Open Letter to Board of Trustees Zamorano 2

8/9/2019 Open Letter to Board of Trustees Zamorano 2

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August 7, 2010

Mr. Frederic Falck,President Board of Trustees,Escuela Agrcola Panamericana

Dr. Alison StoneVice-President Board of Trustees,Escuela Agrcola Panamericana

Board of Trustees,Escuela Agrcola Panamericana

Dear Board of Trustees and its Officers:

I am writing this open letter to you as a Zamorano graduate (Agrnomo Class of 1984), a person who has

navigated through the high level international policy analysis and dialogue arenas, who has been aformal Zamorano Faculty and who is now an Affiliate Professor at Zamorano and at the University of thePhilippines Los Baos, as well as a professional working for a world class policy analysis organization, theInternational Food Policy research Institute (IFPRI). These are my opinions, not that of my employer oranybody else.

I am writing this letter to share with you, some of my impressions and ideas on the future of Zamorano,now that the process of selecting a new rector is underway. This open letter is made with the mostpositive and proactive desire for Zamorano to excel in its mission and objectives. I cannot emphasize thispoint enough as I seek to construct and contribute through very explicit and direct opinions on issues

relevant to the institution. To do so we have to start by discussing a bit of background on Zamorano as ahigher learning and capacity building institution in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is Zamorano unique amongst higher learning institutions?

Zamorano is indeed unique amongst higher education institutions in Latin America and the Caribbeanand other parts of the world. Zamorano s emphasis on a practical, hands-on education focused onproblem solving and the development of a can do attitude separates us from mainly theoreticaluniversities.

The principles that made Zamorano and its graduates different than others have been widely described

elsewhere. Certainly, Dr. Simon Malo s book El Zamorano: meeting the challenges of tropical Americasummarized principles these better than what I can do in this short piece. However, it is important to listthese principles as the need will exist to modify or in some cases strengthen these principles. We needto make these changes with an explicit consideration of the new and emerging agricultural professionalprofile that will be ready today to address the problems and issues of 2050 (and beyond) Latin Americanand the Caribbean agriculture and the economy.

The principles by which Zamorano built a highly regarded reputation are:


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1. Learning by doing

2. Basic philosophy of education and research with a purpose

3. Concurrent classroom and field training

4. Excellent student body that starts from choosing the best of the best through heavy selection

pressures with the explicit objective of selecting the best candidates before admission

5. Disciplinary system and the code of conduct

6. Egalitarian student society: Having a student body with mix backgrounds in an environment

where everybody is as equal as possible

7. Panamericanism and the building of a Zamorano community after graduation

Our prestige has been eroding over time

There may be some signals that Zamorano (and its graduate s) prestige has been eroding over time.Although there are no hard data that I am aware of leading to an exhaustive analysis of whether thisperception is true or whether Zamorano graduates are not being rewarded for excellence in terms of employment or competitive salaries, there are some anecdotal an indirect measurements we can use togain some insight into this issue.

As can be seen in Table 1, university rankings by 4ICU.org (www.4ICU.org) and Webometrics

(www.webometrics.org) position Earth University above Zamorano in their perception of quality. We aresimply not in the league of advanced universities in the region; we do not compete with some of theuniversities in Central America such as the University of Costa Rica, much less with universities in Brazilor Mexico. We do not necessarily need to compete with these more traditional universities; in fact, oneaspect that needs immediate attention is finding the appropriate comparisons to which we can comparea unique institution such as Zamorano which has a specialized educational program. Perhaps we aremore akin to such institutions as Teknion in Israel or some of the special education Eccoles in France. Wedo need to worry about why Zamorano is not ranked higher in these two rankings. Understanding thereasons why Zamorano is ranked so low in Latin America will tell us a lot about what we need to do toaddress this issue.

Of course, indexes such as those from 4ICU.org and Webometrics, reflect the parameters which areused in their construction. At the very least, these indexes are telling us that Zamorano has to do asignificantly better job in disseminating its outputs, while positioning its work in the international debateand discussion arenas and the internet and to improve the quality of its outputs. Certainly, a muchmore rigorous and robust survey of employers, educational institutions, graduates and otherstakeholders needs to be done to address whether this erosion is more of a miss-perception that needsto be addressed by Zamorano promptly.


