Fanny Orozco from Digital Design, won the international scholarship to spend a semester at Hallym University in South Korea, here she tells us about her experience.
When you entered Uni did you know there were international programs?
Yes, I knew that and that was motivating.
When you started your career, did you think you would go to live and study abroad? To tell you the truth, no...... although I wanted and expected to have the opportunity, and it came very soon!
Have you ever lived or studied outside of Mexico before?
Never. This was the first time I went out of my country.
What prompted or motivated you to study in another country?
The curiosity to get to know another place that is completely different from Mexico. The teachers always pushed me to go beyond and look for opportunities to broaden our vision of the world.
Why did you decide to study in that country?
Well, because of the pandemic this University continued to receive foreign students and the Uni always supported me to be able to fulfill the requirements requested by Hallym University.
How did you feel when you arrived in the new country?
It was exciting and scary. Coming to a place where no one speaks your language, where you know absolutely nothing can be very shocking. It was difficult to communicate with people even with English because you could hardly understand them because of their accent.
I also think I still wasn't processing the fact that I was in another country and the fatigue and stress of such a long flight can make you a little cranky. But it's all worth it.
How have you been received at the university where you arrived?
I was very well received despite arriving in the country at midnight. They were always attentive if I needed anything.
What will you miss most about Mexico and UNI?
From Mexico it was the food, our gastronomy is the best in the world.
From UNI it's a little more difficult since I only made it through a semester and a half before quarantine started. I missed the Uniclubs a lot but will continue to participate.
What is the most exciting thing you have experienced so far in this experience?
I have two experiences: Watching the snow fall quietly and the next day seeing everything covered with snow. And visiting the border with North Korea and entering one of the incursion tunnels. It was fabulous and great to be so close to the other side and watch the scenery.
And the hardest part?
I insist with the food, it was not easy, even now that I have been living in Korea for half a year, also the time change; it is difficult to communicate with the family because when you go to sleep they wake up and vice versa.
What do you expect as a person and as a professional from this experience?
To have expanded my way of perceiving the world. I hope to be more responsible and independent since I had to fend for myself on many occasions. I also understood why my career is so attracted to this country.
Do you recommend these opportunities provided by Uni to your colleagues?
It's an opportunity worth living, even if it's only one semester in your professional career! Thank you Universidad de Celaya for supporting me in this great experience!
Our student José Antonio Merino from Communication Sciences is participating in a "Work-Camp" on the west coast of Iceland, an experience that will allow them to develop a global vision, personal and professional skills, within a multicultural environment.
Chosen as Winner in the "Hands for the World 20-21" Program issued by the State Government Congratulations!
"What we are doing is cleaning up the coasts of West Iceland in a community called Brú, we use a waste separation method in which each of the waste found is recorded, sent for recycling and the marine species we find in the Atlantic are conserved, the program is run by Worldwide FriendsThe program is run by Worldwide Friends, with volunteers from all over the world, right now we are from Mexico (me), Slovakia, France, Guatemala, Germany, Austria and Scotland. It is a beautiful experience on which I will base much of my knowledge and that is leaving me a great learning and memories for a lifetime."
The students of the Bachelor's Degree in Systemic Psychology, Salvador, Andrea and Jesús, received their CONOCER certificate for having accredited the ECO217 Certification for the delivery of human capital training courses in a face-to-face group setting, which includes the substantive functions of preparing, conducting and evaluating training courses based on quality standards in force in the country.
With this certificate our students accredit their knowledge, skills and attitudes in the field of training that is relevant to their work performance in any of the areas of specialization: labor, educational or clinical.
The certificate is endorsed by the National Council for Standardization and Certification of Labor Competencies (CONOCER), an organization of which the University of Celaya is a certifying entity, providing constant training and certification opportunities to our university community and the population of our region.
The University of Celaya in collaboration with the Government of the State of Guanajuato and the Association of Producers of Cajeta de Celaya, seek the declaration "Geographic Indicator of the Cajeta de Celaya" in order to give recognition and protection at national and international level of a product that gives us identity, for the benefit of producers and consumers. Why carry out this process? Because Cajeta de Celaya is linked to cultural, traditional and historical factors, the result of processes and traditional knowledge transmitted from generation to generation by a community of a particular region, that is why it can be considered as intellectual property.
