REFLEXIONES

March 10, 2021

A CONTINUING THREAD IN EDUCATION

I MUST HAVE AN EDUCATOR GENE IN MY DNA. On Michel’s side, my grandfather, Papá Ángel, started his professional life as a rural school teacher (maestro de banquillo) in his native village of Chiapa de Corzo and progressed through government positions in education, becoming Inspector of Elementary Schools and Director of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, created to provide education to all indigenous citizens of Mexico living in rural communities. Michel’s brother, Ismael, and sister, Cuca, were also Elementary and then High School teachers; Ismael’s first and third wives were also teachers. Michel himself was Professor of Constitutional Law at UNAM. On Mamita’s side, she was the Director of a Care Center and Kindergarten and her brother Leopoldo, a doctor and a General, was the much respected and beloved Director of the National Military School of Nursing for many years. It should not come as a surprise that I have been involved with the realm of academia since an early age.

FRENCH TEACHER. The first time I looked at life from the other side of a student’s desk was when I was around 10 years old, but the road that took me there was convoluted. My father, Michel, had decided that it was high time for me to start learning to earn my keep. The only way he figured I could do that was by becoming an upholsterer’s assistant. One happened to have a shop around the corner from the apartment where we lived, on Pestalozzi street, in the Colonia Narvarte, a middle class development in Mexico City. On a Saturday morning, I enthusiastically went to work for this craftsman, almost whistling, like one of the characters in Snow White, (Happy rather than Grumpy; certainly not Dopey). When I returned, in late afternoon, after my first day’s hard work, Michel asked how my day had gone.

“It was alright” I told him excitedly. “One of the highlights was when I was walking along the street in the middle of traffic on Xola Avenue, pushing a little dolly with a sofa that we had just upholstered”. I went on to describe with enthusiasm another highlight which was “how I learned to nail fabric to the frame of a sofa by putting a small handful of nails in my mouth, and with my tongue, pushing a single nail to the top of my mouth, between my lips, so I would be able to pick up the nail with the magnetic tip of the elongated upholstering hammer and then I would tap the nail into the frame” I concluded triumphantly. Michel’s eyes grew bigger and rounder at each part of my descriptions as he became quieter and quieter and then really, really serious.

He then softly and gently told me that, upon reflection, this was not exactly the way to start learning how to make a living or for me to learn about the value of money and that he would think further about it. So it was on this note that my career as a furniture craftsman came to an end and it was back to the drawing board for Michel’s educational plans for me

The following week Michel came up with another idea, which was that I should advertise my services as a language teacher for kids who lived in my block, so we went and had business cards printed that said:

Miguel Angel Corzo

Alumno de 5º año de Primaria

Puede dar clases de Inglés y Francés

De Lunes a Viernes de 5 a 5:45 pm

I went around the neighborhood with my cards and distributed them to all the houses and the apartments in my building. There weren't really too many people who were very keen on taking my classes, particularly not the young kids, but there was a little girl, my age, who lived in the 5th floor of our building (her name was Lucero) and her parents thought it was a great idea that I would teach her French, so three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I would teach her French. II don't remember how long all of this lasted but certainly less than three weeks. I received maybe 50 cent per class, which did not last 45 minutes because I had no clue of how to teach a class for 45 minutes. Once Lucero knew how to say “bonjour” and “au revoir” and two or three similar sentences, my experiment in teaching languages in elementary education ended. As a parenthesis, my next job , at that time, was to offer my services as a shoe shine boy, to the households along the street where we lived. I became rather good at this. The demand for shiny shoes was there; I was the envy of all the kids on the block; and the horror of all the mothers who had aspiring ambitions for their boys that certainly did not include them lugging around a shoe shine box, black and brown creams and shines, two brushes, two polishing cloths and jingling money in their pockets, like me. Those were great Saturdays!

HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA TEACHER. My next career as a teacher continued years later when I was 19 years old. My uncle Alfonso González Blanco, El Colorado’s father and Michel’s cousin, had thought that it would be very good for me to be able to have some real experience in having a real job. My uncle Alfonso knew a high school principal in Tlalpan, a suburb of Mexico City. It was a small, private, middle class, high school. I explained to the principal that I was a first year engineering student, I had studied math, physics and chemistry and I could teach mathematics to high school students. Maybe because I was dressed in a suit and tie, maybe because I was nervous and looked very serious, maybe because I was completely irresponsible and spoke with a high degree of authority, the principal took me seriously and gave me on the spot a job as an 11th grade algebra teacher.

The class was not really difficult because it was algebra, the students were not very studious and fortunately for me, the degree of complexity of algebra was a similar to the one I had in my sophomore year in high school, at the Lycée, so it was OK. I knew how to present arguments: I had taken a lot of classes with my tutor, Monsieur Lambert, over the course of many years. I had also taken a lot of classes with my math teacher, Monsieur Colombier. For my teaching, I always arrived in the afternoon before class time, erased the board from what was previously written there and wrote the title of the class for the day i.e. First Degree Equations, before the students arrived. After teaching the principle and theory and giving some examples, I would ask the students come up to the blackboard, one at a time, sometimes two, to compete, and do various exercises of 1st degree equations. I complemented this with graphs of what a first degree equation looked like and the students seemed to understand pretty well. I taught these classes for about three months, got really very much involved in teaching and enjoyed it tremendously. Although I was only a couple of year older than the students, they seemed to respect me and enjoy my silly jokes.

But then came a big change in my life because I had decided that I could not continue studying at UNAM, the National University of Mexico, Michel’s Alma Mater, the most distinguished university in Mexico, the oldest in the Americas, (founded September 21, 1551, compared to Harvard, founded in 1636), and the cradle of some of the greatest intellectuals in Mexico. I had gone to UNAM full of enthusiasm and spirited dedication and found a bureaucracy mired in disorganization, with the professors often absent and no clear direction. I wanted out of UNAM and I wanted in to study at UCLA. So I quit my classes at UNAM, my teaching career as a high school algebra teacher and waited six years to come back to the next level of my life as an academic.

PEACE CORPS LANGAUGE TEACHER. While studying at UCLA I saw an ad in the Daily Bruin, requesting students who spoke Spanish to apply for positions as Language Assistants in the Peace Corps Training Program, which the university was running. I applied, was interviewed by the Director of the language Program, Joe Barry, and was promptly hired. A couple of weeks later, Director Barry and I hit it off well and he invited me for a chat at a small restaurant on a Friday afternoon, after class. Truman’s, then at the corner of Westwood and Wilshire, was the regulation “at least 1 mile away from campus” to be able to offer alcoholic drinks. Director Barry and I ordered Margaritas and had a nice conversation. It turned out that he was Mexican American. His real name was José Barrientos and his family came from Northern Sonora. He inquired about my education and my career as a Conference Interpreter at the UN before coming to UCLA and on the spot promoted me from Language Assistant to Spanish Teacher at the Peace Corps. I spent three Summers working in that program, a fabulous experience. There I met Frank Mankiewicz, the Regional Director of the Peace Corps who had worked in President Kennedy’s political campaign and later became known as the spokesperson in the immediate aftermath of Robert F Kennedy’s assassination. He was also known for halting the US metrication effort, which resulted in President Reagan shutting down the US Metric Board. The twists and turns of history!

HEAD OF ENGINEERING DESIGN. After graduating from UCLA in 1967 and returning to Mexico, I had a series of decisions to make regarding next steps in my professional development. A lot of talking, thinking and hesitation. I finally decided that I was going to teach at the ESIME, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional’s engineering school in Mexico City. The Politécnico was a very prestigious technical institution and a rival to the UNAM. A lot of turmoil was going on in the engineering schools in Mexico, since there had been a tremendous change in the perception of what engineering should be from the time I was at the UNAM. I went to see ESIME’s Dean, Alejandro Vásquez Gutierrez but instead I met a rough and gruff man, Jorge González Chávez, the Dean's Special Assistant who, told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was very difficult to see the Dean. The bureaucracy of universities in Mexico was Neanderthalian. I had found that out at UNAM and it had frustrated me tremendously.

