Capitalizing on its mandate to build bridges of understanding and effective dialogue across the hemisphere, the University of Miami joined the Puentes Consortium last week, a binational group of universities charged with enhancing academic connectivity and addressing the most pressing challenges between the United States and Mexico.
Collectively, this group will focus its operations on facilitating the exchange of visiting scholars to conduct their work at consortium member campuses, supporting researchers with grant writing processes and convening large-scale conferences on issues relevant to binational relationships.
Consortium leaders agreed that the group should not be confined to a strict focus on the U.S.-Mexico relationship but should promote a broader agenda on the transfer of knowledge across disciplines and borders.
“The Puentes Consortium strengthens hemispheric ties by facilitating collaboration among scholars at home and abroad,” noted President Julio Frenk. “We are delighted to join colleagues from top universities in the U.S. and Mexico as the newest member of the consortium, and we look forward to working together to tackle the type of complex issues that can only be solved through cooperation across borders.”
The University of Miami was invited to join the Puentes Consortium by Rice University, one of the nation's top academic institutions. The selection was based on the University’s strong reputation in research and its aspirations to become the leading hemispheric university.
The Puentes Consortium was founded in 2008 by the presidents of U.S. and Mexican institutions of higher education. Its goal is to provide a distinctive voice for a binational community of scholars to carry out multidisciplinary research on issues of importance to the relationship between Mexico and the U.S.
In addition to the University of Miami and Rice University, other members of the consortium include Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM), and La Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP).
ITESM and UDLAP are also members of the Hemispheric University Consortium (HUC), which UM was instrumental in forming in April 2018.
Lourdes Dieck Assad, vice president for the University of Miami’s Hemispheric and Global Affairs, said that the alignment strengthens our footprint in the hemisphere.
“The University’s membership in the Puentes Consortium opens a new avenue to advance our hemispheric strategy,” she said. “In joining this select group we also become a partner with an excellent domestic institution of higher learning, Rice University, with whom we share the vision that U.S. higher education should seek productive engagements with top institutions beyond our borders.”