In this process, the University of Celaya conducted the technical study with feedback from cajeta producers, historians and photographs taken by the Guanajuato state government and drafted the rules for the use of cajeta production. The study describes:
a) The historical, traditional and generation-to-generation approach to the production of cajeta.
b) The production approach: ingredients, blending, family business, "at the cajeta point" and elements such as the copper ladle and the wooden spoon (which gives a particular flavor to the cajeta).
c) Photographic evidenceThe cajeta producers were already constituted as an A.C. and in 2018 the protection of geographical indicators was added.
The holder of the geographical indication of "Cajeta de Celaya" is the Mexican State certified through IMPI. The reputation of a geographical indication is an intangible collective good. "Cajeta de Celaya" would be named to any produced within the geographical indication zone and complying with the established rules of use.
The importance lies in the fact that if it is not protected, it could be used without restrictions, its value would diminish and it would eventually be lost, besides, protection is not only local, regional or national, but international, through trade agreements. Europe, for example, requested Mexico to protect 350 geographical indicators (Spain alone has more than 60), as did the USA and the World Trade Organization (WTO), among others.
In Mexico there are only 18 appellations of origin and 13 or 14 geographical indicators. The advantages of this declaration are the protection of the product, which by having a geographical indicator becomes worth twice the price, because the consumer pays for the guarantee of origin, since for any producer of cajeta to sell it as "CAJETA DE CELAYA" would have to:
a) Obtain a certificate issued by La Uni de Celaya (who made the technical study) and
b) Obtain authorization from IMPI confirming that its production process complies with the rules of use registered with the geographical indicator, the relationship between the product, the quality and the place on which the protection is based prevents its transmission to producers outside the demarcated region.
This whole process also ensures quality because producers are less tempted to substitute traditional procedures for possibly less expensive ones, and it also encourages economic development based on traditional knowledge.
Obtaining protection of a geographical indication will also prevent the registration of the indication as a trademark by a third party, avoiding the risk of "Cajeta de Celaya" becoming a generic name.
With this, the University of Celaya consolidates its performance as an institution committed to the development, culture, history and future of our city.
Universidad de Celaya starts the Academic Challenge "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" that brings together companies from Celaya, students of the Global Business and Culinary Arts degrees, as well as the Ministry of Sustainable Economic Development (SDES) with the objective of designing value propositions that enhance the commercialization of products and/or services through innovative business plans to reactivate and boost commercial activity and economic revitalization of the city.
The challenge is to consider the products of at least 3 of the 4 participating companies (Bachoco, Beta Procesos, Coca-Cola FEMSA and La Tradicional de Salgado), that the equipment for the proposed business does not exceed 35 thousand pesos and that the idea is innovative. The proposals will be developed during the semester, to be presented at the end of November to entrepreneurs, teachers and representatives of the SDES.
The university students who have taken this challenge in their hands have the great opportunity to develop skills for their professional life such as: critical thinking, collaborative work, decision making, problem solving and leadership, as well as to strengthen their creativity and entrepreneurial vision.
The linkage with the productive sector through projects framed in the institutional Business Linking Program where our students, guided by their professors, work on real projects to propose solutions to community needs, is just one way in which the University of Celaya collaborates with the progress of the country and develops professional and leadership skills in students.
This Monday, August 9, 2021 in the municipality of Comonfort, Pueblo Magico, Governor Diego Sinhué Rodríguez recognized the efforts of the Institution and the academic community during the official presentation of the Title and Logo of the Collective Trademark "MCG Molcajetes de Comonfort, Guanajuato", This project was managed by Karime Velázquez Rico, now a law graduate, and contributes to the positioning of Guanajuato as a productive entity and a national reference in Industrial Property, adding with this 10 collective trademarks that boost the competitiveness of MSMEs.
The action consisted in the incorporation of a group of master craftsmen who design and produce traditional molcajetes of andesitic basalt from Comonfort as a commercial company and, once this requirement was fulfilled, in November 2019 the registration of the collective trademark was obtained before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) in the city of León.
