Julia Bello-Bravo , Assistant Director, Center for African Studies, went to Ghana as part of a funded USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab grant on Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss. The overall objective of the project was to identify a cost-effective and readily implantable innovation technology that already exists and can be used to mitigate or reduce post-harvest loss (PHL) caused by different factors such as the following: grain fungal infections (aflatoxins), insect pests in the home, and warehouses storage methods. On this exploratory trip to Accra, Tamale, Wa, and Kumasi, she and her colleagues wanted to identify partner groups for training delivery that would assess farmers who could adapt the existing technology. The target groups will include nucleus farmers as well as farmer-based organizations (FBOs) and women’s groups. The connections made during this trip will allow the group to expand our list of potential partners for engagement. My role in this project is to develop training materials and scientific animations to scale up the identified technologies that would mitigate post-harvest loss. Additionally, this trip allowed them to identify multiple groups in the North and in the Middle Belt who are delighted to facilitate the implementation of the training.
Ken Cuno, Professor of History, published Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Egypt (Syracuse University Press, 2015), and “Reorganization of the Sharia Courts of Egypt: How Legal Modernization Set Back Women’s Rights in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2, 1 (2015), 85-99. He presented “Contextualizing Muhammad Abduh’s views on the family, marriage, and divorce” in a workshop on Reforming Islamic Legal Thought at the University of Exeter in November 2014, and “Claiming heirship: a litigant strategy in the Sharia Courts of nineteenth-century Egypt” at the Fifth International Conference of the National Institutes for the Humanities of Japan for Islamic Area Studies at Sofia University in Tokyo in September 2015. In Spring 2015 he launched a new undergraduate course on Palestinian history, and he also gave guest lectures and participated in panels on modern Middle Eastern history, the Palestinians, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Mark Dressman, Professor of Curriculum & Instruction is in the middle of a three-year Fulbright grant in Morocco, where he is studying the English language-learning strategies of university students and working to improve English education at several universities.
Mary Gathogo joined the Department of Linguistics in fall 2015 to teach Swahili Language and Culture. Dr. Gathogo earned her PhD in Higher Education and Student Affairs and a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University. She has four years of experience teaching Swahili in both semester-based and intensive summer programs. She is currently teaching Elementary and Intermediate Swahili.
Besides teaching, Dr. Gathogo has consulted for U.S.-based foreign language organizations on Swahili language testing. She is also an ACTFL-certified Swahili Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) rater.
Dr. Gathogo ‘s research focuses on the international dimension of higher education with particular focus on intercultural spaces, study abroad in Africa, internationalization of higher education in Africa, as well as the pedagogy and administration of African languages in the U.S. You can follow her on https://marygathogo.wordpress.com/ for information and commentary on, and analysis of, the intersection of African and American culture and global education in Africa.
Linda Herrera, Professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, shared the following of the study abroad she led in July 2015:
Students from the Global Studies in Education program (GSE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) traveled to Malta and Sicily for the study abroad course, "Refugees & Education in the Mediterranean." The class learned about how two Mediterranean countries are dealing with the influx of refugees from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, and explored the policy and humanitarian implications of the crisis.
The group visited NGOS, attended workshops with scholars at the University of Malta, met with politicians and policy makers— including President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca of Malta—and heard testimonials from refugees who have made the perilous Mediterranean crossing. The group also toured historical sites to better grasp the history of migration and conflict and how these struggles have contributed to the rich cultural heritage of the Mediterranean.
Study Abroad is an integral part of the Global Studies in Education program at the College of Education.
Click here to view a short video about the trip or watch here:
Daniel Miller, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, travelled to Montpellier, France this summer to present his paper "The Missing Middle: Local Government, International Biodiversity Aid, and the Politics of Property around Benin’s W National Park”at the bi-annualInternational Congress for Conservation Biology.
Kristina Riedel, former Swahili lecturer, has accepted a position as head of department of Linguistics and Language Practice at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. She is excited about this opportunity to focus on research and to teach and supervise graduate students in areas related to her research (in Bantu language linguistics) and to help work on transforming South African higher education.
Assata Zerai, Associate Dean in the Graduate College, received the Larine Y. Cowan Award for Leadership in Diversity. In addition to her position in the Graduate College, Zerai is director of the Center for African Studies and associate professor of Sociology.
Zerai’s contributions to the campus are numerous. In the Graduate College she oversees the Educational Equity Office, which provides programming and services to enhance diversity in graduate education at Illinois. In 2014-2015, she collaborated with campus leadership to secure a one million dollar grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to create a Sloan University Center for Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) at Illinois. The grant is aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented graduate students in STEM fields. In the Department of Sociology, she initiated a standing Diversity Committee that continues today and created a database of emerging scholars in inequality and transnational research in sociology. More on Dr. Zerai’s work and a short videotaped interview is available here: http://www.grad.illinois.edu/news/assata-zerai-awarded-larine-y-cowan-award-leadership-diversity