Two of Mexico's top universities show that cross-border cooperation and alliances benefit not just students, but the institutions and countries involved. (Education Exchange).

"You give us your wish-list and we make it happen." No, it's not the genie of the magic lantern speaking, but Joan Landeros, director of the Center for International Education at LaSalle University in Mexico City. She is describing LaSalle's executive MBA study visit to Mexico, an intensive week of immersion into the way business is done here.

Five years ago, LaSalle's sister institution, St. Mary's College of California, invited Sheffield Hallam University from Sheffield, England to join them for two weeks at LaSalle. Mexico provided a common ground for both of these visiting schools to get to know each other, while offering an opportunity for them to learn about the challenges of doing business in developing countries.

LaSalle supplied the academic expertise with its own professors giving lectures that taught the basics about Mexican business. St. Mary's delegation went on to visit other countries, but Sheffield Hallam was so pleased and impressed with what they learned that they have come back every year. Sheffield Hallam's MBA program has students from around the world, including the Pacific Rim, Europe and Brazil. Latin America is now looked upon as an exciting emerging market and MBA students across the globe are eager to discover the ins and outs of doing business here.

Last February, the University of Memphis in Tennessee sent a group of executive MBA students to Mexico on a study tour with Sheffield Hallam. LaSalle facilitated a link between both schools, enabling them to network with MBA candidates from many different places--so important in the globalization of business interests. At the same time, the students got to see and understand the business climate in this country.

Since Memphis serves as a logistical hub for Federal Express, the University of Memphis was interested in studying how logistics are handled south of the border. LaSalle set up a visit to retail giant Wal-Mart de Mexico where the MBA executives participated in a workshop led by Federico Casillas, director of Corporate Finance at the company. They discussed a variety of subjects, from the problems of investing in a nation with a floating currency to strategies for maintaining uniform standards from one country to another.

La Salle gave the MBA candidates from Memphis and Sheffield the chance to meet several experts in industry, economics and government. This was balanced with field trips to factories and cultural sites as well as receiving valuable advice from a leading consultant in intercultural behavior.

Adriana Arzac, president of Global Mind, an intercultural business consulting firm, gave the group a better understanding of how Mexicans view business relations.

"Here you ask about the person's family and try to establish a rapport before getting down to business," says Arzac. "A Mexican business deal is based on trust and you must establish that confidence before any contract is signed."

For example, one Memphis businessman had developed a product for Mexico and came with the group to learn how to put his plan into practice. Before his arrival, he had done market research that indicated that there was a strong market for armored cars here. He had the chance to visit the AMERICAN CHAMBER/MEXICO and the U.S. Trade Center to establish contacts that could help him import the cars. He participated in group visits to government offices, found out about regulations that pertained to bringing the cars into Mexico, and got a good idea of just what had to be done before he could start doing business.

It was a learning experience that could never have been duplicated in a Memphis classroom.

"Here there was follow through," says Landeros. "We showed the group practical applications instead of simulations."

LaSalle offers the same vital hands-on learning experience for students of journalism, criminal justice, advanced Spanish, archaeology and engineering. One example is their joint program with the University of Houston, which offers a Masters in Petroleum Engineering. Houston provides the professors and state-of-the-art curriculum while LaSalle provides the Mexican modules, focusing on the specific geology, infrastructure, labor situation and other essentials of petroleum production in Mexico.

This joint program is aimed at engineers of Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos), the state-owned oil company. These engineers receive the benefit of Houston's technological expertise without having to travel to the United States. They can stay in Mexico and continue working while studying for their degree. The University of Houston, in turn, learns useful information about Mexico's oil needs which can be utilized for future business ventures.

LaSalle is a prime example of how Mexico's institutions of higher learning are offering their facilities and country specific know-how to foreign companies and universities that realize the importance of learning the ropes in a country before attempting to establish a business there.

U.S. INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

As more and more companies require bilingual, bicultural graduates, many U.S. colleges have set up campuses in Mexico for students who seek a U.S. degree but find it financially unfeasible to spend four years in the United States.

At the same time, U.S. institutions are waking up to the fact that a campus in Mexico can provide quite a few advantages to their students at home. Globalization is no longer just a buzzword and schools in the United States are setting up campuses abroad with increasing frequency to offer their students an international outlook.

One such school is the United States International University. Based in San Diego, USIU had the foresight to establish a campus south of the border in the 1970s, long before others followed suit. Although the curriculum is essentially the same in San Diego and Mexico City, the emphasis is different. "When we teach a course in economics, we teach the fundamentals of the U.S. economy from an emerging-economy perspective," says Susanne Wagner, executive director of USIU/Mexico.

Other schools are using USIU's Mexico City campus for information they can't find at home. Although USIU has no formal architecture program, the University of Houston sends a class of architecture students along with their professor to study Mexico's 16th-century aqueducts, haciendas and other colonial structures. USIU provides courses and lectures on Latin American history, art and other subjects, which help students to understand the architectural edifices in their cultural context.

This educational interchange is mutually beneficial. While the University of Houston students study structures not found in the United States, they bring along state-of-the-art technology that is hard to obtain in Mexico.

They detected structural flaws invisible to the naked eye and determined the exact chemical composition of the original materials used to construct the Zempoala Aqueduct, located between the cities of Toluca and Cuernavaca. At the end of their study, the students presented their findings to the Commission for the Reconstruction of the Zempoala Aqueduct. The material is invaluable to the Commission, which cannot afford to gather such information on its own.

Wagner believes that although the United States probably has the best educational system in the world at the doctoral level, "there is unfortunately a tendency to downplay what Mexico can contribute," she adds. "Our students are getting the best of both worlds."

July 1 will mark USIU's merger with Alliant University, formerly known as the California School of Professional Psychology. This means that psychology will become an important offering at the Mexico City campus, and cross-cultural approaches to psychology are already being considered. The importance of the family and the interaction among its members can be very different in Mexican and U.S. homes. New courses are being planned so that U.S. students will better understand the differences in the way Latin Americans perceive the world.

The merger of the two schools, to be called Alliant International University, has already shown its advantages. Accreditation can be a major sticking point in Mexico since the Mexican campuses of U.S. institutions usually have no official academic recognition from the Mexican Department of Education. This means that students graduating with a psychology degree from USIU/ Mexico would not be permitted to practice in Mexico. Because Alliant University is certified by the internationally recognized American Psychological Association, students at' the new Alliant International University will be recognized in both countries.

USIU is an example of a number of U.S. institutions of higher learning that are establishing a presence in Mexico and reaping the benefits in an increasingly global society.

Rhona Statland de Lopez is the education columnist for the Mexico City Daily News and Mexico Correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education.