Harvard Introduces Chilean Fellowship

Harvard University will create a new fellowship for students in Chile to pursue graduate degrees at Harvard.

The agreement with the Chilean government will provide funding to Chilean students for masters and Ph.D. programs at Harvard, according to Jorge I. Dominguez, vice provost for international affairs.

The agreement comes on the heels of University President Drew G. Faust’s visit to Chile last month, building on the University’s 10 year relationship with the country.

The fellowship will likely cover expenses for about 15 Ph.D. students at a time, in addition to an undecided number of master’s degree candidates. There are currently 10 Chilean Ph.D. students at Harvard.

The University will shoulder the funding responsibility with the Chilean government, resulting in a roughly even division of costs among the two, Dominguez said.

He said he hopes to sign the agreement formally in September, when Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, who received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976, plans to visit Harvard.

Faust and Piñera agreed during her visit to move forward with the agreement between Chile’s minister of education and Dominguez, which they hope will foster an increase in the number of Chilean students enrolling at Harvard.

Dominguez said that he feels that fellowships of this kind are important because international students are often in need of financial aid and fewer resources exist in their home country to fund advanced degrees abroad.

Giselle M. Huerta García ’12, who grew up in Chile, said she would like to see more partnerships between Harvard and universities in Chile.

“Given the influence that Chile and Brazil have had in the economic and political arena in the past decade, I think it is very important that Harvard is taking an interest in this region,” García said.

This year there are 37 Chilean students at Harvard across the University, according to Dominguez.

Harvard has had academic partnerships with Chile for many years.

The Harvard-based David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies was founded in 1994. In 2002, it established a regional office in Santiago, Chile that has served as an outpost for undergraduate studies and internships in Latin America.

For about 10 years, Harvard has been a partner in the Magellan Telescopes project, along with the Universidad de Chile, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several other American institutions.

For the past five years, faculty members from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Medical School have partnered with Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, Chile’s Ministry of Education, and the Universidad Diego Portales to work on a project researching early childhood education.

—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.