This study explores the implementation of the Dean's List initiative, a student-centered approach at a large School of Engineering and Sciences serving approximately 8,000 undergraduates. In this program, 37 students collaborated on nine strategic projects under the guidance of 17 academic directors acting as coaches, aiming to enhance the student success mentoring model. By emphasizing leadership, teamwork, and communication, the initiative fostered a supportive academic environment where students engaged in solving real-world challenges to improve their academic experience. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through surveys, interviews, and project assessments. The key projects included a peer mentorship program for first-year students, enhanced feedback systems for course evaluations, improved communication between students and leadership and strengthened cocurricular engagement. Preliminary findings indicate a positive impact on mentoring quality and skill development, particularly in leadership and teamwork. The initiative also promoted collaboration among students and faculty, contributing to a culture of continuous improvement. This research underscores the role of student-led initiatives in refining mentoring frameworks and highlights the Dean's List as a model for integrating student voices into institutional practices. Compared to traditional mentoring models, this approach offers a comprehensive focus on mentorship, engagement, and skill development, preparing students for both academic and career success.

In today's rapidly evolving job market, academic institutions implement diverse strategies to enhance students' professional competencies and employability. These strategies include active industry and educational partner involvement in curriculum development, the promotion of soft skills, the integration of real-world experiences, and the implementation of internship programs. At Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Tec21 educational model is structured around four core pillars: challenge-based learning, academic flexibility, inspiring faculty, and comprehensive student support. This study examines the impact of industry collaboration and mentorship on student development in two specific programs: Mechatronics Engineering and Industrial Engineering. Throughout their academic journey, students engage with over ten companies, applying theoretical knowledge to solve real-world challenges. These experiences not only strengthen technical competencies but also foster essential soft skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, adaptability, and leadership. Industry collaboration is a fundamental component of Tec21, ensuring students are consistently exposed to industry-driven challenges and gaining hands-on experience through internships and project-based learning. This research explores the impact of two key componentsindustry collaboration and comprehensive mentorship-on the development of future-oriented competencies. The study assesses their contribution to the holistic growth of three cohorts (620 students), preparing them to tackle both current and emerging engineering challenges. The findings indicate that students engaged in industry projects demonstrate greater readiness to address complex, real-world problems, exhibiting enhanced adaptability and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, the mentorship model significantly improves student engagement and motivation, fostering increased confidence and competence in both academic and professional settings.

The field of education is experiencing a profound transformation driven by digital technology, a shift that the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened. This global crisis has prompted educational institutions to swiftly adopt digital tools, leading to a notable surge in online educational resources, particularly in the sciences. In university teaching of chemistry, virtual visualisation platforms and remote classrooms offer college-level chemistry students immersive experiences beyond the confines of traditional classrooms. The success of digital transformation in higher education hinges on educators' ability to tailor the learning experience to individual student needs, fostering inclusivity and diversity. This study underscores the pivotal role of a digital platform in engaging students from engineering and science backgrounds in the study of chemistry. The resources offered by the virtual platform cater to various learning preferences and provide a comprehensive method for grasping essential chemistry concepts, ensuring that educators and students are fully engaged in the educational journey. Preliminary results indicate that students prefer exercises with additional hints (39%) and consider them more useful for learning. This suggests that receiving additional guidance during problemsolving is an effective method to facilitate the understanding of complex concepts. Explanatory videos are also highly valued by students (27%). This could be related to the effectiveness of visual and auditory resources in the learning process, providing a more interactive and accessible way of absorbing information. The research also revealed that students prefer learning methods that align with their dominant intelligence style, whether logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, or kinesthetic. This underscores the importance of tailoring educational resources to students' preferences and strengths. Incorporating digital platforms and virtual classrooms into chemistry education resources facilitates active learning and fosters a more inclusive, data-driven approach to teaching in the digital era.

Engineering students in higher education need to be prepared to work on sustainable solutions to the complex problems that they will be confronted during their professional careers. The first cohort of graduates from the Tec21 educational model, launched in 2019, completed their studies after four years. Preliminary findings suggest the successful implementation of the model, which is attributed to the diverse experiences encountered by graduates through approximately 7-8 training partners throughout their academic journey. This article presents a comparative analysis of the level of achievement of our engineering students in 4 soft skills evaluated during the first stage of their professional careers. Our examination focuses on 498 students from August 2019 enrollment out of over 1,600 students across five academic programs: Industrial and Systems Engineering, Computer Technologies Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Biotechnology Engineering at the Monterrey Campus of Tecnológico de Monterrey. Preliminary results show high levels of achievement in several soft competencies such as self-awareness, well-being, and self-regulation, while self-awareness scores lower, suggesting the need to promote constant self-reflection in our engineering students. Tec21 educational model at Tecnológico de Monterrey is demonstrated as an empowering factor for students to acquire specialized knowledge and essential soft skills. Tec21 distinguishes itself from traditional programs that are formulated around integral courses, with its holistic approach to learning throughout the undergraduate journey. Finally, Tec21 promotes student interaction with professors and the educational environment as a complete learning experience.