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2. Developing Zamorano as a Global leader in environmental, agricultural, and development policyresearch for developing countries in Latin America

Zamorano has to take a leadership role in helping LAC countries define policies and implement them inthe near future. Zamorano cannot afford becoming part of the sidelines in the policy debate arena.

Otherwise, we risk losing relevance and our prestige will deteriorate further, or simply will be ignored byall stakeholders. I propose that this process should start with its host country to develop a proof of concept and then expand through all countries represented in Zamorano. This deployment will implydeveloping later on a strong partnership with the local AGEAP s so that joint work can be done withgraduates in the area of agricultural and food, environmental and development policies.

3. Developing Zamorano as an pro-active Latin American leader in applied and policy research

Zamorano as an educational and outreach institution needs to significantly strengthen its capacity sothat it pro-actively contributes solutions to specific problems in Latin America. Similar to the previouspillar, Zamorano needs to proactively address relevant and specific problems so that the institutiondevelops an educational and research program that has a purpose beyond creating agriculturalprofessionals. The issue here is that we have to maintain and enhance Zamorano s image of beingproblem solving institution whose graduates are of course problem solvers.

4. Establishing the Center for Policy Analysis, Education and outreach

Policy analysis, education and outreach are major gaps in Zamorano s strategic map and plans for thenear future. A major contributor for Zamorano s ability to strengthen its leader position amongstagricultural institutions in developing countries is to address knowledge and policy analysis, educationand outreach. This a major gap as there are very few such centers in Latin America, and virtually none in

Central America and the Caribbean. Zamorano can use the International Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI) to which I belong, as a model to develop such center for Latin America and the Caribbean, with of course a much more modest capacity than IFPRI. Certainly there is a market to develop a centerconducting research, policy development and analysis, and policy outreach related agriculture and food,environment, development and other areas which can be self sustaining if it becomes a recognizedentity.

T he future of agriculture

Agricultural Innovation

In order to evaluate the current quality of Zamorano s education and to develop its future, we have toanswer the question of whether Zamorano is prepared to deal with the future of agriculture. As MichaelBoehlje from Purdue's Center for Food and Agricultural Business has expressed in several articles,agriculture will increasingly go through an evolutionary -in some cases revolutionary process movingfrom an industry that grows stuff to one of biological manufacturing. We're in the process of thebiological manufacturing of specific-attribute raw materials for the nutritional, industrial andpharmaceutical industries


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diligently discussed, debated and agreed-upon in broad consultations with Zamorano stakeholders. Thisis not the work of one person alone.

1) Commission a formal survey of all stakeholders to determine whether Zamorano indeed is losingground to its competitors and to measure perceptions of its quality.

2) People respond to incentives that Zamorano needs to internalize. Zamorano needs to conduct annualperformance evaluation reviews of its entire faculty, instructors and support staff and establish activemonitoring and performance evaluations and standards for graduates, faculty, administration andadministrative processes, product delivery, and other relevant components. . Performance evaluationreview forms need to include a mix of education, research, outreach and communications components.The relative value of each of the parameters for the assessment needs to be negotiated and agreedupon with everybody being evaluated in advance as part of conditions for contract signature andrenewal. To avoid rent-seeking behavior that detracts from the main educational mission of theorganization, Zamorano s Administration needs to set guidelines in terms of the appropriate mixamongst its faculty and instructors.

3) Strengthen communication efforts by designing a strategic communication policy designed topromote all Zamorano products in different venues. This activity has to be strategic, rational and welldesigned program that becomes an active part of Zamorano programs. This cannot be an afterthought.Thus Zamorano needs to dedicate an appropriate amount of its budget for these activities.

4) Set a higher excellence standard for all Ingeniero Agrnomo theses. Most of these theses should beof sufficient quality so that either individually or in a research project set becomes part of a researchproject, they have a distinct possibility of being published in regional and international peer-reviewedpublications, be presented in international meetings, or become the platform for developing a

communication/outreach product. These outcomes should be part also of the faculty performanceevaluations efforts.

5) Provide opportunities and support for Faculty and Instructors to opt for internationally competitiveprojects, grants and financing resources. Zamorano needs to monitor faculty performance so that theeducation component is not impacted negatively through an inordinate rent seeking behavior. The key isto pro-actively manage and monitor conduct and performance with faculty.

