New Award Announced

Teresa Martinez | Director of Communications
On March 30, the Belen Jesuit administration announced at the faculty meeting that the Beatriz Jiménez Ignatian Educator of the Year Award will be established at the end of this academic year. 

Named in honor of longtime Belen Jesuit educator, Beatriz Jiménez, the award will be given to a member of the faculty or staff who exemplifies the profile of an Ignatian Educator. The educator serves as a guide with and for students on their formational journeys at Belen Jesuit. The Ignatian Educator engages in ongoing personal, professional and religious development in order to sustain a vibrant community committed to the mission of Jesuit education. 

“I am very excited to announce the establishment of this award,” said Principal José Roca ‘84. “I was very fortunate to not only be a student of Mrs. Jiménez but also her colleague. She has been an inspiration to so many students and teachers and I can’t imagine a more deserving person to name this award after.”

Beatriz Jiménez began teaching students in June of 1971. From that moment on, she devoted herself passionately to teaching, because she believes that it is where the answer lies to serve the Lord and create a better world.

Beatriz was born in Havana, Cuba on December 17, 1950. Just after she turned ten, her parents were forced to send her to the United States to escape the Castro regime. She was part of the Pedro Pan Operation and went to live with an American family in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After a year, her mother arrived in Miami and was able to claim her and her two sisters. They moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1964.

Beatriz attended Mother Seton High School in Cincinnati and then went on to the University of Cincinnati, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education, Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Literature with a Biology minor, and a Master of Arts in Spanish Literature. In 1976, she, her husband, Dr. Fernando Jiménez, and their two small boys moved to Allentown, PA so her husband could begin his work as a professor at Muhlenberg College.

Wanting to get closer to members of the family and the Hispanic environment, they moved to Miami in 1979 when Fr. Felipe Arroyo, S. J. hired her to teach at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Little Havana. She had the great joy of teaching thousands, and of seeing her own children Gabriel Jiménez ‘91 and David Jiménez ‘94 graduate from there. She spent 33 years at Belen when family obligations changed the course of her life and she moved to Raleigh, NC. There she continued teaching where her grandchildren went to school, putting into practice what she learned from so many exemplary Ignatian educators.
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BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain.  The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline.  In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty.  The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow.  Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.