Over the past few decades, immersive technologies have completely transformed the world around us. Recent trends show that the next digital transformation will directly impact the way people live, communicate, work, trade and learn and will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Generative artificial intelligence has had to face significant higher education challenges since its appearance, requiring the development of new and innovative teaching and learning practices. Nevertheless, the assimilation of such immersive technologies necessarily brings with it many challenges, advantages, and risks, which have led to differing opinions among educators, students, and academics. This paper provides a preliminary reflection on the risks and benefits that higher education students perceive in the formal use of this type of tool for academic purposes. An exit survey was used to verify the initial opinions of the students, obtaining almost 90 percent of positive perceptions, but only considering AI as a support tool. In contrast, a significant percentage mentioned that there could be some risks in using this technology: dependency on AI tools, loss of creativity and plagiarism according to institutional policies. Despite its innovative and significant importance, the students acknowledge that the tool is imperfect and accept several disadvantages, such as incorrect answers, poor quality references and the production of unsafe content, so its use must regulate and for now remain only as a complementary support tool.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed great challenges for Engineering Education. For Latin America higher education institutions, the greatest changes were total virtuality, distance education, collaborations between educational entities, labs, and connectivity problems. The return to in-person attendance has brought new challenges to engineering schools, such as the low motivation of teachers and students in this new transition, as well as the possible lags of students in the acquisition of practical skills that online laboratories and digital courses could not develop. Additionally, other related organizations, such as professional or educational societies faced challenges such as retention of members, running virtual conferences, and maintaining fiscal viability. The main objective of this work is to make known the challenges in Engineering Education in the post-pandemic era in Latin America, the initiatives the nonprofit Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) has developed to address these challenges and promote best practices so that Engineering Education institutions in Latin America can face them, and the need to scale these initiatives through collaboration among academic, gobernmental, industry and organizations.

In August 2019, the national initiative Women in Engineering and Sciences (MIC) was launched with the objective of raising awareness and monitoring gender equity, equal opportunities and women empowerment. This project, led by a group of professors, hopes to accompany, support and join efforts, for a stronger impact within our academic community. This study presents the work of the linking committee towards the empowerment of women engineers through linked experiences. The methodology of this work includes: 1) integrating a multi-campus team to work in the engagement and linking committee, 2) identifying internal efforts towards the empowerment of women, as well as external efforts in companies, organizations and other universities through research and interviews, and mapping the networking ecosystem 3) analyze the information to identify key partners for collaborative projects, and 4) create a community by implementing Lean In circles (leanin.org) and replicate the project at other campuses. The work done and the reflections hope to be a roadmap and source of inspiration to other engineering institutions working towards a culture of gender equality and women empowerment.

Several studies suggest that women are inspired by female role models. Observing women with successful development in their profession inspires other women to pursue professional growth as well, even in STEM areas, where there is less female participation. This research presents a successful case of a program with two differentiating characteristics: the use of social networks to present a group of female leaders like a role model in STEM, and an international strategic link. The objective of the program was to strengthen women leadership in the STEM educational environment, as well as to identify the determining factors for this strengthening. In the webinar program developed over a 6-month period, more than 700 people were impacted, with more than 22,000 views. Through feedback surveys and data regarding audience obtained from the webinars transmitted by social networks, the impact and needs of teachers were shown. The results indicate that the majority of the audience teaches classes in elementary and middle levels, however, it is observed that teachers from all educational levels participated. The presence of female role models teaching in STEM programs and their extensive experience in current social happenings are two elements that favor interest and participation in these events.

Gender equity and inclusion have been relevant topics in the agenda of the companies, organizations and universities. As a university and particularly with engineering, science and technology programs, it is relevant to implement actions that encourage this culture of gender equity in a STEM environment. The main initiatives are related to mentoring programs, which seek to develop and empower women through women themselves. The research aims to identify the factors that influence the impact generated by the mentoring process in the different stakeholders: teachers, researchers and high school students. The mentoring model is composed of three key elements: (a) massive session with life testimonies of engineering and science students, (b) massive session with the testimonies of mentors and mentees, and (c) the mentoring sessions in small groups or one-to-one. The methodology is of a mixed nature and is composed of 4 stages: (1)design of the mentoring program based on the research of literature review and interviews with companies that has experience in mentoring programs, (2) implementation of the mentoring program with high school students and women STEM professors mentors, (3) evaluation of the impact of the program with interviews with mentors, observation, focus groups with mentors and mentees, and surveys, (4) definition of the impact factors and improvement areas of the program. The findings in the different stages allowed to integrate the factors that impact the mentoring process and its involved stakeholders. Some of the factors that influence the impact of the mentoring program are: the role of the mentor and its characteristics, the mentee profile, its commitments and interests, the impact of the life testimony both professional and personal, the type of needs that arise for the mentees and for the mentors, the time of attention, and the interaction.