Monday marked the opening for IU's Mexico Gateway Office in Mexico City. The Mexico office is the fourth of its kind around the world, and joins other IU international offices in New Delhi, Beijing and Berlin.
IU President Michael McRobbie gave some opening remarks where he highlighted IU's steadily growing global engagement and the importance of furthering ties with Mexico, as well as with Latinos in Indiana.
According to data gathered by the IU Public Policy Institute, Latinos are the fastest-growing minority population in Indiana. More than 429,000 Latinos live in Indiana, 75 percent of whom are of Mexican origin. Indiana also exported more than $5 billion worth of goods to Mexico last year.
The university currently has 10,000 Latino alumni, hundreds of whom contribute to an IU Mexico alumni group McRobbie helped create in 2016, according to an IU press release.
The Mexico Gateway office is designed to enable and support faculty research, teaching opportunities, workshops, student study experiences and more.
McRobbie led an IU delegation to Mexico City where they will participate in an inaugural workshop in indigenous languages and literature, as well as a concert by IU Jacobs School of Music and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
The Gateway office is located on UNAM's campus, which is the largest university in Latin America, the oldest in North America and a leading university of the Spanish-speaking world
"Indiana University is committed to deepening its ties to this dynamic and important part of the world at a time when we are also seeing our country's rapidly growing Latino population making increasingly important contributions to economic growth, educational development, cultural diversity and the quality of life in communities in Indiana and across the nation," McRobbie said in an IU press release.
Reports about the Mexico City delegation will be available at a blog site, IU Goes to Mexico 2018, and through IU social media channels on Facebook and Twitter.