But I had learned there were other ways of doing things. When I went to the Dean’s office to ask for an appointment I stayed there until they gave me the appointment. González Chávez had an office behind the door of the small lobby where people would wait for appointments with the Dean. A man in the lobby, Maestro Tolentino, was a receptionist. I became friends with Maestro Tolentino, who was very intrigued, watching me read all day long in his lobby. Every time González Chávez came out, he saw me and courteously said hello. Eventually, after three or four days, we got to chat and I explained to him that my plan was to wait as long as necessary for me to see the Dean and, since I did not know when the Dean would be able to see me, I would wait until that happened. I had nowhere else to go and I wanted to present my credentials to the Dean and talk about teaching at the Polytechnic. González Chávez was taken aback.

After about a week, Jorge and I were better acquainted; he took pity on me and invited me to lunch. He explained that the Dean was very busy because, apart from being the Dean of the School, he was also a government employee in the Federal Electricity Commission and therefore he was a part time Dean and would go to the school whenever he could. I waited again for another two or three days after González Chávez had heard all of my stories and all of my history and finally he said, “Come tomorrow morning at 7:00 and I will get you in. You will be the first appointment”. So the following day I was there at 6:30 in the morning and by 7:00 o'clock on González Chávez came out and said, “The Dean will see you now”.

At the time Alejandro Vásquez Gutierrez was in his late 30s. He had been promoted after the previous Dean retired after many, many years on the job. Alejandro had great ideas about changing the curriculum and really taking on a new direction for his engineering school. He read my resumé and was very interested in what I had accomplished so far; we started talking about a lot of things, particularly about education in the United States, as he had gone to the Illinois Institute of Technology to get his Master’s degree. We also talked about the direction that engineering was taking and about engineering design which was a great interest of his. Then he said, ”Look, I'm trying to create a new school of engineering here and shake the system but it’s a tough job. Here's my suggestion: I would like you to meet with the three Heads of the different engineering Departments, Mechanical, Electrical and Industrial, and see what they think about your ideas. Once you've had a chance to talk with them, come back and see me and we'll talk some more.” I was excited but still doubtful about how the bureaucracy worked. I told him as much. He assured me it would be alright and I would not have to wait another week to see him.

After my interviews with the Heads of the Departments, I went back to Alejandro, who told me, “I’ve met with the three Heads and they are very excited about you coming to ESIME. I am offering you a new position that I am creating as Head of the Department of Engineering Design; you’ll teach two Engineering Design courses, three times a week and work on developing the curriculum for Engineering Design for the School. You can start on Monday. How about it?” After I said enthusiastically yes, I asked him about my salary and he said, “Oh, yes. We’ll start you at the equivalent of teaching two courses in the School” to which I agreed. It was only later that I found out that I had accepted a salary equivalent to less than an eighth of what I had been offered to work in the construction of the Mexico City Metro.

I started teaching engineering design to freshman engineering students at the ESIME. My classes were, one at 8:00 am and the other at 7:00 pm. Most of the students worked and this was the only time slots they could take classes from 7 to 9 am and from 7 to 10 pm. The students enjoyed very much the discovery of learning, not about math or physics, but about the basic essence of engineering which is design. The class took them from the analysis of needs to the optimal solution. It really created an opportunity for the students to develop a project over the course of the semester and that made all the difference in their outlook about their careers. The students were young, enthusiastic, interested and eager to engage in all of the ideas of what engineering was about. I was only seven years older than them so we had a great relationship. My relationship with the Heads of the other departments as well as with faculty and staff was very good.

EXECUTGIVE DIRECTOR OF ANFEI. Soon the Dean started inviting me to attend meetings he had with other Deans from other Schools or Colleges based on the idea that an engineering curriculum reform was necessary in Mexico in in order to bring it up to speed with what was happening in other parts of the world. I participated in three or four of these sessions. I was also interested in doing some research. My 8 am class was over at 9:15; then my 8 pm class was over at 9:15 pm so I really had the whole day to do research. The Polytechnic was very far away from where we lived and at that time I didn't have a car and I needed to take the trolleybus, (which took about an hour and a half each way) for a few months until Michel lent me his Mercedes to go back and forth every day for my classes. Of course, it meant he did not have a car at all!

