Carlos Albizu University

Albizu University is a private, non-profit university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of psychology, education, speech and language, criminal justice, ESOL, and human services. With the main campus in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a branch campus in Miami, Florida, and an additional instructional location in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, the university provides professional training that is relevant and responsive to the mental health needs of multicultural communities and supports culturally sensitive research that contributes to and helps grow the professions of psychology, health, education, and human services. The university’s history began in 1966, when a renowned Puerto Rican psychologist and educator, Dr. Carlos Albizu-Miranda, founded the Instituto Psicológico de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Institute of Psychology) in response to the need for culturally sensitive professional training in the area of clinical psychology. At the time, there were no graduate programs in clinical psychology in Puerto Rico. Mental health professionals were trained abroad and returned to their home country with the challenge of adapting what they had learned to fit the sociocultural realities of a Hispanic community. Dr. Albizu-Miranda himself received his training at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and incurred the same difficulties of incorporating what he had learned into the culture of the island upon returning home to Puerto Rico. He hoped to address the need for multicultural professional training in psychology with the establishment of the institute.