SUNY & Mexican National Council Create New Graduate Fellowship Program

First System-wide Program of its kind for SUNY

Washington D.C. – State University of New York Chancellor John R. Ryan and Dr. Gustavo Chapela, director general of the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) today signed an agreement of cooperation in response to SUNY’s objective of attracting highly qualified doctoral students from Mexico and CONACYT’s desire to support the most promising Mexican students to pursue graduate education at the Ph.D. level.

The joint program of fellowships is now known as the CONACYT-SUNY Graduate Fellowships Program.

“We are proud to reach this understanding with the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology,” said Ryan.  “Having outstanding Mexican students on our campuses will enrich and enhance SUNY’s intellectual and cultural diversity.  I am very grateful to Dr. Chapela for his efforts in bringing about today’s agreement.”

“Conacyt is proud to sign this agreement of cooperation with SUNY System, in order to increase the enrollment of promising young Mexican graduate students at SUNY. We look forward to the day when these students will be involved in those endeavors,” said Dr. Chapela.

Programs of study in the CONACYT-SUNY Graduate Fellowship will include any or all of the following activities:

• Graduate Scientific and Technological Education, 
• Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs and Mixed Fellowships,
• Exchange of Faculty, Students and Postdoctoral Fellows, and
• Other Cooperative Initiatives and Promotion of the Agreement of Cooperation.

Students in the CONACYT-SUNY Graduate Fellowship program will be supported by CONACYT in their first and second years of study and by SUNY campuses during the third through fifth year of their program.

In addition, SUNY and CONACYT share a commitment to increase opportunities of collaboration between SUNY’s faculty and students and the Mexican academic community.

To this end, both SUNY and CONACYT have agreed to explore mechanisms to promote a program which shall annually place and support Mexican academics in short-term research and teaching programs at SUNY and academics from SUNY in similar positions in Mexican institutions of higher education and research, respectively. 

Also, both parties will explore mechanisms to develop a program which shall place and support Mexican postdoctoral scholars in appropriate SUNY departments and SUNY postdoctoral scholars in Mexican universities.

The State University of New York is the largest comprehensive university system in the United States, educating more than 414,000 students in 6,688 degree and certificate programs on 64 campuses. 

CONACYT is Mexico’s foremost government institution for support of graduate education and research activities, one of the tenets of CONACYT is to foster the pursuit of academia research careers among young Mexican students. More information about CONACYT.