These meetings with the different Deans of the schools around the country took place in the framework of the National Association of Engineering Colleges and Schools in Mexico (ANFEI). The Association was in need of a new executive director. The Deans I had met were enthusiastic about some of the ideas that I had presented. Roger Diaz de Cossío had been at a conference where I presented a paper on mathematical decision making to an audience of professional engineers who were nicely receptive to my method and the way I manipulated the math to make a decision tree model. Dr Diaz de Cossío happened to be the director of the Institute of Engineering of the National University in Mexico, so his voice at ANFEI was an important one.

After a few couple of months the group of Deans decided that I should become the new executive director of ANFEI and thus I went from Head of Engineering Design and Professor of two courses to the additional job of being the Executive Director of ANFEI, which brought with it, fortunately, a fourfold increase in my salary, so things started looking up rather rapidly.

I UNDERTOOK A LARGE SURVEY OF ALL THE ENGINEERING SCHOOLS around the country and started working on a national curriculum for engineering schools which I shared with the Deans. Traveling throughout Mexico, presenting these new ideas about a change in engineering curriculum, was a very exciting prospect. Sometimes I went to give a lecture and nobody came. This happened on a trip to Guanajuato, where I wanted to show off to Lili’s parents and invited them to come. We arrived at the University of Guanajuato and the doors were locked and nobody could tell me why my lecture had been cancelled. Such is the price of success!

But all came to a head at the ANFEI national meeting, which took place in early 1968, where the assembly voted unanimously to change all the curricula of the engineering schools in Mexico. This was a major success since the curricula had not changed since the late 40s. The only problem was getting money to be able to implement these ideas.

It occurred to me that I could go to the Ford Foundation. I had read that the Foundation supported programs of innovation. I wrote a letter to the Foundation and explained everything we were trying to accomplish and waited and waited and waited. After a couple of months, a letter arrived addressed to me at the Polytechnic. When I opened it, a check from the Ford foundation, made out in my name for the amount of US$100,000, was included, to implement the change in the engineering curriculum of Mexico . I immediately took the check to the Dean who got very excited; he started calling the other Deans and within four or five days we had all come together and I was able to present how I proposed the money be spent in order to take on the change in curriculum for all the engineering schools. Thus began the complete overhaul of the engineering curricula in Mexico.

A couple of months later, the great social upheaval happening in Mexico brought higher education to standstill. There were many student demonstrations in the streets; the government acted with ferocity to stop them. The schools and universities closed in March of 1968. I went on to new activities. The Olympics were beginning in a few more months. I had connected again with Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and I was ready to move to the Olympics.

ASSOCIATE DEAN AND TENURED PROFESSOR. After the Olympics I returned briefly to ANFEI at the end of 1968. Early in 1969 Juan Casillas García de León, the Dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at the National University, invited me to talks and offered me a new position as the Associate Dean of his Graduate School. It seemed a good idea to me because the Olympics were over; it was a step up it and certainly a new challenge; It was back in the general area of engineering education; I was able to study for my Master’s degree in Operations Research and my request accepting the position was that I would continue to be involved with the transformation of the engineering curriculum at a national level and that I be allowed to continue teaching courses in engineering design at other institutions. The Dean was very generous so I moved on to be the Associate Dean and, at the same time, I got tenure as a Full Professor at 27, and started teaching an engineering design course at the Universidad Iberoamericana and then at the Universidad Anáhuac for a couple of more years.

