Grant Made to Caribbean Center
Diocesan Press Service. August 8, 1973 [73195]
CAROLINA, Puerto Rico -- The board of directors of the Lilly Endowment, whose offices are located in Indianapolis, Ind., has made available to the Caribbean Center for Advanced Studies here, the sum of $77,000 in order to create a faculty chair for a distinguished professor in the Humanities.
The professorship has been projected in order to widen the perspective of the Center's graduate programs in theology and psychology, and in order to enable both clergy and professional psychologists to take account of humanistic studies as they seek to understand man from the standpoint of their own special disciplines.
The new post will be occupied by Dr. John Figueroa who will hold the title of Professor in Humanities and Consultant in Educational Development and Community Learning.
Dr. Figueroa, a distinguished West Indian poet, literary critic, and educator joins the faculty of the Centro after many years as chairman of the Department of Education of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and after two years on leave from that post, as Visiting Professor in the Honors Program in English at the University of Puerto Rico. Among Dr. Figueroa's written works are Caribbean Voices, a critical anthology of West Indian poetry, and Society, Schools and Progress in the West Indies, a study of education in the Caribbean.
Charles G. Williams, vice-president for Religion of the Foundation, in informing the Centro of the grant, commented, "We are pleased to be able to join the Center in bringing this outstanding scholar to your exciting school." The Lilly Endowment has, among its many interests over the years, supported important new developments in theological education.
The Chancellor of the Caribbean Center, Dr. Carlos Albizu-Miranda, has commented that "the acquisition of Dr. Figueroa to develop a new program of humanities which can help to serve as cement between the social sciences and theology is one more important step in the study of man in the Caribbean to which the Centro is dedicated."
The Center, which offers studies at the master's level in theology and at the master and doctoral levels in psychology, has been formed by three participating institutions, The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Caribbean, the theological faculty of the Dominican Fathers of Puerto Rico, and the Psychological Institute of Puerto Rico.
The president of the Endowment is Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, who for many years directed the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company, Inc., whose local operations in Puerto Rico include plants in Carolina and Mayaguez.