Abstract:

Students´ participation and support in research, development, and teaching projects, is an activity that successfully contributes to train competitive engineers at national and international level. Professional training is not only confined to the curricular program, but also it´s strengthened with the collaboration of students in projects that, while it is not compulsory activity, it is widely promoted in various university programs. Thus, on the one hand, the students´ participation in research and development activities is promoted institutionally, and, on the other, students look and explore this alternative mainly in their last semesters, when choosing a modality to obtain their degrees.
Considering that within the University coexist diverse schools, centers and development and research institutes related to engineering, students take advantage of this opportunity to collaborate and acquire new responsibilities and professional competitiveness. At the same time, this option allows students to glimpse the professional environment and to join to other sectors of interest either at national or international level.
For this, there are various programs, projects, agreements, and institutional extracurricular activities aimed at the strengthening of capabilities and skills. allowing graduates to successfully manage their labour insertion.
This article describes the general characteristics of the programs and projects and their approaches, in which students can participate, ranging from teaching, technological development, research and productive sector projects, substantive functions at the UNAM. The analysis and experiences gained by the students as a result of their participation in projects, as part of their professional training, are presented, as well as some statistics derived from their participation.

Keywords:

Projects, professional training, competitive engineers.