There are encouraging and hopeful signs as the details of the annual meeting of the Uniservitate community are fine-tuned. The V Uniservitate Global Symposium will bring together more than 200 representatives of Catholic higher education institutions worldwide on 7th and 8th November in Rome, as well as those who join from other parts of the eternal city or via streaming.
All those in Rome will have a private audience with Pope Francis and participate in a Mass at St. Peter’s celebrated by Mgr Paul Desmond Tighe, Secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery, will participate in a meeting with some 30 rectors of Catholic universities. It will be the third Meeting of Rectors organized by Uniservitate, which will take place at the headquarters of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See, a kindness that the Uniservitate family acknowledges and deeply appreciates.
The Uniservitate team would also like to thank the LUMSA for its facilities for the Symposium. Its staff has been working tirelessly to ensure the programme can proceed as planned.
The great news, in addition to the large number of rectors who will participate in the two days of work, includes the presence for the first time in a Uniservitate Global Symposium of a group from Bethlehem University, alongside the effort made by some universities to finance the trip of some professionals and thus increase their representation.
A working day for the delegations from each of the seven Uniservitate hubs will precede the meetings of the Symposium with a more scholarly nature. On Wednesday, 6th November, students, professors, hub representatives, members of the Uniservitate Academic Sounding Board and Porticus authorities will meet on the campus of the Australian Catholic University (ACU). After a moment dedicated to joint exchange, they will work in separate groups. The students and professors will share their experiences and prepare their presentations for the Symposium, while the hubs leaders and the Academic Sounding Board will discuss what Uniservitate has developed so far and plan future actions.
‘It will surely be an explosion of affection because this day will give the possibility to personally embrace those who have been working for months in virtual spaces,’ said Nieves Tapia, director of Uniservitate.
According to the Symposium schedule, students and researchers will have a special place in this edition because. As its title announces, the event seeks to share and show the world how service-learning practices are ‘Transforming higher education from within’.
The event’s prevailing image will be a special version of the Uniservitate logo representing the global network built and sustained by head, heart and hands. The heart, with the network footprints growing in the Uniservitate community, seeks to highlight the transformative potential of service-learning within the institutions; in short, a community that reflects on the institutionalization mechanisms without losing the mystique that keeps alive the dream of integrating science and faith, academic excellence and community service, knowledge production and Christian witness of a socially engaged university.
We share here the updated programme of the V Global Symposium Uniservitate.