President, provost among cabinet members visiting this week
Ashland.news staff report
Southern Oregon University administrative leaders are in Guanajuato, Mexico this week, visiting its Mexican sister institution, the Universidad de Guanajuato, and officially renewed the schools’ 55-year relationship on Wednesday by pledging in a new memorandum of understanding to “strengthen institutional collaboration in the areas of teaching, research and extension,” according to a news release.
The new agreement — which builds upon a commitment the two universities made to each other during their 50th anniversary celebration in 2019 — was reached as a delegation from SOU visited Guanajuato this week. The memorandum was signed by SOU President Rick Bailey and UG Rector General Claudia Susana Gómez López, whose position is equivalent to that of the president at a U.S. university. SOU Board of Trustees Chair Daniel Santos is also visiting.
The new memorandum of understanding commits the two universities to maintain a close working relationship: “Universidad de Guanajuato and Southern Oregon University express their intention to strengthen institutional collaboration in the areas of teaching, research and extension, through activities or projects that will be formalized by specific agreements, within the framework of the attributions conferred by their regulations.”
“All of us at Southern Oregon University are grateful to President Claudia Susana Gómez López and her wonderful team at the University of Guanajuato for celebrating and continuing this beautiful 55-year partnership,” President Bailey said, in a news release. “We look forward to even more opportunities for our students, faculty and staff to collaborate in a spirit of friendship, partnership and love.”
Bailey’s first visit to Guanajuato was in August 2022 after starting in his position as president earlier that year. It was during that trip that he awarded distinguished SOU alum Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, former Governor of the state of Guanajuato, with the SOU President’s Medal.
SOU Provost and Executive Vice President Casey Shillam, who started in her role earlier this year, is visiting the sister city for the first time. She spoke to Ashland.news about the trip in August.
“My goals for the trip are to get a better understanding of the academic programs that they have and to identify some really great overlapping programs for faculty and students, where we can expand our partnerships with them,” Shillam told Ashland.news in a phone interview in August. “The programs that we do currently have are so strong and impactful and I think that we’re at the right time where we’re ready to build out some of those relationships and partnerships.
Shillam noted a strong connection with University of Guanajuato through the Business Department, but that there are more opportunities to expand through the Honors College, health and wellness, and visual arts programs, such as Digital Cinema, music and theater.
“There’s just so many things that our becoming much more highly recognized in the United States as these programs of excellence and so that’s one of the things I’m looking forward to (on this trip to Guanajuato),” Shillam said.
More than 1,000 students, faculty members and others have participated in a variety of exchange programs between the two universities and the cities of Ashland and Guanajuato, which are sister cities. The cooperative link between the two cities and the two universities is unique.
Graciela “Chela” Tapp-Kocks started the university-to-university relationship more than five decades ago.
“This woman has held it together for 53 years,” said Kernan Turner of Señora Chela in 2022, as reported in Ashland.news. “In Guanajuato, she is the Queen.
“Guanajuato really understands what she’s done and they really love her,” he added.
Señora Chela started the process of becoming a sister city in 1968 and the partnership began officially in 1969, according to previous reporting by Ashland.news. She saw similarities between the two cities prior to the sister city partnership formation, among them, the similar mountains and cultural legacies and theater, according to the Ashland Amigo Club website.
“Ashland was looking for a sister city and I was able to in a year, being a professor here, to see the personality of the city, and I had been to Guanajuato and I noticed that personality,” Senora Chela said. “They had many similarities. They had the mountains … they had the university, they had many artists, they had a lot of theater.”
Universidad de Guanajuato has sister university relationships with more than 300 other institutions worldwide, but the Ashland-Guanajuato relationships — between both the cities and universities — were the first for each entity, according to a news release.
Some families from the Mexican city have been involved in the relationships with Ashland and SOU for three generations, and more than 80 marriages have united partners from Ashland and Guanajuato.
Contingents of academic and administrative leaders of the two universities regularly visit the other’s campus, and collaborative programs benefit the students of each. One current example is the Global Innovation Scholars program — a collaboration on multicultural business development that grew out of an initiative from the U.S. Department of State.
The Global Innovation Scholars program, which began in 2022, includes online coursework for participating students from the two schools during each year’s winter and spring terms, and a visit to each other’s communities to assess and create development plans for local businesses or organizations.
Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at hollyd@ashland.news.
Related stories:
Entre Amigos: Sister City cooperative projects are going strong (May 23, 2024)
Guanajuato muralist among sister city group visiting Ashland for the Fourth of July (July 3, 2023)
Guanajuato to Ashland visitors: ‘Welcome — our home is your home’ (Aug. 22, 2022)
SOU awards its highest honor to former Guanajuato governor and his wife (Aug. 9, 2022)
