Research & Academic cooperation
The team members
First action:
Hosting a webinar to develop cooperation
11 May 2021
The International Association of Engineering Jesuit Schools (IAJES) Task Force “Research and Academic Cooperation” organized a webinar in order to introduce its objectives and foster cooperation within the network. During the webinar, three initiatives were presented and discussed.
The webinar consisted of two parts. Firstly, the team provided an introduction to the Task Force and an explanation of the three initiatives. Secondly, Break-out rooms were arranged for discussing the three initiatives, examining their feasibility and potential next steps. Finally, results were presented at a plenary session, finishing with a survey for exploring present interest and future work.
3 initiatives proposed during the webinar that caught the interest of the 59 participants
Initiative 1: Mentoring
The mentoring program aims at the sharing of knowledge between experienced professors and younger or less experienced professors within the Jesuit Universities network.
Initiative 2: Cooperative PhD Program
This initiative builds on previous experiences within the network. Students pursue PhD degrees conducting research with a professor at another University. The research project should be of interest to both universities.
Initiative 3: Building Transversal skills for scientists and engineers
To develop a tentative program that helps train scientists with research techniques and skills applicable to many disciplines.
Initiative 1:
Mentoring project
Dear IAJES members,
The mentoring project is ready, and the opportunity to exchange and share your experience, your needs, or your interests with a fellow IAJES member, and much more, is coming
Do you want to participate? Click here and complete the short survey
Team leader
Luís Aarón Martínez, UCA, El Salvador
Rosa Nomen, IQS‐URL, Barcelona
Muhsin Elie Rahhal, Saint Joseph, Beirut
Carlos Campos, UNICAP, Pernambuco
Benjamín Dingel, Ateneo, Manila
Julià Sempere, IQS‐URL, Barcelona
The Mentoring Project aims to facilitate the creation of links between IAJES members. Under
the umbrella of mentoring, needs, concerns, or projects can arise and can be solved without a
fixed deadline. With mentoring, all participants will have the intangible reward of the benefit of
the transmission of specific expertise.
According to accepted definitions, Mentorship is a personal development relationship in which
a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less
knowledgeable person.
A mentor may be older or younger but have a certain area of expertise. Here the mentor should
be a professor or researcher with experience in teaching, making research projects for industry
or administration, with a high capacity of listening and high doses of empathy.
A mentee should be a professor or researcher who would like to change or improve something
in his or her professional life. Also, due to the reality of many IAJES institutions in developing
countries,some faculty have not had the opportunity to conduct many research projects or have
lost track of trends in their research areas and would like to have a mentor who can guide them
to find new research topics, collaboration opportunities, and develop new skills.
Mentoring will generate mutual benefits between participants. Developing countries may
particularly need the helping hands from the developed countries and developed countries can
regain the hospitality and warm treatment of the developing countries.
For us, mentoring is not any kind of control, nor directive leadership, nor interference with the
directives received from the University of the mentee.
To summarize, mentors have the experience that others, mentees, can learn from.