Fr. Bernadin F. Mfumbusa

Father Bernadin F. Mfumbusa is Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT), the Tanzanian Catholic bishops' official university.

Father Bernadin and Owen Phelps, Director of the Yeshua Institute, met several years ago when the priest was a graduate student at Gregorian University in Rome and Dr. Phelps was Director of Communications & Publications for the Rockford Diocese. Jesuit Father Bob White, who headed the Communications program at "The Greg," arranged for the young priest to do an internship under Dr. Phelps. The two men became fast friends and continued corresponding after Father Bernadin returned to Rome. There Father Bernadin finished his master's degree in communications and then stayed on to complete a doctorate in the same field.

After that, he was appointed Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Assistant Deputy vice Chancellor Academics at SAUT. After several years in those posts, in 2008 he was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. In that post he is responsible for academic matters in all of SAUT's four colleges with a combined enrollment of nearly 10,000 and more than 300 resident lecturers.

Although SAUT wasn't established until 1998, it is already having a major impact on East and Central Africa. Its students come not only from Tanzania, but also from Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, Malawi and Zambia. SAUT graduated its first class of physicians in 2008 in a cooperative program with Cornell University, and it continues to educate many teachers to staff elementary and secondary schools throughout the region.

The Yeshua Institute has assisted SAUT by arranging and helping to finance a shipment of more than 15,000 college texts for the university's library and 13 laptop computers for the school's administrators. The shipment left the Books for Africa warehouse in Atlanta bound for Mwanza, Tanzania on Nov. 13, 2009 — the same day the Yeshua Institute certified its charter class of Facilitators for the S3 Catholic Leading Like Jesus Encounter.