Dear University Council members,

In accordance with what is established by Universidad de las Américas Puebla’s Organic Statute in Article 12, section XV, the 2023-2024 Activity Report was sent to you. I request your authorization to make it accessible to the university community through its publication on the Intranet.

Thank you for your approval. As of this moment, the report will be available to all university community members on the Intranet.

Introduction

Contrary to widely held belief, the 2020 to 2022 events proved that the future, both of people and institutions, is unpredictable and uncertain by nature. Fortunately for the university, the institutional growth strategy defined in 2020 allowed us to successfully face the consecutive onslaught of COVID and the attempt to violently seize our institution, designed by opportunistic people who used deceit and influences to take over. The sole intention of these individuals was to plunder the university and harm over 10,000 students and 1,800 employees who work at this institution. Thanks to the institutional structure established by the strategies applied since 2008, the nefarious intentions of the looters failed, both legally, financially, and in public opinion, collapsing before the response of the UDLAP community, as they closed ranks in defense of legality and the truth. The university’s academic prestige and quality were put on the line by the lies and actions of those who falsely declared themselves the “true UDLAP Board of Trustees,” in conjunction with the underlings who accepted to be named illegally as administrators.

To all of you, who united in this common cause defended the integrity of our university – professors, students, administrative employees, union personnel and alumni –, who under the slogan “UDLAP Libre” organized the protests which finally forced the looters to return our facilities in February 2022, and to all those members of Puebla’s society who backed our movement to defend UDLAP, today we express our thanks for your brave participation to rescue our institution.

I want to especially recognize those who faced personal threats and external harassment from the spurious Board of Trustees and “university administrators” during the temporary takeover of the university. Led by Dr. Cecilia Anaya, María del Carmen Palafox, Dr. Dianalicia Gayosso, Dr. Mónica Núñez, Bernardo Ramírez and Alberto Barroeta, the members of our UDLAP community operated the university, maintaining its financial, physical, and legal integrity. Thank you for that.

Recent Results

Those who thought that it would be difficult for us to recover the position and prestige we had before our crisis have lost the bet. The 2018 Strategic Plan is still valid. In it we defined the following axes: (1) to generate resources that guarantee the institution’s sustainability and verify that they are used efficiently; (2) to attract and retain the best human capital; (3) to maintain investments in technology and facilities,  which position us as the best university in Mexico; (4) to continue financial support plans to remain the inclusive university we want to be; (5) to strengthen our academic status with a faculty that has outstanding academic credentials, professional experience, teaching quality, and relevant research; (6) to offer academic programs that are nationally and internationally accredited and that respond to today’s market conditions; (7) to strengthen UDLAP’s outreach to alumni, businesses, and society, and (8) to create the correct organizational climate for the efficient and effective development of all our activities.

Finance

The financial results show the recovery we have achieved. After suffering cumulative loses of almost $300 million pesos between 2020 and 2022, a careful reassignment of financial, technological, and human resources let our budgetary crisis end in the second half of 2023. The Financial Statements presented in the report show that at the end of 2023 we achieved a surplus of a little over twelve million pesos, a quantity that represents a change of 190 million pesos when compared to 2022’s result. The 2024 partial results allow us to predict a much better outcome for this year.

Two examples: Thanks to a careful financial strategy, we managed to pay bank liabilities of 185 million pesos, of which ninety-eight were advance payments. Because of that, the bank loans to December 31, 2023, were only 100.1 million pesos, amount that will be completely paid off this year. Continuing with our objective of social inclusion, in 2024 we hope to have a financial support program of over nine hundred million pesos for students who have the intellectual capacity to study at our institution, but not the economic means to cover tuition costs; this program will let many students achieve their goal of studying at the best private university in the country, and it will allow us to have the best students in Mexico.

Facilities

I can tell you that at the start of the Fall 2023 semester, and during this Spring 2024 semester we have returned to a path of growth and development which will swiftly place us again as the university with the best teaching and research facilities among private universities in Mexico. The recent renovation of the Oral Trials Courtroom for the Law licenciatura, the acquisition of last-generation equipment for the optics lab, and the over 50 million pesos authorized for equipment and software investment to back up the work and research of our faculty will allow the university to position itself as the best university in physical and academic facilities at the end of this year.

After recovering from the financial crisis of the 2020-2022 period, investment in facilities and technology in 2023 and to this date in 2024 has allowed us to re-establish the quality of our physical, educational, and social areas, with comfortable facilities that are safe and modern, and resume our extensive maintenance and improvement plan for the campus. Additionally, we invested over twenty million pesos to reinforce information security (the university has around five million daily cyberattacks) as well as the physical surveillance of campus with the purchase of 124 CCTV state of the art cameras, whose coverage can guarantee the safety of all individuals within our facilities.

Through the new Governance Management and Administrative Solutions, this year we modernized the university’s administrative systems, the most important of which are those developed for scholarship management, school services applications and control, and the administration of academic tutoring, as well as systems implemented to manage student’s social service and the record and management of university workshops.