This work is in addition to many other activities that have been carried out by different areas of the University with various associations of artisans in our state where they have been supported in the development of websites, corporate image, digital catalogs, access to global portals for online sales, promotion and regional and national projection, among others, thus reinforcing the institutional commitment as a learning community in generating opportunities for a more prosperous Mexico.
SMEs are highly represented in the Colombian market; in the Cundinamarca region alone, 42% of businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. But how do these companies survive in the market?
Research by Angelica María Borrego Espitia, researcher of strategies used by small and medium enterprises in Cundinamarca Colombia.
Sustainable value in SMEs
A problem that has been noticed in the region of Cundinamarca, Colombia, is that only 30% of the micro, small, medium and large companies survive the first five years after being created, which caused a lot of curiosity in locals and that is why it was decided to conduct an in-depth investigation. This research conducted by Angélica Borrego as her master's thesis at the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada under the direction of Professor Yefri Manuel Pascagaza Corredor shows us the different strategies used by the same SMEs, strategies that help us understand how they have maintained a stable place in the market of Cundinamarca.
The objective of Angélica Borrego's research was to analyze the strategies used by small and medium-sized companies in Cundinamarca to create sustainable value.
According to the data obtained in the research, the creation of sustainable value is based on the following points:
Innovation
Sustainability
Business Model
Co-creation
Value
Sustainable manufacturing
Human capital
Emerging synthesis
Circular economy
These comprise: sustainability, creation value and sustainable creation value.
By checking this information we can see that this research has a descriptive quantitative approach and its design is non-experimental-transactional, which means that it is a non-probabilistic method by convenience. Angélica Borrego says that for the collection of data a questionnaire of closed questions was carried out together with a judgment of experts and to assess the validity all this was applied in some participating SMEs in Cundinamarca Colombia.
Study results Survey results
Finally, the researcher commented on her conclusions and recommendations, which were:
Medium-sized companies are the best performers when it comes to implementing strategies for sustainable value creation
Efforts must continue to be made to achieve representative improvements in terms of sustainability.
Small companies need to work with greater dedication and adapt to current trends.
Trends are the key to creating strategies if you want your SME to remain competitive and sustainable over time.
The companies that are the subject of this study must redefine their strategies
You should always think about introducing new factors to create value, this will help your company a lot.
Last Thursday, May 13, 2021, we received at the University of Celaya during our activity "Science Dialogues" Dr. Rocio Boza Calvo from the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Hispanoamericana de Costa Rica, who shared with us the development and results of her analysis of the effectiveness of the implementation of the simulation strategy in education according to the perception of the facilitators involved in the process, from the second quarter of 2016 to date.
Would you like to know the most important details of this research? We present them to you!
The objective of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of simulation as a methodological strategy used in different courses of the curriculum of the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Hispanoamericana. This simulation strategy consists in that each professor in his course chooses thematic contents that have been addressed in the classroom and plans with the accompaniment of professional actors a scenario or also called profile that is as close as possible to the educational reality in classroom or educational center contexts, with the objective that the student faces these situations and puts into practice the theoretical knowledge acquired in the courses.
Fields of application of simulation
Simulation is a didactic strategy that allows an approach to professional reality.
Traditionally it has been used for:
- Training and education
- Communication and sales
- System design or improvements.
- Systems management
In disciplines such as:
- Engineering
- Medicine, biology, ecology.
- Social and economic sciences
Research process
In 2016, a qualitative study was conducted in the second half of the semester of the same year, at the Universidad Hispanoamericana. University that has formalized simulation in education and that has been applied in six courses of the curriculum of the different careers of the Faculty of Education, among which are:
- Learning disabilities
- Language disorders 1
- Group techniques
- Evaluation techniques in English and Spanish
- General Didactics 1
- Teaching English 3
Each of the courses where simulation is carried out as a teaching methodology contemplates in its program that the student's participation and performance in such activity has a value of 20% of the final passing grade of the subject.
Throughout the term, starting in week 7 according to their schedule, two simulations must be carried out. They have 18 trained teachers who have become facilitators to implement it.
