Frontera NorteSur March 2001

Tec currently has 1,000 undergraduate students in its industrial engineering program. The program has seventy instructors, about half of whom are full-time Tec employees that work on research in addition to their teaching duties. The other instructors are part-time employees and work for local businesses and bring real-world experience to the classroom. The are forty graduate students in the master's degree program. Half of them attend Tec full time on scholarships given by the Mexican government. The other twenty attend Tec in the evening and work primarily in the maquiladora industry during the day. There are six students in the department's PhD program.

While there are 76 technological institutes throughout Mexico, all of which belong to the Dirección General de Institutos Tecnológicos (DIGIT), the Cd. Juárez Tec is the only institute that offers a PhD in industrial engineering. While the programs offered in the different Tecnológicos are quite similar many of the institutes offer regional specializations. De la Riva said that while all of the Tecnológicos offer undergraduate degrees in industrial engineering only nine of the Tecs offer master's degrees and Cd. Juárez has the only program that offers a specialization in environmental engineering.

Tuition and scholarship programs

The undergraduate degree in industrial engineering takes students between 3 1/2 and six years to complete. Tuition is 1,100 pesos per semester (approximately US$110) and students can pay their tuition over the course of the semester. Some students attend Tec full time, others attend on a part-time basis and work as well. The university also has approximately 200 students on federal scholarships through the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). These scholarships pay for students' tuition and books and provide them with some spending money as well. Some of the conditions to the scholarships are that students must attend school full time, they can not be employed, they must be from low-income families and there may be no more than one scholarship recipient per family at any given time.

While Tec's tuition may seem low by US standards it pays the bulk of the institute's operating budget. While instructors' salaries are paid by the federal government, money from tuition pays almost all of Tec's other expenses. As money for research is quite limited Tecnológicos across Mexico compete for prestige through competitions in two fields: entrepreneurship and research. According to De la Riva, the Cd. Juárez Tecnológico has had much success at the nationwide competitions, especially at the master's degree level.

Tec's Main Classroom Building

To graduate Tec students must do more than just complete their coursework. They must also pass exams which allow them to become members of their professional associations. Last year 476 students graduated from Tec. According to De la Riva, due to their professional status and internship and work experience, graduates always have jobs at the time they leave the program.

Relationships with other universities

When asked about relationships between Tec and cross-border US universities, De la Riva said that he appreciates a program that allows Tec to use the libraries at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP). The library at Tec is small and the institute is currently looking for funds to build a new structure on land that it has recently acquired. While some Tec graduates get their master's degrees or doctorates at NMSU and UTEP, there is no regular student exchange between these three universities. Neither is there any joint research between faculty at the three institutions at this time according to De la Riva.

Internship programs

Ing. Maria del Carmen Ramírez, head of professional studies at Tec, said that one of the most important parts of a Tec education is the required internship. Once students have completed three-fourths of their coursework they must do a 640 hour internship at an organization within their field. As many students already have jobs they may take on special projects at work so as to gain internship credit. Other students get placed by the university at local companies.

Sports and other extracurricular activities

One thing that is a bit shocking to hear in an interview geared toward gaining an understanding of an institution's academic programs is unabashed pride by faculty and administration in athletic accomplishments. De la Riva said that Tec is involved in all sorts of sport programs from volleyball to swimming to chess. Schools across the nation compete and win points for victories in recognized events. One advantage to this system is that all sports and events share in an equal weight in an institution's athletic success.

At the end of the year the institute with the highest number of points wins a trophy and if the institute wins a number of years in a row it is allowed to keep the trophy. Tec Juárez has a number of such national trophies proudly displayed in its main instructional building. De la Riva and Ramírez pointed these out on a tour of the campus that also showed off Tec's heated, indoor swimming pool, weight room, basketball court and dance studio. In addition to its sports program Tec also has student groups that put on dance and theater programs.

While in the past Tec has had over 6,000 students enrolled at one time, Ramírez states that the school functions best for students and faculty when it has just 4,000 students--its current enrollment. It is a self-awareness like this that helps Tec be the university that it is. Steadily over the course of the past 37 years Tec has increased the number of its programs and the opportunities available to its students that receive a combination of classroom instruction and real-world experience that make them instantly employable and a value to the Cd. Juárez economy.