Victor A. Arredondo
Hall of Fame Class of 2011
Victor A. Arredondo has made it his career objective to position Mexican continuing higher education within the context of an overall policy framework for collaboration in the Americas. His leading role in international task forces and organizations has been key to the development of institutional ties and partnerships in the Western Hemisphere, establishing some of the current programs for student mobility, teacher training, distance education, and research networking in the region.
Education has always been the focus of his career. From 1981 to 1985, he was chairman of academic programs for the National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education (ANUIES). During his time at ANUIES, he instigated various programs, plans, and policies oriented toward the consolidation of planning and evaluating continuing education units at the institutional, state, and national levels.
From 1988 to 1997, he was director of university development and general director for higher education at the federal Department of Education. Here, he introduced a model of institutional performance-based funding – FOMES – which is still in operation today. This fund for modernizing universities has been essential to the consolidation of their technological infrastructure and projects such as digital libraries and information systems, curriculum updating, distance education, research networking, academic mobility, and international collaboration.
He was also the technical secretary of the National Commission for Higher Education Assessment from 1989 to 1992 (CONAEVA). Here, he coordinated the design of a national strategy and the appropriate elements to evaluate the performance of students, programs, and institutions.
As Mexico’s representative on the Trilateral Steering Committee for North American Collaboration, from 1992 to 1995, he worked for trilateral reciprocity in the certification of professions through the definition and promotion of acceptable standards in 12 major occupations, and with a special emphasis on continuing education among Mexican professional organizations.
As president of the Mexican Association of Distance and Continuing Education from 2001 to 2003, he integrated institutions and professionals to organize courses and programs; fostered social development and recognition of continuing education professionals; and established and promoted relations among educational institutions, businesses, and government.
From 1997 to 2004, he was president of Universidad Veracruzana; and from December 2004 to November 2010, he served as minister of education for the state of Veracruz.
Arredondo is the creator and developer of the Vasconcelos Project and the Clavijero Consortium. The first initiative seeks to improve the quality of education and community life using all-terrain roaming mobile units that reach underserved communities. The Clavijero Consortium, created to provide online continuing higher education and training, has been essential to update more than 37,000 teachers in the intensive usage of ICTs in the classrooms and on new learning methodologies.
Examples of his international work for the advancement of continuing education include the Program for North American Mobility in Higher Education (1995) and his emphasis on human resources development in the Commission for Education and Culture of the Gulf of Mexico States Accord, which he chaired from 1998 to 2003. He was an associate founding member of the Global Alliance for Transnational Education and served as president of the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE) from 2003 to 2005.
Arredondo is a native of Cordoba, Veracruz, Mexico. He holds a B.A. in psychology from Universidad Veracruzana (1973), a master’s in psychology from the University of Western Michigan (1974), and a Ph.D. in educational psychology with an emphasis on educational planning and behavioral systems analysis from the University of West Virginia (1978). Currently, he is the president of the Corporate Villa Aprendizaje.