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Meet the Santiago Faculty

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Classes offered through the Santiago Program are taught by local faculty, the Center Director, and by one Stanford Faculty-in-Residence per quarter. Many local professors hold regular appointments at Chilean universities or have served in prominent positions in local governments, policy organizations, or research institutes. Courses are taught in Spanish unless otherwise noted.

Faculty in Residence

Each quarter, one Stanford professor serves as Faculty in Residence in each of the BOSP program locations. These faculty teach classes in their own disciplines, developing courses that incorporate unique features of the local culture and environment or that provide comparative perspectives on a particular topic. View a list of current and future faculty.

Local Faculty

Mabel Abad 

Mabel Abad has worked in the Spanish Language and Cultural Program for Stanford in Santiago since 2002. Through her vast academic experience, she has taught diverse groups of foreign students from American and European universities at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, as well as other study abroad programs in Chilean universities and international institutions (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean -United Nations). She is the author of the books Blunders in Spanish and Language Aids (1998), Aim & Hit in Spanish as a Second Language (2005), and 12 Verbs in Contexts of Speaking (2010), all of which are used to support the teaching and learning of Spanish as a Second Language for students who attempt total immersion in the target language.

César Albornoz

César Albornoz finished his doctoral thesis on Chilean popular music at the Institute of History, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He has conducted numerous research projects on twentieth-century popular music, and taught at various professional institutes in Santiago. His latest publication (2005) is on popular culture during the Allende period.

Germán Correa

Germán Correa did his doctoral studies in Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. A prolific writer, Correa is an international consultant for the United Nations Development Program, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. He served as Minister of Transportation under President Patricio Aylwin, and as Minister of National Affairs under President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

Iván Jaksic (Program Director)

Iván Jaksic is Director of the Stanford Program in Santiago. He taught for many years at the Universities of California, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame, and has held research appointments at Harvard and Oxford. A Guggenheim and NEH fellow, he is the author of Academic Rebels in Chile (1989), Andrés Bello: Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (2001), The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life(2007), as well as numerous edited volumes and essays in professional journals. He is also General Editor of the Historia Política de Chile, 4 vols. (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2017-2018).

Rolf Lüders

Rolf Lüders is a Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, as well as being a professor at Stanford in Santiago. He received an MBA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He has been Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University (1968-1971), Director of the Capital Market Development Program of the Organization of American States (1971-1974), Chairman of the Morgan-Finansa Bank in Chile, a member of the Legislative Commissions of Chile (1974-1981), Secretary of the Economy and Secretary of Finance of Chile (1982-1983), Director General of the International Center for Economic Growth (ICEG) from 1994 to 1997, editor of Cuadernos de Economía: Latin American Journal of Economics (1999-2001), and Professor and Director of CEDIEM at the department of Business Administration at Diego Portales University (2002-2005). He is co-author of several books and has written numerous journal articles. He writes a regular column for La Tercera, a local newspaper. He occasionally serves as a consultant to the World Bank, the United Nations, the Agency for International Development of the US, and other international organizations as well as some local business firms.

Sergio Missana

Sergio Missana is a Chilean author, scholar, editor, journalist and activist. He is the author of fifteen books, including novels, essays, children’s books and a collection of travel pieces. He holds a BA in Social Communications from the University of Chile, and an MA and PhD in Spanish from Stanford University. He is currently the Executive Director of the Climate Parliament, a UK-based environmental organization that promotes renewable energy. He served as Director of Publications at the BBVA Foundation in Madrid and as a member of the Governing Council of the European Foundation Centre in Brussels. He has collaborated with the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi and was an editor of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission human rights report in Chile.

Hernán Pons

Hernán Pons has worked in the Stanford Center since its foundation in 1990. Former Spanish Language Program Director, he has taught Spanish courses at different levels and conducted personalized tutorial workshops, which aim at helping students in their academic goals as well as in their overall adaptation process in Chile. He holds a M.Sc. Degree in Linguistics from NYU University and a doctorate from the University of Illinois. He has been a professor of Linguistics, English, and Spanish in the Language Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, as well as in other Chilean and foreign institutions. Hernán has also been an Official Language Examiner at the Embassy of Great Britain in Chile, since 1980 to date.

Sharon Reid

Sharon Reid holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She has extensive experience leading workshops on biodiversity and ecology, and has worked for several educational institutions and NGOs including the University of Chile, Fundación Senda Darwin and The Nature Conservancy. In 2002, she served as director of an Education Project in rural Chiloé on Inquiry-Based Teaching in ecology (National Committee of Scientific Investigation and Technology of Chile: CONICYT). Prof. Reid has published numerous journal articles on the ecology and conservation of birds, with a central interest in birds as seed dispersers for plant regeneration and forest biodiversity. She has also authored book chapters on the practices of forest landscape restoration (IUCN 2011) and co-authored book chapters on the diversity and conservation of forest birds. Born in the United Kingdom but having lived most of her life in Chile, she has an inbred passion for natural history and sharing her expertise with students in the field. She has been a lecturer at the BOSP Stanford in Santiago program since 2008, with a two-year break, when she lived in Sydney, Australia (2009-2011). She teaches a course on biodiversity and ecology in the Southern Cone.