New Mexico State University Partners with the University of La Salle - Bogotá in a Unique Educational Experiment for Community Transformation.

The Utopía project is a unique educational experiment established by the University of La Salle-Bogotá, Colombia, which integrates agricultural, educational, and productive opportunities for resource-limited young people from rural areas of Colombia who have been impacted by violence during 20-30 years of drug wars and armed conflict in that country. The goal is to transform these disadvantaged students with limited educational opportunities into community leaders capable of bringing about social, political, and productive changes in their local communities, and ultimately revitalize the nation’s agricultural sector. La Salle and New Mexico State University (NMSU) carried out a one-year exchange project to provide opportunities for students/faculty from each institution to interact and meet additional students/faculty at reciprocal universities. This unique collaboration, supported by Partners of the Americas in association with the White House-sponsored 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative, has allowed La Salle to gain wider recognition of its’ pioneering work in preparing rural youth displaced from drug and war conflict areas for future leadership roles in agriculture. In November 2014, four NMSU students and three faculty traveled to Colombia to visit the Utopía project (an agricultural satellite campus of La Salle) in Yopal and the main campus in Bogotá. The NMSU faculty gave lectures and demonstrations on agricultural decision-making and irrigation planning. In April 2015, a reciprocal exchange was undertaken by a La Salle group of four students and two faculty to NMSU in Las Cruces, NM. Not only were the participants from each university exposed to the others’ campus, region, and culture, but administrative interactions and correspondence provided the foundation for a stronger linkage between La Salle and NMSU. A number of successes, challenges, and lessons learned, as well as plans for the future, will be highlighted.