In order to know the effectiveness of the methodology we were working with, a qualitative research was carried out by sending a questionnaire to each of the professors who implemented this methodology throughout the course they taught. It should be noted that one of them left the institution, another is no longer part of the faculty of education, another is the simulation coordinator and preferred to avoid bias and the remaining 4 did not send the survey in the time in which they were requested.
Eleven questionnaires were collected and served as a sample for the qualitative analysis.
Main results
The teachers who responded to the questionnaire report that by using simulation, students develop critical thinking, in situations that actually allow them to test what they know, what they can do and how they think it should be done. Many simulations develop decision-making skills, a very important aspect of thinking and problem solving.
All the interviewees mentioned as positive aspects the ambience of the space, the professionalism of the actors, and the technology used (Learning Space). These positive aspects are the product of a joint effort and work.
The most outstanding issue in terms of aspects to be improved is the sound and the transfer of venues to carry out the simulation. It should be noted that the respondents seemed to answer focusing on recent events and did not answer evidencing everything that occurred throughout the strategy implementation process.
Conclusions and recommendations
It is important to make it clear that although simulation allows the future teacher to get closer to reality. It will not always be able to represent or reproduce in its entirety situations that are generated within the educational centers, hence the component of using professional actors is perhaps the option that most reduces this disadvantage that several researchers have pointed out.
Professional actors are hired for the simulations considering that they have dramaturgical training and a trained capacity for reproduction that facilitates performance in an educational activity, focused on learning objectives and at the service of students in professional training.
An important factor provided by the adequate preparation of actors is the increase in the level of realism of the simulation scenarios.
Another very important factor is that the teachers attending the education courses must be active teachers with work experience so that the scenarios or profiles are as real as possible and in line with the current context.
To develop science outreach skills, 4th semester students of the Communication and Audiovisual Media degree at the University of Celaya participated in the Science Dialogues activity. In this activity, students chatted with researchers from different areas of knowledge and various universities in Mexico and Latin America to learn about their research projects and then publish a note to disseminate these projects to an international audience.
Invited guests include the following researchers:
Dr. Avid Roman-Gonzalez, CEO of BE Tech, UNTELS Lima Sur, Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades, Peru.
Dr. Gustavo Illescas, Professor-Researcher, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Universidad Nacional del Centro, Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rocío Lorena Boza Calvo, professor and researcher at Universidad Hispanoamericana, Costa Rica.
Dr. Yohanna Milena Rueda Mahecha, Universidad Uniminuto, Colombia
The team of students and Dr. Josman Espinosa Gómez from CETYS University, Mexicali Campus
Angélica Borrego Espitia and Oscar Robayo Quevedo, thesis students advised by Dr. Yefri Pascagaza of the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Colombia.
María Fernanda Acosta Romo and Marco Antonio Chamorro Lucero, researchers of the Universidad Mariana in Colombia.
Some of the notes that resulted from this activity will be published in this blog and others were published by the authors directly in their social networks and professional portfolios. We invite you to discover them.
Thanks to the high commitment of the students and the preparation provided by the teachers, the 2021 Generation of Prepa Uni IB achieved its highest result in the International Baccalaureate Diploma program, obtaining 4.83 as the average mean score of our students, surpassing the world average score of 4.43.
Academic quality is at the core of Prepa Uni's philosophy and on the road to excellence the educational system of the Universidad de Celaya has been strengthened with the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (DP) that trains students, between the ages of 16 and 19, with an excellent breadth and depth of knowledge, while growing physically, intellectually, emotionally and ethically, giving them the tools to access any university in Mexico and abroad.
The evaluation used a dual model and included content from subjects such as literature, business management, monograph, biology, mathematical analysis, theory of knowledge, theater and visual arts. The International Baccalaureate Diploma program allows students to live a learning experience where they learn and share with young people from all over the world, raising their academic level and developing other personal skills that transcend in their lives.
Created in 1968, the International Baccalaureate® Diploma Program has the recognition and respect of the world's leading universities, guaranteeing better performance in higher education than those who do not take the program, Prepa Uni is the only one in the region that officially offers the International Baccalaureate.
