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El Salvador Immersion Focuses Trustees, Benefactors on Worldview
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Jo Ann Cahill, trustee emeritus (1993-2000) and her husband, John, visit with children from Communidad Oscar Romero in El Salvador. The community of about 350 residents is located outside San Salvador and has no running water.
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As more University of San Francisco students head abroad each year for study and immersion trips, a group of university administrators, trustees, and benefactors recently followed suit, taking a break from the boardroom for their own immersion – to El Salvador.
The weeklong tour of the city of San Salvador – where USF has organized study and immersions trips with various social justice programs supporting the poorest of the poor since 1998 – was intended to highlight the role foreign travel plays in expanding students’ worldview and cultural appreciation. The group, led by USF President Stephen A. Privett, S.J., met with elected officials and leaders of the University of Central America, and heard a lecture at the Hospitalito La Devian Providencia – where Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador was assassinated in 1980. Romero, after whom a USF student leadership award is named, was well known for speaking out against economic injustice and military repression in El Salvador.
The itinerary for the June 14-21 trip included meeting El Salvador Supreme Court Justice Victoria de Aviles, El Salvador National Assembly member Hector Dada, and factory workers, as well as a tour of a hospital, a Catholic school, and a shantytown.
The visit was similar in purpose to one taken a year ago by USF vice presidents and deans to Nicaragua. That trip was meant to focus USF’s top administrators on the university’s mission of educating students to create a more humane and just world by introducing them to one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. El Salvador, with its history of civil war and repression and its legacy of Jesuit martyrs who spoke the truth despite adverse consequences, offered trustees and benefactors “a unique context for fresh thinking and moral reflection on the mission of a Jesuit university today,” said Anne-Marie Devine, USF director of media relations.
As members of USF’s governing body and major supporters responsible for setting the vision and direction of the university, it’s important for trustees and benefactors to have a clear understanding of what immersion means for USF students, said Julia Dowd, associate director of the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought, which sponsored the trip along with the Office of the President.
“This trip is an opportunity for key partners of the university to experience first hand the transformational power that immersion experiences have for many of our students,” Fr. Privett said. “These programs that aim to expose and educate us to the realities of the global village are oftentimes the catalyst for students to rethink how and who they want to be in the world. We hope they will have a similar impact on our trustees and alums.”
For Claudio Chiuchiarelli, chairman of the USF Board of Trustees, traveling to San Salvador had just that impact. “This (trip) gave me an even greater conviction of a Jesuit education, and reinforced our absolute need to provide global perspective,” Chiuchiarelli said in a review of the trip. “(Immersion) highly differentiates the USF experience and squares up with everything we stand for and many of the qualities we value.”
Richard Bechelli ’55, and his wife Barbara, were surprised to learn the depth and breath of power that the country’s dominant political party wields in El Salvador. “If you’re not part of the party, you don’t get treated with respect,” Bechelli said, recalling a tour of one shantytown that had no electricity or running water because the residents refused to accommodate the party. Directly across the road a nearly identical town, friendly to the ruling party, enjoyed the benefits of electricity, water, and other basic services.
While the days in El Salvador were anything but relaxing, the trip convinced him of the relevance of immersion trips, not only for students but also for university faculty and alumni, Bechelli said.
– Originally posted July 18, 2008 – 
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