As I mentioned before, the investment program for academic facilities and technology will allow our institution to end 2024 with the best teaching labs among private universities in the country. Besides those investments mentioned above, during this Spring 2024 term we will update the Immersive Marketing Lab for the Marketing licenciatura, the Radio and Communications Lab for the Communications Systems licenciatura, and the HU225 Dance and Theater Hall to support those programs. We renewed over 240 laptop computers for full-time professors to support their work and over 170 computers for administrative personnel, as well as acquiring over one hundred academic software programs, 85% of which are updated versions to maintain the quality of our teaching programs. I reiterate my commitment to continue prioritizing investments in the academic area to guarantee that at the end of 2024 there will be no other university in the country with better academic infrastructure.

I am pleased to announce that to finish equipping our institution with outstanding structures, in the second semester of this year we will begin the construction of the UDLAP Conference Center, which will have 5 conference rooms for 350 people each, so we can have five simultaneous events, or receive major events for 1,500 people. When the Conference Center is inaugurated in 2025, the university will have the facilities to hold world-class meetings and conferences, equipped with the most advanced technology.

Our library will change this year from a passive building to an active one. Under this concept, we will begin a total modernization of the building in Summer 2024. The new facilities will have spaces for autonomous learning, tutoring, and academic support, and will be a respectful space, which favors work and individual reflection and work and collective reflection. To achieve this, the planned remodeling will have a traditional library area with zero noise, stands for 60,000 volumes and places for study and personal reflection. To motivate disruptive innovation, collaborative work, and the debate of ideas, the new facilities will have over 240 closed areas for collective work, with a similar number of open spaces distributed in the building’s three floors. These new facilities will also have areas for social interaction and the hubbub of students with students, students with professors, and professors with professors, interaction that is required to establish a culture of creation of innovative ideas in restful and socially relaxing areas. Finally, in spaces designed for this purpose, we will create structures that will support ludic activities and three medium-sized conference rooms. For our institution, this remodeling project will have to be conducted with particular care to preserve our Special Collections Hall, the only one of its kind in the country.

Academic Prestige

After the loss of professors resulting from the campus invasion, I am pleased to inform you that by Fall 2023 we had the same number of faculty as before the pandemic, and there are now 678 professors, 100% of whom have graduate degrees and 82% the terminal degree in their areas. Our internationalization program continues to be successful, as 17% of full-time professors are foreign, something unique among private universities in our country.

UDLAP’s academic prestige was ratified by our placement in national and international rankings, published in the first semester of 2024. QS ratified our position as the university with the highest evaluation in its university quality audit, granting us Five Stars. Only two universities in Mexico have this ranking, proving that we have recovered our prestige.

Before the accusations presented to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges by malicious people regarding our academic and financial situation, after a thorough exam and visit to our campus, this association ratified our full accreditation, keeping us as a Level VI institution, the highest rating in the United States university system.

In their yearly survey, the Nordic group Universum stated that UDLAP’s students consider it as the best private university for licenciaturas in Mexico. According to the results of their survey, 90% of our students state that given their personal experience they would choose UDLAP again for their licenciatura studies. The same percentage declares that they would recommend people who are planning to study a licenciatura to do it at our university.

The ranking by the newspaper El Universal placed 19 of 21 licenciaturas that participated in their evaluation as the best program among private universities in Mexico, an increase of three from the previous year. And finally, in the specialized rankings by Business & Management Studies, Hospitality & Leisure Management, and Modern Languages, our institution maintained its international positions as one of the best in Latin America. A detailed list of these achievements and rankings can be found in the full report.

Sports and Culture

Our cultural and sports achievements are presented to you in the full report. It is important to point out the Christmas Concerts and other activities of the UDLAP representative cultural teams have placed the institution’s name and its academic programs in high regard in different cities, especially in the concerts and theater performances in Puebla, Mexico City, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, and the country’s southeast. Likewise, the representative sports teams have confirmed the excellence of our university with their achievements in 2023 and 2024, as well as the role that sports play in the integral formation of our students. In this context, I can announce that as of the 2024 American Football season we will have a remodeled Templo del Dolor, with the installation of grandstands which will hold 4,000 fans, worthy of our sports tradition.

Enrollment

The actions that violated our university caused our enrollment numbers to drop by almost 2,000 students in August 2022. Our academic quality and excellent study programs allowed us, once the crisis was over, to recover enrollment quickly. Over 2,700 new students entered the university in October 2023, a 22% increase from the previous year. Once the storm was over, almost five hundred students who had left to attend other universities in 2021 and 2022 re-enrolled in Fall 2023, allowing our university to have 9,260 students that semester. Thanks to our national and international accreditations, the updating of study programs, the cooperation of over a thousand companies in the Professional Practices program, and a strong applied research program, we can guarantee that the recovery of enrollment numbers will continue, and soon we will accomplish the goal of having 12,000 students in our university campus.

I could continue detailing the successes and achievements of the 2023-2024 period, but I do not think it necessary as you can find the data in the full report that you have been given. I only want to stress that the recovery of the university and the vindication of its academic, administrative, and financial quality result from the work of over 1,800 colleagues who day after day, conduct tirelessly their activities with quality and warmth benefitting our over 9,000 students. To them I give my full gratitude and recognition in this document called “President’s Report,” but which in truthfulness is a report of the joint activities we all conduct and have achieved during this term thanks to them. We are a community, we are UDLAP.

