– Marco Carvalho
Deacon Stephen Morgan, who has held the position of dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Saint Joseph since September 2018, will succeed Father Peter Stilwell in the directorship of Macau’s Catholic university. The resolution was announced last Saturday by Bishop D. Stephen Lee Bun-sang during the first meeting of USJ’s new General Council.
The Catholic Foundation for Higher Education has promoted Professor Stephen Morgan to the position of Rector of the University of Saint Joseph. At the head of the Faculty of Religious Studies from September 2018, the Welsh deacon is expected to take office next July, according to a press release distributed by the University.
In the same statement, USJ says that the British scholar, an expert on the work of St John Henry Newman, was appointed as the institution’s new helmsman on 7th March, following an extensive consultation process: “The titular entity first consulted the members of the General Council and the directors of each academic unit on the challenges that the University of Saint Joseph might face and the desirable profile for the next rector. The answers were delivered to the members of the Foundation who, on Saturday 7th March, appointed Prof. Morgan,” the statement reported.
Directing the University is both an honor and a responsibility, professor Morgan told O Clarim: “It is an enormous honor to be asked to lead the University in the coming years. The students and staff of the University are a fantastic group of people, who are engaged in a remarkable project of being a genuinely international place of study and research, within the context of being a Catholic University of China, with a strong and positive Portuguese heritage, grounded in and at the service of Macau. It is a very special place and I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility,” Stephen Morgan says.
The new rector of the University of Saint Joseph was born in Wales, he is 54 years old and completed a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford, with a thesis on spirituality in the work of John Henry Newman, an English theologian and poet canonized in October by Pope Francis.
The first plenary meeting of the new General Council of the University of the University of Saint Joseph gave the current Rector, Peter Stilwell, the opportunity to introduce data on the evolution of both the number of students and the University’s accounts since 2012. The meeting also served to proceed with the homologation of documents about career progression and development and the attribution of honorary degrees.
The Council also assessed the criteria for the Equivalence in Online Modules, a document that is based on the intense online learning experience that has been adopted at the University of Saint Joseph since the beginning of the epidemic outbreak, in February: “The University expects this challenging experience will contribute to a lasting integration of new and traditional methods in a diversified classroom teaching,” the University stated in the press release.
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