Leonardo Lomelí Vanegas will be the new rector of the National Autonomous University (UNAM). The candidate has been appointed by the Governing Board, the body made up of 15 academics that has voted for the successor of the current rector Enrique Graue. Of the 27 candidates who started the race and the 10 candidates who were preselected, the Board has voted by a qualified majority for Lomelí, 53 years old, for the period 2023-2027. The new rector will take office on November 17.
The election has not been without controversy and is already one of the longest deliberations in the history of UNAM; the Board has taken four days to elect the new rector. Despite the university autonomy, the vote has been surrounded by political interests, attacks between candidates and criticism of the Governing Board.
A historian and economist by training, Lomelí Vanegas already stood for election as rector in 2015. He was not elected but was appointed general secretary, a position of trust close to rector Graue. Since 1994 he has been a professor and has been director of the Faculty of Economics for five years, between 2010 and 2015. In 2002 he received the Alfonso Caso Medal as the most outstanding graduate of the Master’s Degree in History and in 2003 he obtained second place in the Jesús Silva Prize Herzog Research in Economics, awarded by the Institute of Economic Research. His lines of research are focused on the History of the economic policy of Mexico, the Political Economy of development and Mexican social policy.
In a recent interview with EL PAÍS, Lomelí declared himself “very motivated and with more experience” to assume the position of rector of one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America. The new rector will have to manage a universe of more than 400,000 people in which students, workers, teaching and administrative staff coexist. In addition, they must face several challenges that have marked UNAM in recent years: increase in complaints of gender violence, financing problems, budget cuts, improvements in staff salaries, modernization of its facilities and friction with the current Government. to mention just a few.
Among these areas of opportunity, the rector recognized that UNAM’s enrollment has grown by 55%, which generates certain “imbalances” both in the infrastructure and in the academic staff. “We have to pay more attention to high school. We have to strengthen our support systems for students, because the majority come from households with incomes of less than four minimum wages per month. In addition, the student population is more vulnerable, from an emotional point of view. “This has to do in part with the pandemic, but also with the crisis of insecurity that is being experienced in the country and with a crisis of expectations,” he noted in the interview.
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