Final Reflection

Hanna Arendt, that great political philosopher of the 20th century, described the effects of the trivialization of evil. In her analysis, Arendt explains that trivialization of evil led the world to atrocities such as genocide during the Second World War. As she expressed, “the atrocities and genocide committed during the Second World War were not the result of terrifyingly monstruous individuals, but of normal people like any of us.” Never should the echo of these words worry us like today.

The trivialization of those values that should guide our conduct is today of such a magnitude that all actions that we conduct stopped being correct or incorrect and are judged in comparison with what the rest of individuals in our society do. Phrases such as “everybody steals; therefore, stealing is not bad”, “everybody lies; therefore, lying is not bad”, “everybody is corrupt; corruption is tolerable” are widespread in our daily lives, relativizing behaviors that are contrary to universal values such as honesty, freedom or the inherent rights of all human beings. This minimization of the values that should guide our lives are used by all to tread the thin line between truth of the facts we see and the opinions that we publicly manifest. If we all accept this minimization, little by little we will be unable to recognize the truth, or respect the rights of other human beings, or protest the abuse of authorities. If everything in our lives is relative, we will not have the moral compass to guide us to define our individual or collective actions. If we do not have the truth as our guide, all information that we create or is created in society distorts the facts and actions of the people we interact with. This is how we have come to the age we live in today, the Age of Post-truth.

The events of 2020 to 2022 that shook our planet, our country, and our university show the risk of this post-truth age.

The COVID pandemic showed the fragility of our existence and the importance of science in our societies. In 1918, a virus caused the death of millions of human beings and transformed the lives of millions more. One hundred years later, the advances in science led humanity to have in just one year a vaccine that curbed the spread of the disease. Unlike 1918, this discovery allowed us to dramatically decrease the number of people affected by the virus and reduce the subsequent length of the economic and social crisis. As in 1918, generalized ignorance of a large part of society contributed to the expansion of the disease much more than was necessary. However, unlike 1918, the attitudes of some political and social leaders unnecessarily magnified the negative and disruptive effects of the disease by insinuating that the vaccine was not necessary. While it is true that the ignorance of some people converted these leaders’ words into sacred commandments, it is no less true that the complicity of those who applauded these ideas for political, economic, or social gain are those responsible for the magnification of the effects of the pandemic.

In a similar incident, our university suffered three years of unrest provoked by the destructive ambition of a group of people who, having lied about their true purposes, seized our facilities, and falsely accused the institution’s employees, threatening those who valiantly faced them and trying to impose a spurious board of directors and management. Two and a half years later, the falsehood of their accusations and the maliciousness of their actions were proven after a complex legal process. But the use of “post-truths” and the abuse of those who supported them, sheltering these falsehoods, caused great damage to our university, its heritage, and all of us who suffered in different degrees the evil of their actions.

The Defense of our Values

Paraphrasing Nelson Mandela, I allow myself to say that, in this day, through our presence here and by celebrating the rebirth of our university, the results obtained in 2023 bestow splendor and hope in the future of our recovered institution.

From the experience of an excessively violent intervention, fed through contemptible actions by people whose intentions were to carelessly destroy our university, today a new institution emerges, one which we can all be proud of. Like Mandela did when he assumed the presidency of South Africa, our daily actions must now produce a reality that reaffirms our belief in justice, reinforces our trust in the nobility of the human soul, and encourages our hopes for a just life for all. All of this we owe to ourselves, and we owe it to all of those who defended our institution in one of the darkest periods of its history. It is time to heal the wounds.

With humility, I am committed to working with you to recover the place that corresponds to UDLAP in the firmament of higher education institutions in Mexico. I am aware that the road towards this recovery will not be easy, but I also know that if I am accompanied by all of you who are part of this great university community, we will walk this road successfully.

I finish my report by reading this beautiful poem of my favorite Mexican poet, José Emilio Pacheco.

El Canto de la Esperanza
En el eco de la noche estrellada,
surge el canto de la esperanza,
como una melodía suave y clara,
que ilumina el alma y la alcanza.

Es un canto que nace en la oscuridad,
un faro en la tormenta que guía,
una voz que susurra al corazón,
que, a pesar de todo, la vida continúa.

En cada nota del canto de la esperanza,
se entretejen sueños y anhelos,
una promesa de días más brillantes,
de nuevos horizontes y destinos bellos.

Es un canto que despierta la fortaleza,
que inspira a seguir adelante sin temor,
a pesar de las sombras que se interponen,
a pesar de las pruebas y el dolor.

En el canto de la esperanza encuentro aliento,
una fuerza que me impulsa a seguir,
me invita a creer en un futuro mejor,
y a encontrar en la vida un sentido pleno.

Así, en el canto de la esperanza,
me abrazo a la certeza de que todo es posible,
que aún en la adversidad hay luz,
y que el amor y la esperanza son indestructibles.

Thank you very much.