Students and staff at the Chile residency.

Walden University’s second international residency, held in Santiago, Chile, March 3–9, addressed social change in the context of Chile’s unique cultural and political history. More than 30 U.S.-based doctoral students, some with their families and friends, joined Walden faculty and staff for the residency at the Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello (UNAB), one of the institutions in the Laureate International Universities network.

The program kicked off with a university plenary entitled, “A New Chile, New Chileans: Social Transformation and National Identity through the Twentieth Century,” by Dr. Andrés Bernasconi, a professor at UNAB. Residency participants then took a guided tour of Santiago to observe for themselves how Chile is adapting to its current challenges.

The academic portion of the residency included cross-disciplinary milestone seminars (based on each student’s academic progress), skill sessions with Writing Center and academic advising staff, seminars on time management and dissertation preparation, and individual meetings with advisors. In addition, Dr. Manuel Barrera, dean of the College of Education, presented a colloquium on “Developing Flexible Thinking and Understanding the Cultural Context of Social Change.”

Cultural excursions brought special significance to the residency experience. These included visits to the historic Concha y Toro winery, the Museo de Arte Pre-Colombino, the home of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, and to Cerro San Cristobal—the highest point in the city. The residency ended with a farewell dinner, cementing the valuable networking relationships that developed throughout the week.

Alice Eichholz, director of academic residencies, indicates that by attending an international residency, students “learn to negotiate their sense of self in a different culture and develop a perspective they couldn’t have within their own culture.”

In the words of one of the students, the residency “put it all together for me—understanding the concept of our community of scholars, and how we will be influential to initiate more change in the world.”

Upcoming international residencies will be held in Liverpool, England, in June, and Madrid, Spain, (the site of Walden’s first international residency) in August.

May Ponder front page