SDSU faculty tour Tijuana, collaborate with Mexico school
Professors and deans from San Diego State University ventured south of the border Friday to meet social and business entrepreneurs in Tijuana and explore ways to expand its partnership with CETYS Universidad.
“We’re calling this a Tijuana entrepreneurship ecosystem tour,” said Alex DeNoble, executive director of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at SDSU and one of the coordinators of the trip.
DeNoble said he thought of the tour over tapas in Spain while doing a joint teaching project with Eduardo Durazo Watanabe, a faculty member in the School of Business Administration at CETYS Universidad (Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior), which has campuses in Tijuana, Ensenada and Mexicali.
Deans from the College of Professional Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and College of Sciences were among about 20 people from SDSU on the Friday tour of Tijuana, which stopped at four businesses and nonprofits before ending at the local CETYS campus.
“This is just a start,” DeNoble said. “I want to bring students down. I want CETYS students and our students to work together on multicultural projects. That’s what today’s all about.”
SDSU and CETYS already have decades-long exchange programs, and since 2015 SDSU professors have taught classes on the global marketplace and international entrepreneurship at the Mexican university.
Looking ahead, DeNoble said he is working with CETYS to establish an entrepreneurship program and graduate program in entrepreneurship at the school.
The first stop of the day was at Estacion Federal, a former 1940s-era bus station that had been converted into a mixed-used plaza with residential units, work spaces, a coffee shop, barber and other businesses.
Miguel Marshall, a 2011 CETYS graduate, launched the project with his business Centro Ventures.
“Our slogan is ‘Impacting emerging neighborhoods,’” Marshall said.
With housing prices out of reach for many in San Diego, he said most of his tenants are Americans who are taking advantage of the $500 monthly rent for 360-square-foot micro units.
Marshall said the project reflects the values of the neighborhood, with a focus on design, art and sustainability. More than 10 murals adorn outside walls, and a small art gallery takes up one of the spaces.
Marshall said he learned about entrepreneurship as a CETYS economics student.
“Just from the business class 101, everything started to make sense,” he said. “I’m very tangible. I like to do things. By the first semester, I was working with an Israeli entrepreneur in Tijuana. We were selling wholesale clothing.”
SDSU business professor Michael Sloan asked Marshall if he had a way of gauging what kind of impact the project was having on the neighborhood.
Marshall said he did not, which got Sloan thinking that he may have found an opportunity for his SDSU students.
“I could say, ‘Here’s a startup in urban development that wants to have an impact on the community, but they’re not exactly sure how to measure it,’” he said.
Sloan asks his students each year to develop a project to help impoverished regions in other countries. Students have worked on projects in Bangladesh, Brazil and Ethiopia, where a portable threshing machine was developed for farmers.
While his original idea was to expose students to countries where they’ve never been, Sloan said he is looking closer to home this year because more students are interested in the border region.
Stanley Maloy, dean of College of Sciences, said he sees collaboration between San Diego and Tijuana as a benefit for both cities.
“Anything we can do to help improve the economy and stabilize Tijuana is also going to improve the economy and help San Diego,” he said.
As another benefit, Maloy sees projects with Tijuana as a way of giving students a global perspective that is needed for businesses to be successful today.
Francisco Velez, dean of the School of Business at CETYS, saw a similar benefit to collaborating on entrepreneurial projects with SDSU.
“It means giving CETYS the opportunity to better fulfill its mission of creating professionals who are globally minded and also socially conscious and committed to creating a community that is more prosperous,” he said.
The tour also visited La Granja, a concrete bunker-like building in the distressed Camino Verde neighborhood, where Torolab Collective founder Raul Cardenas talked about the nonprofit’s far-reaching social innovation projects. Cardenas said state police had warned him not to move into the neighborhood seven years ago, but he said the presence of La Granja has been credited with helping reduce crime 85 percent in the area.
The tour also stoped at MIND Hub, a business incubator, and the Bit Center, a work space for companies and freelancers.
SDSU assistant professor Valerie Alexandra, who teaches international business and international management at Fowler College of Business, said the visits to La Granja and Estacion Federal demonstrated that the best way to make positive changes in society is from the bottom up and by working with people in communities.
“What we saw here was that what really works is when people are part of the change,” she said.
Alexandra said it is especially valuable to work with people in the border region, because they can see problems from both sides and can help build bridges to solutions rather than walls.
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