“El pobre es Cristo” (“the poor is Christ”) is the bold quotation on posters throughout Santiago bearing a picture of recently canonized Alberto Hurtado. Many are found on light-poles and the buildings that house Latin America’s newest Jesuit university – Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
This university was founded in 1995 and, in an unusually rapid process, it was fully certified by the Chilean government in 2004. In keeping with the philosophy of their university’s namesake, the founders decided to locate the university in the older, poorer section of Santiago near the Los Heroes subway entrance. It was not far from here that Saint Hurtado taught at the Colegio San Ignacio and founded the El Hagar de Cristo, a shelter for homeless adults and abandoned children.
Desiring to become a “cutting-edge” university that would help shape the future of Chile as well as all of South America, officials contacted several Jesuit universities in the United States to form partnerships in different areas. In 2002, the president of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, at the time Father Nicholas Rasford, S.J., was approached by Alberto Hurtado’s vice president for international relations, Father Fernando Verdugo, about the possibility of forming a partnership to offer a joint master’s degree in educational administration as well as a student exchange program. That summer three members of the Saint Joseph’s faculty traveled to Santiago to explore these possibilities.
Over the next year, officials at the universities developed programs in both of these areas. Whereas the student exchange program is just beginning, the joint master’s degree courses were inaugurated with a seminar at Alberto Hurtado presented by Saint Joseph’s professors Robert Palestini and Jeanne Brady, as well as myself, in August 2003.
Indicative of the interest generated by the partnership is the fact that more than one-hundred and fifty Chilean educators attended the seminar in spite of the fact that a labor strike had shut down all public transportation in the city on that day.
The joint master’s program features five courses offered by Saint Joseph’s faculty in Santiago and six courses plus a practicum and thesis preparation taught by Alberto Hurtado staff members. Saint Joseph’s professors not only develop a strong foundation in various aspects of educational administration, but also strive to create transformational leaders. In this respect, they teach the democratic and progressive ideals of John Dewey and Maxine Greene. They also develop post-modern theories advocated by critical pedagogues such as Paulo Friere, Dr. Brady, and Patrick Slattery. In many respects these theorists are in the tradition of Alberto Hurtado himself, who saw education as the key to reforming society. His 1935 doctoral dissertation went to the heart of Progressive educational reform and is entitled The Pedagogical System of John Dewey Before the Demands of the Catholic Doctrine.
Interest in the joint master’s degree has been high. The first cohort, consisting of thirty-five students, is completing its coursework this semester. A second, with more than thirty enrollees, began in August. Many of these students are elementary or high school principals who want to receive their master’s degrees. Others are teachers who desire to become principals, directors, or other educational leaders. They have been pleased with the Saint Joseph’s courses and have made comments such as “this is a champagne and caviar” course directly to the professors.
Alberto Hurtado and Saint Joseph’s officials are also pleased with the partnership. In a June 21st letter Alberto Hurtado education department chair, Juan Eduardo Garcia-Huidobro, wrote that “. . . we can only report benefits and satisfaction for ourselves and our students.”
The dreams for this partnership continue to develop beyond the joint master’s degree initiative. An agreement for a student exchange program was signed in August and is expected to begin in the spring of 2006.
Another collaborative effort involves Chile’s certification requirements for school principals. Alberto Hurtado has received a grant from the Chilean government to study and make recommendations regarding the training, evaluation, and accreditation of competencies for school principals. As part of their study they have spent considerable time interviewing Saint Joseph’s faculty members as well as several Saint Joseph’s curriculum graduates who are currently principals in the Philadelphia area.
All of these initiatives reflect the serious approach taken by Alberto Hurtado University officials in attempting to reform Chile’s educational system. They are capturing the democratic spirit that has pervaded the country following the downfall of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990. Their efforts bring to mind the words of Chilean Nobel prize poet Pablo Neruda when he wrote in A Light from the Sea:
re-arising:
open
each day with your petals
and eyelids,
grant us your cleanly celebrities
to widen our on looking;
bring us to see, in the end,
the sea moving, wave upon wave,
and flower after flower, all the earth.
(renacedora, renacida;
abre
cada día tus pétalos,
tus párpados,
que la velocidad de tu pureza
extienda nuestros ojos
y nos enseñe a ver ola por ola
el mar
y flor a flor la tierra).
Saint Joseph’s University is honored to be in a partnership with a university that widens perspectives each day, moves as the sea, and blooms as flowers over all of the earth.
For more information about the Joint Masters Degree Program with Universidad Alberto Hurtado, contact Dr. Terrance Furin at tfurin@sju.edu.
