The University of Saint Joseph (USJ) has announced the appointment of Stephen Morgan, a Welsh deacon who has been a professor at the Catholic university since September 2019, as its next rector.
According to a USJ statement, the university's chancellor, Macau Catholic Bishop Stephen Lee Bun-sang announced during a meeting of its General Council on Saturday that the university's titleholder, the Catholic Foundation of Higher Education, appointed Prof. Morgan on March 7 as the incoming rector.
The statement said that the installation of the new rector was slated to take place in July. Prof. Morgan will replace Prof. Peter Stilwell, a Portuguese national.
The statement pointed out that Saturday's meeting approved the university's Equivalence of Attendance in Online Modules criteria, "in a working document rooted in the intense online learning underway" at USJ since early February in response to the novel coronavirus epidemic.
The statement added that the university "hopes that this challenging experience will eventually contribute to a lasting integration in Macau of novel and traditional methods in a more interactive teaching."
The university was co-founded by the Macau Catholic diocese and the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon in 1996, previously known as Macau Inter-University Institute. The flock of the local Catholic diocese is said to number about 30,000, not including the thousands of Catholic Filipino migrant workers in Macau.
