Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra

Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, a university founded jointly in 1962 by the business community and the Conference of Dominican Bishops in Santiago De Los Caballeros, the second largest city and economic center of the Dominican Republic—85 miles northwest of the capital, Santo Domingo. Along with the conservative but progressive elite, a prime mover in UCMM's creation was the bishop of Santiago, Hugo Eduardo Polanco Brito. Although it is a private and secular university, its rector has always been a priest, starting with Bishop Polanco. The university was established to be insulated from national politics, in contrast to the Universidad Autónoma De Santo Domingo, and to provide instruction and training in the fields that were needed for the development and modernization of the country. It follows the U.S. university model.

UCMM opened on a limited basis in the academic year 1962–1963 with some seventy students in the faculties of education and philosophy. It remained open during the 1965 civil war and steadily increased in enrollment to around 12,000 in the early 1990s. In its early years UCMM received important foreign assistance, including faculty development, from the U.S. government and several universities, the Ford Foundation, and the British government. While President Joaquín Balaguer starved the Universidad Autónoma in the capital during his first term (1966–1970) because of its leftist students, he was generous to UCMM, which was not dependent on government funds.

See alsoBalaguer, Joaquín; Dominican Republic.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ian Bell, The Dominican Republic (1981).

Agripino Núñez Collado, La UCMM: Un nuevo estilo universitario en la República Dominicana, 2 vols. (1982).

Frank Moya Pons, El pasado dominicano (1986), chap. 18.

Additional Bibliography

Hernández, Pablo María. Historia del pensamiento pedagógico en la República Dominicana. República Dominicana: Editor Impresos Goris, 2001.

Núñez Collado, Agripino. La Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra: En el umbral del siglo XXI. Santiago de los Caballeros: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 2005.

                                  Larman C. Wilson