Skip to Content

About the Program

On This Page

Program Details

Close to 70 million people per year migrate from the countryside to the cities. That’s 1.5 million people per week or 130 people every minute. In fact, the world population is expected to swell from 6 billion today to 8 billion by 2030, with 95 percent of that growth taking place in the poorest regions of the world, and overwhelmingly in poor cities like Karachi, Cairo, and Manila. Already there are 1 billion persons—one out of every six—living in squatter communities. By 2030 that figure will mushroom to 2 billion squatters—one out of every four people on the planet. This explosive growth of slums is perhaps the crucial demographic and geopolitical event of our times.

Most of this global social class of perhaps one billion ex-peasants, civil servants, informal wage earners, and mini-entrepreneurs improvise lives largely disconnected from the world economy. Their living conditions are almost unthinkable. Overcrowding, squalor, unemployment, chronic health hazards, hopelessness, and violence are everyday realities.

At the same time, out of the slums of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa has emerged Pentecostal Christianity—a dynamic religious form that mixes spectacles-oriented fundamentalism with slum-based social services. This is now the largest self-organized movement of poor urban people in the world. Will it ultimately transcend its reactionary elements in order to serve as a vibrant, faith-based vanguard for social and spiritual redemption?

Part of the answer to this question hinges on enlightened leadership at both community and regional levels. Urban poor communities desperately need intelligent, ethical leaders who are able to organize residents around initiatives that instill hope, mend families, create jobs, foster educational opportunities, improve sanitation and health care, and promote sound planning policies.

The Master of Arts in Transformational Urban Leadership (MATUL) Program aims to prepare such leaders. Entrepreneurial training institutions on four continents (Asia, Africa, North America, and South America) sponsor this entirely field-based program, with a single focus: to develop leaders who can catalyze transformational movements for positive change within the world’s burgeoning slums and shantytowns.

Philosophy

The MATUL degree program is embedded within a broader movement to link a new generation of Christian internationalists from the global North with those from the global South in vocations dedicated to advancing God’s shalom within urban poor communities. Program graduates, as “servants among the poor,” will utilize their understanding and skills within the fields of international relations, community development and planning, environmental policy, church leadership, non-profit management, global health, or public diplomacy, just to name a few. It is here where their extraordinary grasp of the urban poor condition can guide policy formulation and project development, both in their homelands and internationally.

Distinctives

The MATUL may be the only graduate program in the world exclusively focused on the world's burgeoning slums and shantytowns. Its goal is to train a new generation of urban poor leaders to organize local residents in initiatives that can instill hope, mend families, create jobs, foster educational opportunities, improve sanitation and health care, and promote sound planning policies.

The entirely field-based degree program is co-sponsored by entrepreneurial training institutions on four continents (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America). APU-enrolled students (both U.S. citizens and foreigners) complete coursework, side-by-side, with "national" (e.g. Indian, Filipino) classmates enrolled through the host institution.

The MATUL degree program features a 45-credit curriculum that includes two years of field residence, study with senior development practitioners, and the completion of supervised internships in areas that include land rights, health care, small business development, educational centre development, and service to marginalized populations (e.g. sex workers and street children).

Intensive classroom-based learning is combined with extensive field-based learning. The integration of theoretical disciplines and experience-based learning engages students directly with community issues as both learners and advocates. The assumption underlying this process is that insight and understanding is revealed, not through physical distance and emotional objectivity, but by entering into compassionate, mutually accountable relationships with those whose reality we wish to comprehend. The primary bond of the knower to the known is one of empathy and love, not dispassionate logic.

The MATUL has several distinctive features:

Field-Based

Students are expected to relocate to program sites, find housing with local families either in or adjacent to slum communities, and commence intensive language learning for 3-6 months prior to commencing formal coursework through the hosting institution.

National students residing outside the program site will either fully relocate to the program site (e.g. Chennai or Manila) or remain at their ministry site and travel to the program site for the instructional period several times each year. They may also need to enroll in intensive English language development—possibly at program sites—in order to satisfy the minimum entry requirement.

Practice-Oriented

Residence in or adjacent to actual slum communities enables students to combine living and learning (study, research, writing, and active problem-solving) in an integrated approach to leadership development. Following language study, students begin practical training (internships) in various areas of community improvement through local community organizations.

Intensive Format

Each course is taught in an intensive format (one week, full time) at locations arranged by the sponsoring institution. This classroom-based phase is followed by an extensive field-based phase where students complete course requirements over several weeks. The dates of instructional periods are staggered to enable fieldwork to be completed and for international expert faculty (when used) to travel from one location to another.

Blended Delivery

While many program resources are accessible on-line, extensive topical discussion, problem solving, mentoring, and supervision take place face-to-face with faculty, other students, and practitioners in the larger community. Both delivery methods seek to enhance the exchange of concepts, ideas, and experiences in the analysis of urban poor issues.

Field Support

The challenge of living and learning in distressed environments is balanced with a high level of practical support. Students regularly participate in daylong or overnight retreats together under the direction of an assigned field supervisor. During these times, they rest, worship together, engage in reflective journaling and conversation, and do course-related reading.

About Our Students

The MATUL Program is designed for early- and mid-career professionals preparing for vocations in service among the world’s urban poor. It offers a broad, multidisciplinary, highly practical, and theologically-informed approach to transforming value frameworks and improving life opportunities for informal (slum) settlement dwellers. The student population is comprised of two major groups:

  • International (APU-enrolled, largely North American) students either affiliated with U.S.-based mission organizations and church movements, or non-affiliated independents and graduates from Christian colleges and universities.
  • National (i.e. Indian, Filipino, Latin and African) church leaders, activist believers, and business entrepreneurs who would elect to earn their master’s degree through an indigenous partnering institution.

Applicants are drawn from among those intending to pursue vocations within urban poor movements, non-governmental organizations (e.g. World Vision, Oxfam, Tear Fund) or foundations, multilateral development agencies (e.g., the United Nations, World Bank Group, OECD, WTO), refugee and immigration services, government ministries, and business enterprises, or through professions such as teaching, journalism, development planning, and administration, especially within less-developed regions.

Class Schedule and Size

Units: 15 courses, 3 units each, for 45 units of coursework

Cohort size: Minimum of 15 enrolled students and a maximum of 30 in each cohort

Residency: Two years of in-country residence, including summers, unless an explicit waiver is given

Progress toward degree: Students will complete approximately 7 courses each year (typically 4 core courses and 3 practitioner training courses) with one 6-unit Capstone Project to complete the program. Each course is valued at 3 credits, for a total of 45 units. The normal time for degree completion is four regular terms plus summers, or two years.

Format: Each course features an intensive, one-week classroom phase followed by a multi-week fieldwork phase. Five practitioner training courses integrate students’ living and issue-oriented service within or adjacent to a slum community. Each field supervision process extends over a one year period.

Additional Information

To gain further insight into the misison and purpose of APU's Master of Arts in Transformational Urban Leadership program, visit the following resources:

Reading

Videos

Movie Recommendations

Organizations

Note: This information is current for the 2009-10 academic year; however, all stated academic information is subject to change. Please refer to the current Academic Catalog for the most current and controlling information. For additional information, please contact the appropriate office.