Steve Reifenberg awarded Fulbright to develop programs at pontifical university in Chile
Steve Reifenberg, teaching professor of international development in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to help create new experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate students at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC) in Santiago, Chile.
Beginning in January, Reifenberg will spend four months collaborating with faculty across disciplines at the pontifical university, one of the oldest and most widely recognized educational institutions in Latin America.
“Our goal is to create innovative opportunities for students to engage in real-world, team-based problem solving that addresses some of the complex global challenges we face today in areas such as education, health or community development,” Reifenberg said.
Reifenberg developed a series of master of global affairs courses based on this approach as co-director of the Keough School’s Integration Lab from 2015 to 2021, and also as an instructor for several Notre Dame undergraduate courses.
At UC, Reifenberg will work with faculty representing the natural sciences and mathematics, the social sciences, and arts and humanities. Together, they plan to build upon work with the university’s current partner organizations and also with individuals from outside the university community.
“We’ll explore models for initiatives that enable students, partners and the communities they serve to bring their best selves — creative, resourceful, authentic, purposeful and impactful — to make concrete contributions to the work at hand,” said Reifenberg, whose teaching focuses on international development carried out through accompaniment, a partnership rooted in a recognition of shared human dignity and care for all dimensions of the human person. While at UC, Reifenberg also plans to explore and write about the concepts of accompaniment and experiential learning in the Chilean context.
Reifenberg has extensive experience living and working in Chile. Before coming to Notre Dame in 2010, he founded and directed the regional office of Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies in Santiago, Chile, one of several roles he held while working at Harvard for 20 years. He is the author of “Santiago’s Children: What I Learned About Life Working at an Orphanage in Chile” and serves on the boards of Partners in Health and also Education Bridge in South Sudan. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, an M.S. in print journalism from Boston University and a B.A. in philosophy from Notre Dame.
Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu
Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on Sept. 5.
Latest Faculty & Staff
- Virtual learning detrimental to school attendance, especially in districts with higher poverty rates, study findsSince the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of chronic absenteeism have nearly doubled across the nation for students in kindergarten through grade 12. This increase was tied to the mode of instruction during the early years of the pandemic. In particular, schools that employed virtual learning as the primary teaching mode during the 2020-21 school year experienced a greater increase in chronic absenteeism in the following year. That increase was significantly greater in school districts with higher levels of poverty, according to new research from William Evans, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.
- In memoriam: E. Jane Doering, professor emeritaE. Jane Doering, professor emerita in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, died Aug. 23. She was 91.
- ND Expert Julia Adeney Thomas: The reality of the AnthropoceneFor the last seven decades, Earth has been operating in unprecedented ways, leading many researchers to argue that we have entered a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. “While it may not have been formally accepted onto the geological time scale, the Anthropocene is real and its effects have drastically and irrevocably changed the living conditions on our planet,” said Julia Adeney Thomas, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. “It should therefore be treated as a de facto new epoch of Earth’s history.”
- In memoriam: William H. ‘Bill’ Leahy, professor emeritus of economicsWilliam H. “Bill” Leahy, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Notre Dame, died Sunday (Aug. 11). He was 89.
- As Maui rebuilds, Notre Dame research team contributes expertise on hazard-resilient housingIt has been one year since fires on the Hawaiian island of Maui killed 102 people, destroyed more than 2,200 buildings and displaced 5,000 people in the historic town of Lahaina. Today, signs of rebuilding are visible. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has leveled and graded the lots where homes once stood, and temporary FEMA housing is slated to open in October. Susan Ostermann, assistant professor of global affairs in Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs, studies housing resilience and is investigating the question of how to rebuild.
- ND Expert: Will ‘Brat Girl Summer’ translate into an autumn of Democratic victories? ‘It’s anybody’s guess’In the past three days, people on social media have embraced British pop star Charli XCX’s online pronouncement that “Kamala IS brat.” According to to Sara Marcus, an assistant professor of English and author of “Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution,” that translates to a declaration that Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive new nominee for president, embodies the sort of messy, complicated, casual womanhood that the singer’s recent album, “Brat,” depicts and celebrates.