6) Define an appropriate mix of Ph.D., M. Sc., MBA and B.Sc. /B.A. professionals hired as faculty andinstructors. An enforcement of job positions and its duties, as well as qualifications, needs to be vigilant.Table 2 shows a comparison between EAP and EARTH. Although the share of post-graduate faculty atZamorano will probably not be as high as Earth due to is Aprender Haciendo component and the needto supervise field work, Zamorano definitively needs to increase its share of Ph.D. and M. Sc./MBAfaculty at this point in time. This will allow improvements in the quality of education, research andoutreach programs while ensuring that Zamorano can defend its quality claims to all stakeholders.

Certainly, Zamorano needs to improve the descriptions of its faculty and staff to include titles, positions,publications and CVs, ongoing research and outreach projects and so on, in order to back up why they


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are there in the first place to outside observers, including prospective students and potentialcollaborators. In building Table 2, I could not identify the title of 25% of those faculty and staff listed inZamorano s web site. This is not acceptable. Zamorano is doing a disservice to its faculty by not havingsuch information in its web site. Furthermore, Zamorano needs to actively promote its ongoingcollaborations and international projects. Once again, a review of how these communication efforts are

done in other institutions such as IFPRI, can be very illuminating.

7) Seek funds to establish the Policy Analysis, Environmental Strategic Impact Assessment, andOutreach/Communications Centers. These Centers will have to begin their efforts by establishing activecollaborations with advanced policy centers such as FAPRI and IFPRI, Research centers such as CIMMYT,CIAT, and CIP, and with discussion forums such as GFAR, as a precursor to developing such centers. Newdonors will need to be approached to invest and fund these centers to which there may be someinterest as the gap exists in Latin America and the Caribbean for such centers.

These ideas and components will need to be integrated within current ongoing activities and the timingand sequence of such activities will need to be defined so that the whole becomes a true Roadmap. Ihope now that now the Zamorano Board of Trustees is in the process of electing a new Rector -or hasalready done so- considers the content of this letter in its planning, implementation, and monitoring andevaluation processes. If you have any questions about this document please do not hesitate to contactme.

Sincerely

Jose Benjamin Falck Zepeda, Ph.D.Research Fellow, Leader Policy Team Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS)International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI/EPTD)2033 K Street NWWashington, DC 20006-1002USA


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Table 1. University rankings

University Ranking Webometrics2009 Ranking4ICU.org

Globalrank

Continental rank Country rank

UNAM 4 58 2 1Universidade de So Paulo 57 53 1 1ITESM 432 443 12 2Universidade Federal de MinasGerais

27 329 9 6

Universidad de Costa Rica 319 595 21 1EARTH 2319 5616 483 9Zamorano 4723 6404 558 2Universidad Nacional Agraria LaMolina

1539 2759 193 6

INCAE 3947 3787 300 7

Universidad Estatal a DistanciaCosta Rica

N/A 3650 285 6

Universidad AutonomaChapingo

3414 3005 220 33

Universidad Peruana Cayetanode Heredia

1546 2809 195 7

Universidad San Carlos deGuatemala

1121 2506 171 2

Universidad Nacional Agraria(Nicaragua)

3951 2249 143 1

UNAH- Honduras N/A 7463 673 3

UNITEC N/A 6014 527 1

Notes:

1) Ranking http://www. Ranking 4ICU.org2) Webometrics rankings is composite score based of a) Size: Number of pages recovered from

four engines: Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead, b) Visibility: The total number of uniqueexternal links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search, c)Rich Files: After evaluation of their relevance to academic and publication activities andconsidering the volume of the different file formats, the following were selected: Adobe Acrobat(.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). Thesedata were extracted using Google, Yahoo Search, Live Search and Exalead. d) Scholar: GoogleScholar provides the number of papers and citations for each academic domain. These resultsfrom the Scholar database represent papers, reports and other academic items.


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Table 2 A brief comparison between EAP and EARTH

Universidad Costper

year (US$)

Ph.D. M.Sc./MBA

B.Sc.

? Total Ph.D. M.Sc./MBA

B. Sc. ? Total

EAP 13,250 14 18 16 16 64 21.9% 28.1% 25.0% 25.0% 100.0%EARTH 14,210 20 20 2 0 42 47.6% 47.6% 4.8% 0.0% 100.0%Note: extracted from EAP and EARTH web sites.

Open Letter to Board of Trustees Zamorano 2

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