USD Deepens Presence in Tijuana with new Hub, Promoting Cross-Border Collaboration and Partnerships
The Tijuana Hub is a new multi-purpose space housed at the Business Innovation and Technology (BIT) Center for University of San Diego students, faculty, staff, alumni and community partners to collaborate directly with Tijuana partners on projects, deepening the university’s history of community engagement in the region.
“The signing of this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or the opening of this Tijuana HUB is not the start of USD’s involvement in Tijuana. We actually celebrated 30 years of engagement in the region not too long ago. The university has a history of partnering through all of our different schools and departments. This is just the natural evolution of all of that work which has led us to now have a permanent physical presence in the region,” said María Silva, former Director of Community Partnerships at USD's Mulvaney Center.
The purpose of the Tijuana Hub will be to facilitate and improve cross-border collaboration in entrepreneurship business, education, arts, human rights and other areas integral to the advancement of economic development and social justice. This partnership also solidifies USD’s commitment as a Binational Anchor Institute, investing financial and human resources in partnership with our neighboring community south of the border-- many of which have developed over decades.
“I think there are three main threads that really come together in this project. One as the University of San Diego as an anchor institution, pursuing democratic and reciprocal relationships with our community partners in the place that we reside which includes the local work which the university conceptualizes is to include Tijuana. The second is as a Changemaker university this is an opportunity for us to come together and not talk about social and environmental problems but take action in partnership across the border because the issues affect us on both sides. And, I think the third piece is that it’s a very entrepreneurial university with a rich history in international business,” said Rachel Lozano Castro, Director of USD’s Brink Small Business Development Center.
In 2019, a $30k USD Strategic Initiatives Grant was given to support the Hub, while identifying and mapping all of USD’s projects in Tijuana.
Here are a few of the current and past projects that the campus community is involved in across the border:
- Social Innovation and Design Thinking Workshops
- USD facilitates workshops on social innovation every year involving USD students and students from CETYS, Instituto Tecnologico de Tijuana or others for mutual exchange of ideas and project-based learning.
For a look at other Tijuana-based projects, you can find a map here.
To see the work that USD's University Ministry team is doing in Tijuana, you can visit their site here. And, to see how the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Sciences is making a difference in Tijuana, you can visit their site here.