Inspiring excellence in engineering education

As a high school principal in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Alejandro Rivera-Becerra, M.S. '93, stresses academic excellence among his students, drawing on the lessons of his own UB education.

Rivera-Becerra supervises the training of 400 high school students on the Ciudad Juàrez campus of ITESM (Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), which serves another 600 students in its graduate and undergraduate divisions. ITESM, a highly regarded private education and research institution, enrolls more than 60,000 students nationwide.

"After completing my M.S. in industrial engineering at UB," says Rivera-Becerra, "I joined the Faculty of Industrial Engineering in ITESM at Ciudad Juárez, where I taught the following to undergraduate IE students: operations research, simulation, linear programming, facilities planning, and differential and integral calculus. My stay at UB helped me prove to myself what I was capable of. Working on my thesis project at UB with Dr. Li Lin as my advisor meant personal and professional growth in developing character and acquiring the ability to work under pressure."

He also made the most of extracurricular activities available to him as a UB student, including classical music performances and on-campus movies. "I believe that academic development needs to be complemented with sports and cultural activities. UB provides an ample range of options."

Rivera-Becerra says he savored the university's cultural diversity, attending concerts of Indian music, for instance. Today, Rivera-Becerra maintains ties with many international alumni, even traveling to France and India to see them.

Rivera-Becerra returns this fall to UB, where he will begin Ph.D. studies in industrial engineering, concentrating on "green manufacturing," a field that also includes environmental science.