Elms College has signed a partnership agreement creating a continuing education program with the State University of Haiti.
A delegation from the university was in Chicopee last week to formally sign the agreement that will allow training educators from Haiti to gain knowledge and skills in areas such as special education and elementary school subjects, at Elms College and then share it with teachers in Haiti.
After the signing of the partnership, Elms College President Harry Dumay said there’s a lot for Elms professors to learn from their Haitian colleagues too.
“Any partnership is always a win-win,” said Dumay, “And our colleagues in Haiti have deep knowledge about the reality in Haiti, but also they have great pedagogical and didactic knowledge that they will share.”
The partnership between Elms College and the State University of Haiti follows an earlier academic collaboration with the Episcopal University of Haiti School of Nursing that was signed in 2019.
“So the idea came to take what we've learned in enhancing the quality [of instruction for] the people who are teaching nurses in Haiti, to take it to the people who are teaching kids in Haiti,” said Dumay.
Rector Dieuseul Predelus along with Professor Ricot Pierre-Louis, and Professor Marie Chantal Dumay represented the State University of Haiti during the event.
Predelus said that Haiti has experienced an extremely difficult political situation. The lack of elections in the country for over ten years has resulted in the absence of a legitimate leader.
“We, at the State University of Haiti, have a responsibility in this difficult context,” Predelus said in French. “We must educate our young people because we cannot get out of this situation without education.”
Predelus also said that through the faculty and administrative staff exchange and through the modernization and internationalization the State University of Haiti would be able to address various problems and difficulties that the country is currently facing.
" In general, and I emphasize in general, [the country] suffers from a shortage of qualified teachers. We must train our teachers better, we must provide them with much more support so they can acquire more knowledge, more skills, and ultimately, [provide] better support our pupils, our students, and all the young people of the country," he said.
He added that because of the shortage of qualified teachers in Haiti, the State University of Haiti is continuing to strengthen its academic collaborations with universities throughout the world. The Laval University, The Sorbonne and the National University of Mexico (UNAM) are just a few that were visited by the Haitian academic delegation.
“We really want to develop cooperation in all directions, across all continents.” said Predelus. “That's how we'll have a truly global university.”
