Xavier University hopes to collaborate with Catholic university in Haiti

The government of Qatar came to the rescue of Xavier University of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and now the oil-rich, Middle Eastern country is determined to do something similar for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Dr. Norman Francis, president of Xavier, sits on an ad hoc committee created by Qatar that will analyze proposals for approximately $20 million in grant money Qatar has earmarked for recovery projects in Haiti.

Francis and a team of top administrators hosted two Haitian bishops and the rector of the Catholic university in Haiti to flesh out ideas for a proposed collaboration between Xavier and the Université Notre-Dame d’Haiti that could involve exchanges of students and professors as well as the creation of a school of pharmacy and an expanded teacher certification program in Haiti.

Archbishop Guire Poulard of Port-au-Prince, Bishop Pierre-Antoine Paulo of Port-de-Paix and Msgr. Pierre-André Pierre, rector of Université Notre-Dame d’Haiti, spent Aug. 30-Sept. 1 at Xavier to discuss their needs and what joint initiatives might be most effective.

“This is a great opportunity to partner with Xavier University,” Msgr. Pierre said. “We have common ground. We have common values. It would be the first Catholic university in Haiti partnering with the first university created by St. Katharine Drexel in the United States to serve the black people here. For us, it is very meaningful.”

Notre-Dame d’Haiti was founded by the Haitian bishops in 1996 and currently has about 3,000 students studying at affiliated campuses across Haiti.

Qatar has set aside about $20 million for recovery projects, and the committee of which Francis is a member will make a proposal by the end of September for the educational collaborative. A team of five Xavier administrators is scheduled to fly to Port-au-Prince Haiti within the next two weeks to meet the staff and students of the Haitian university.

“They’ve explained very well the lay of the land, but there’s nothing like going and seeing it firsthand,” Francis said.

Notre-Dame d’Haiti has a medical school already in place in Port-au-Prince, but one idea would be to establish a pharmacy school, using the foundational science courses already being offered and build from there, Francis said. Haiti has only one pharmacy school – in a public university.

Also, the bishops emphasized Haiti’s desperate need for trained teachers at the K-12 level.

“We can’t build homes or do irrigation projects, but we can help develop the human capital of skilled professionals so that they would be able to go back to Haiti and help develop the next level and the next level,” Francis said. “We think education is really the key to that. The archbishop said the K-12 system is very important to him. He’s very much concerned about the elementary schools and the high schools, and that’s one of our strengths.”

Archbishop Poulard told Francis that getting certified teachers in the K-12 classrooms was an important goal.
Francis said one challenge that might have to be overcome if Haitian students come to Xavier to study on scholarship is that when they graduate, they are very marketable and may not want to return to Haiti. For example, pharmacy graduates can command salaries of $100,000 annually.

“Maybe we could do what the Army does and a lot of other governments do – the student signs a contract to work for four years after graduation in the home country,” Francis said.

Xavier is one of only two universities in Louisiana with a school of pharmacy. One possibility under the new collaboration would be to have fourth-year pharmacy students make their six-week residency in a Haitian hospital.

“It would be a great opportunity to go and see not just the poverty but the different degrees of suffering as well as what services are needed as pharmacists,” Francis said. “It would be eye-opening for a young 21-year-old to see that.”

“This is the best way of collaboration – the exchange of students, the exchange of faculty members and the exchange of academic materials,” Msgr. Pierre said.
Bishop Paulo said the Catholic university in Haiti “lacks a good school of education,” and he would like to open education programs in his diocese of Port-de-Paix in northwest Haiti and in the Les Cays Diocese in the south.

When the Haitian bishops established Notre-Dame d’Haiti in 1996, they decided to decentralize the system by offering different concentrations of study on about 10 campuses.

“It was a way to offer students from other regions the opportunity to get a good education,” Msgr. Pierre said. “It was also a way to contribute to the development of the country.”

In the five months since his installation as archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Archbishop Poulard said he is “observing the situation and visiting the parishes and encouraging the priests and the laypeople to take their situation in hand.”

Estimates of the death toll from the January 2010 earthquake, which flattened every major church in the Port-au-Prince area and killed Archbishop Serge Miot, have varied widely. The Haitian government reported 316,000 deaths, but the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated between 46,000 to 85,000.

Archbishop Poulard said the fledgling government of President Michel Martelly has gotten off to a rocky start, with both of his prime minister candidates having been rejected by the Haitian parliament.

“We have a president, we don’t have a government,” Archbishop Poulard said. “My personal point of view is that the people are losing faith in this president. They are exhausted with this situation.”

Asked about the demeanor of the Haitian people, Archbishop Poulard said: “It’s a struggle for life.”

After Katrina, Qatar gave Xavier $17.5 million – $12.5 million to build a new pharmacy building and $5 million in scholarships for students affected by the storm.

Msgr. Pierre said the Xavier educational initiative offers Haiti hope for a better future.

“It’s good to remain connected as brothers and sisters and to remember that this is the ground of our life – faith, love and hope,” he said. “At one time your brother may be in great difficulty and may need assistance. We are witnessing the love of Christ among us.”

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.