16 University of Guanajuato students have worked on projects in Ashland with local counterparts this year
By Kernan Turner
Sister City activities are in full swing this year, maintaining and creating new cooperative projects and people-to-people friendships as envisioned more than half a century ago by the founders of the partnership between Ashland and Guanajuato, Mexico.
The all-volunteer Ashland Amigo Club, supporter of the Ashland-Guanajuato alliance since its beginning, reports 16 University of Guanajuato students have come to Ashland this year to work on projects with their university student counterparts.
Most recently, seven University of Guanajuato nursing students arrived in Ashland on April 13 for a three-week visit, renewing an exchange with the Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing Campus at Southern Oregon University, one of OHSU’s five regional Oregon campuses.
This year marks the first time Mexican students have returned to Ashland in the springtime since COVID 19 forced a suspension in 2020. A total of 40 Guanajuato nursing students came to Ashland between 2015 and 2019.
Franny White, OHSU senior media relations specialist, said in an email to Ashland.news that visiting students are paired with OHSU Ashland nursing students, who they accompany as they attend classes, participate in health care simulations, and engage in community-based clinical experiences.”
White said the students “see how local organizations have health-related programs that focus on serving Southern Oregon’s Latino community,” including La Clinica, Rogue Valley Farm to School, the Kids Unlimited Academy charter school and Celia’s House hospice.
Midway through their time in Ashland, the students, their university advisers and administrators attended a breakfast hosted by the Ashland Amigo Club.
“Guanajuato students are also having fun,” White said. Among planned activities were visiting Crater Lake National Park, attending the Oregon Cheese Festival, hiking in Lithia Park, going to the Ashland Growers Market, bowling and dancing.
White said OHSU will also revive the student exchange “as soon as possible,” sending its Ashland-based nursing students to Guanajuato in the fall, as was done before the COVID interruption.
Global Innovation Scholars
Earlier this spring, nine other University of Guanajuato students were in Ashland to participate with 10 Southern Oregon University students in this year’s Global Innovation Scholar Program, initiated in 2022 through the U.S. State Department. Its two directors are Dee Fretwell, chair of the SOU business department, and Guanajuato professor Martin Pantoja, an SOU graduate. Earlier, in March, the SOU participants had gone to Guanajuato.
The 19 students worked together, researching and analyzing local businesses in each community and presenting their owners with recommended development plans.
The Ashland Amigo Club hosted a farewell dinner on April 13 for the Guanajuato students.
A story on the SOU online news site, SOU Global Scholars Program underway for 2024, said the Global Innovation Scholars project grew out of a previous partnership that began in 2019 between the two universities called Collaborative Online International Learning. It brought together “classes of business students to work on the development of international business relationships.”
The online article said that “Fretwell and … professor Pantoja led the transition to Global Innovation Scholars in 2022, when the two universities’ business schools were awarded a $25,000 grant sponsored … by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassies and the nonprofit organization Partners for the Americas.”
“This recognition … bolstered our commitment to fostering collaborative learning experiences that transcend borders and unite students from diverse backgrounds,” Fretwell was quoted as saying in the article.
Scholarship recipients
In February, the Ashland Amigo Club held a welcome dinner for three of its scholarship recipients from Guanajuato who are studying at SOU this year. They are music students Isaac Aaron Quintamilla Melgar and Monica Herrera Zamora and business administration student Dama Paola.
The students and some 30 Ashland Amigo Club members met in the home of Jay Ach and Amigo Club Vice President Karen Grove.
Quintamilla Melgar and Herrera Zamora entertained dinner guests by playing music, Isaac on cello and Monica on violin.
SOU President’s Medal
On Jan. 9, SOU President Dr. Rick Bailey presented the prestigious SOU President’s Medal to Señora Chela Tapp-Kocks, the visionary who pushed simultaneously for Sister City relations with Guanajuato in 1969, the same year she encouraged a small group of Ashlanders to create the supportive Amigo Club.
Bailey said the medal is the university’s highest honor and recognizes individuals who made a “significant and lasting impact” and “who demonstrate exemplary leadership and service to Southern Oregon University and the global community.”
Bailey presented the medal to two other retired SOU teachers at the ceremony: artist Betty LaDuke and poet Lawson Fusao Inada.
LaDuke taught art at SOU for 18 years. Many of her paintings of Rogue Valley farmworkers are displayed prominently in the Medford International Airport lobby.
Inada, a third-generation Japanese American, was at SOU from 1966 to 2002. His experience of being confined with his family in Second World War internment camps shaped much of his poetry.
SOU has previously awarded the medal to 59 individuals and organizations, including in August 2022 to Guanajuato politician and SOU graduate Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and his wife, Frances “Faffie” Siekman Romero, a generous contributor to the Ashland Amigo Club Endowed Scholarship Fund, administered by the SOU Foundation.
Amigo Club’s Entre Amigos (Between Friends) column about Ashland ties to its sister city Guanajuato, Mexico, appears periodically. Longtime AP reporter and bureau chief Kernan Turner is an Ashland resident and Amigo Club member.
May 26: Photo of Martin Pantoja introducing students replaced with correct photo (prior photo was general shot of gathering at restaurant).
