A recently initiated partnership will allow San Diego State professors to teach business classes at a university in Baja California.
The agreement, International Memorandum of Understanding between SDSU and CETYS Universidad in Baja California, will offer two concentrations: Business in the Global Marketplace and International Entrepreneurship, according to SDSU NewsCenter.
CETYS students will complete courses taught by SDSU business faculty to receive a certificate in their concentration.
CETYS University students are able to take four to six courses at a foreign university to acquire skills and become culturally competent within a specific area.
The program is self-supporting and paid for by CETYS, according to SDSU NewsCenter.
“This option allows students to graduate CETYS with an added value to their degree; it is an excellent opportunity for border students, as it allows them to specialize in key areas of business and be more competitive in a global era,” CETYS President Fernando Leon Garcia said.
The program was signed in December and will begin in the fall of 2015.
“We are looking at two institutions who value entrepreneurship and international programs,” SDSU President Elliot Hirshman said in a press release. “The program that we inaugurate today is really another significant step in building both a binational partnership between our universities, but also a broader binational partnership in this region.”
Management professor and Center for International Business Education and Research Director Martina Musteen is one of the professors going to teach at the Mexican university.
“You have our faculty going abroad, and they’re learning a cross pollination of ideas, and bringing it back into their own classes,” she said. “And it’s important to students there to have international interactions. I can’t see any negative.”
Journalism sophomore Andrea Villafana-Lopez, a native Mexican, thinks the cultural exchange will benefit CETYS business students.
“The United States has such a big influence,” she said. “I’m not trying to say everyone’s trying to come here, but when you’re in Mexico, they have you learn English.”
Business and criminal justice major Sebastion Estrella, who visits Mexico frequently, believes the agreement might bring more cultural understanding to students.
“I hear people say all the time, ‘Don’t go to Tijuana,’” he said. “A bunch of people have that mindset that Mexico is bad.”
CETYS and SDSU have previously exchanged faculty and students in several programs in an effort to enhance education for both institutions.
CETYS also has agreements with universities in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe and South America. In the U.S. it partners with 16 universities.
