International Students Welcome: Filipino students in the Pensionados program
Drexel Institute has long welcomed international students. In 1904, several Filipino students attended Drexel as part of the Pensionados program. This program was established via Law No. 854, in 1903, instituted as a tool of “benevolent assimilation” in the aftermath of the Philippine-American war (also known as the Philippine Insurrection or Philippine Revolution), 1899-1902. High-achieving students were identified and selected to receive scholarships to attend American educational institutions. Theu were known as pensionados. The first women were selected in the second round of scholarships and two of these students came to the Drexel Institute in 1904.
Letters from James MacAlister to [William] Alexander Sutherland, the War Department's superintendent of Filipino students, as well as to one of the Institute’s trustees, Charles E. Etting, share updates about Drexel pensionados' ongoing studies in 1905. In the first letter shown here, from MacAlister to Sutherland, MacAlister expresses his pleasure at the possibility of having more Filipino students attend the Drexel Institute. He also writes about how well received the program and the students have been at Drexel. MacAlister assures Sutherland that two new Filipino students have arrived as part of the Pensionados program.
In the very first issue of the Drexel Institute Bulletin, an article mentions Filipina students Honoria Acosta and Luisa Sison. The two women started their studies that year in the Junior Domestic Science and Arts Department. Acosta and Sison were asked to “state in writing the conditions, the occasion, and the object inducing them to come to this country.” Their writings were well received, and Honoria’s was published in the January 1905 edition of the Drexel Institute Bulletin.
Luisa Sison completed her diploma in Junior Domestic Science and Arts in 1906, and is listed as a graduate in the 1906 edition of the Drexel Institute Bulletin. She was listed as a graduate of the Normal Course of Domestic Science in the June 1908 issue of the Drexel Echo student magazine (below).
Honoria Acosta (1888-1970) began her studies in the Junior Domestic Science and Arts program in 1904 and attended the Drexel Institute until January of 1905. The January 1905 issue of the Drexel Bulletin lists her as having entered the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, a predecessor to what is now the Drexel University College of Medicine. She completed her MD at Woman's Medical in 1909 and then returned to the Philippines as the first Filipina physician and obstetrician. In later years she became known as the mother of obstetrics in the Philippines. She married Dr. Antonio Sison, an earlier pensionado. (It is unclear if Antonio was related to Luisa Sison.) Read more about Dr. Honoria Acosta-Sison here.