CREATOR OF A COMPUTER CENTER. During the Fall of 1970, IBM invited a group of Latin American Professors and Deans to look at major university computer centers in the US and Canada over a period of two weeks, all expenses paid. I was included in this group. Soon after my return, I was scouted by ITAM, a high level economics and sociology Institute in Mexico, thanks to Jorge Gónzalez Chávez who had moved there as Professor of Law. The Dean for Academic Affairs, Jorge Barajas, was interested in me to teach operations research and computer science and also wanted me to create a Computer Center. At that time, the only way to access a major mainframe computer was through terminals. I accepted the position and ITAM organized a fundraiser to build a new small facility. This building could be used as a conference room and it would house a terminal connected to an IBM 360 computer in a central location, hired out by the minute, to different organizations. I created the Center and started teaching computer courses. I was also very happy to have some additional time left to be able to continue my research and finally work on a manuscript. With the Computer Center working and the classes finished I submitted my resignation to Antonio Carrillo Flores, who had been Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and was now President of ITAM and took an unpaid leave of absence in September of 1971.

MY FIRST TEXTBOOK. All this turmoil came to a wonderful finale when, in November, Michel and Mamita returned from their round-the-Pacific trip and I was able to receive them with lots of love and care and present them with the first copy my first book on Engineering Design, published by Limusa Wiley (Introducción a la Ingeniería de Proyectos). Fortunately Introducción sold well around the Spanish speaking countries and went through 14 editions over the course of 20 years. I still get shivers of concern when I think of the many thousands of engineering students that had their basic training in engineering design based on my book.

UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MEXICO. At the beginning of 1974 we were living in Munich when I received a call from Pedro Ramírez Vázquez saying that the president of Mexico had asked him to create a new University; that he had accepted; and that he was hoping that I would accept his invitation to return to Mexico and engage in this new project.

When I asked him when he planned to open the University, he said that we didn’t have a lot of time because the president would like to open the University this September. The call was on February 2. Lots of call back and forth to Mamita and Michel, who were in Cuernavaca, followed. The next day, somehow, Lili, Lilou, Alex and I got into our white Volvo, leaving Willy and Frederique to sell Michel’s car, ship our furniture, cancel the apartment lease, and deal with all the problems of an unexpected departure, and drove like mad to Amsterdam, shipped the car to Los Angeles, went to bed, got on a plane to Mexico City the next morning and arrived in Mexico City late at night so that by February 5, the next day, at 7:00 o'clock in the morning I was meeting with Pedro Ramírez Vázquez at his home to start my new career in education with the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). At that time I was the third member to join the Universidad, Enrique Alvarez del Castillo being the second one. More about the UAM in other Reflexiones.

THE GETTY CONSEERVATION INSTITUTE. One of the basic premises of the Conservation Institute was that it would train conservators around the world in many different areas, from object intervention to conservation science. The Training program, that Marta de la Torre headed, and to which we devoted an enormous amount of attention became one of the main stays of the Institute. We started conversations with UCLA to create a joint program, leading to a Master’s degree in Archaeological Conservation with the Institute of Archaeology. That program is still running and is a fine example of how the GCI dedicated its resources and accomplished its strategic goals with education in mind.

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS. After I left the Getty, I was looking for something significant and transcendental related to arts and art education. When the opportunity arrived in the form of the position of President of the University of the Arts, I quickly devoted all my energies to applying for that position, making every effort to be selected, as I truly wanted to continue in the realm of education. It all came true. More details can be found in further Reflexiones.

AS I LOOK BACK AT SEVERAL PERIODS OF MY LIFE, those times that I devoted to academia jump immediately to my thoughts. There is something totally magical about having children and being able to influence their thinking and learning processes. It makes you think about the enormous responsibility you have as a parent. When you take that a step further and begin to reflect of how you can influence young minds about their ability to reason, deduct, induct, correlate and invent, the universe takes on a completely different dimension. I have enjoyed tremendously learning; but given a choice, my enjoyment is greater when I have been able to connect with a student and discern their process of discovery, revelation, intuition and epiphany. Writing books to help articulate this, present lectures to disseminate ways of exploring and connecting and being part of a team of individuals that create goals and curricula, adventures for the mind, and explorations of the spirit, through research and education, is an experience that has marked my life constantly and for which I will be forever grateful to all those that have supported me along these paths.