LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas State University board of trustees on Friday authorized administrators to negotiate with Mexican officials to establish an ASU campus in that country.
The university had been talking with governmental and business leaders in the Mexican state of Queretaro for several months about the possibility of offering college classes.
Friday’s action by the board, which met at the ASU-Mountain Home campus, gives ASU the approval to begin negotiating terms with the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Education, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to advancing higher education in Mexico, ASU System President Charles Welch said.
“This gives us the green light,” he said. “We feel good about it.
“We wouldn’t do this unless it was beneficial to the university.”
Once the plan is developed, the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board must approve it.
The campus is the brain-child of Tim Hudson, hired in April as chancellor at ASU Jonesboro.
He first talked with Mexican officials about developing a campus in Queretaro two years ago when he was the vice chancellor of the Texas Tech University system.
He envisions 500 to700 Mexican students enrolling in ASU’s international campus in the fall semester of 2015. He predicts 3,000 to 5,000 students will take classes there within five years of its development.
Under the proposal, ASU-Jonesboro will use federal funds or private money to pay for initial start-up, and the Advancement of Mexican Education will underwrite any operating deficits in the first two or three years after classes begin, according to an executive summary of the resolution trustees approved Friday.
The summary also states: “It is projected that the program will ultimately be completely self-supporting.”
The Association for the Advancement of Mexican Education will purchase land in Queretaro for the campus, provide facilities and underwrite the first two years of operational costs, Welch said.
After that, the campus should be financially self-sustaining and could even provide additional revenue for ASU-Jonesboro, Welch said.
Once developed, the Mexican campus would be the first American university campus in the country.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville maintains a campus site in Panama, but it offers only a master’s degree in business administration to a small group of students.
While the curriculum at the Mexico site is a long way from being determined, Welch said the campus will probably offer several academic disciplines, including architecture, engineering, science, technology and mathematics. The campus will also offer general education courses, and English will be the language of instruction, he said.
During the meeting Friday, trustees sped through the usual array of items. But when they discussed the proposed Mexican campus, they recognized its significance.
“It’s a historic decision for Arkansas State University,” said ASU trustee Dan Pierce.“We’re taking on the first step in becoming a global university.
“I’m honored to make a motion to accept this.”
The five member board voted unanimously.
“We’re now ready to begin the implementation stage,” Welch said.
In the early stages of Hudson’s discussions, while he was still at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, he traveled to Queretaro and met with officials several times and worked with consultants to determine whether a campus would be feasible.
“It was a combination of business executives, the private sector and government officials,” Hudson said in a recent interview. “They were all looking at creating a better higher-education opportunity.”
When Hudson left Lubbock to take the chancellor’s position at ASU, “the project followed me,” he said.
Shane Broadway, interim director of the state Department of Higher Education, said in an interview Friday that he and Gov. Mike Beebe met with Mexican leaders when they visited Arkansas in September.
“They were looking for guidance,” he said. “I think they saw ASU as an opportunity.”
Likewise, Welch said he saw offering classes in Queretaro as an opportunity for ASU students to travel to Mexico for a semester of classes.
Located in the center of Mexico, Queretaro is one of the smallest of the country’s 32 states, with about 4,500 square miles of land and a population of 1.8 million. Half live in the capital city of Santiago de Queretaro.
“The area is vibrant, growing and affluent, and has a rising middle class,” Hudson said. “Mexico is right for this opportunity.”
“The area is much more affluent than what comes to mind when you think of Mexico,” Welch said in a separate interview. “I think most people’s view of Mexico is very different than what it actually is in Queretaro.”
He said there are more than 500 international companies in the state, including Boeing.
Since Hudson began working with Mexican officials, the chancellor has been contacted by leaders in Brazil to develop a similar campus proposal.
“I said, ‘Let’s do this first,’” Hudson said of the Queretaro campus. “Let’s learn to do this right. If it works, then we’ll look at something else.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/08/2012