Between collaboration and anchoring: IIMAS-UNAM in Mérida
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Abstract
Purpose: To analyze and document UNAM's linking and subsequent anchoring strategies to the regions where it has established foreign headquarters such as IIMAS (Institute of Applied Mathematics and Systems Research), located in the Merida Campus.
Methodology: A literature review on anchoring and the scientific and technological system of Yucatán was conducted as well as field work for a month in the city of Mérida, at the UNAM headquarters of the Science and Technology Park; additionally, we carried out interviews with researchers, academic technicians and students of this headquarters and with different actors of the scientific and technological system of the state of Yucatan. We also attended meetings with professors and students.
Results: We documented the strategies followed by the different research groups and by university authorities to anchor UNAM in the State of Yucatan. In some groups these begin with teaching (very clearly in iimas) while in others such as cepchis, the laboratories of the Faculty of Chemistry or the Institute of Ecology include local actors and problems in their research agendas.
Limitations: the study should be completed by documenting the opinion of local actors about the work that UNAM has done in the region. Since although interviews were made, there was not enough time to capture the local perspective in detail.
Findings: We were able to document the opportunities, limitations and challenges that Latin American universities face in the process of legitimation to anchor themselves in different regions of the countries where they originate. The case of UNAM is especially relevant because it shows how a large university in a highly centralized country has followed formal decentralization strategies; it complements each other with the informal mechanisms that researchers find to be able to continue their work in conditions that are sometimes very different from the ones they have in university campuses with more resources.
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