Posted May 5, 2016
Dr. Dick Kawooya, assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science, was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to travel to Uganda this summer to work with Makerere University’s College of Computing and Information Science (CoCIS) on a two-month project titled "Design of a Web-based online Program for the Master of Science in Agricultural Information and Communication Management (MSc AICM), Makerere University, Uganda."
The project will train a new generation of agriculture communication experts in diverse backgrounds and areas of practice including agricultural extension workers, journalists in agricultural/natural resource management, agricultural officials, information scientists, agricultural educators and advisors, scientists, researchers, agricultural service providers, among others. Kawooya will review, update or develop CoCIS’ institutional capacity and resources for supporting the online program. He will also explore other opportunities for future collaboration in areas of research and graduate student training and mentoring.
“Dr. Kawooya is already a significant contributor to Makerere University and other academic institutions in Africa,” College of Information and Communiations Dean Charles Bierbauer said. “I am confident that Dr. Kawooya will be a valuable asset to Makerere University.”
CoCIS’s project is one of 57 projects that will pair African Diaspora scholars with higher education institutions in Africa to collaborate on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities. Kawooya is one of 59 African Diaspora scholars who have been awarded fellowships to travel to Africa beginning in May 2016 to conduct a wide range of projects across disciplines, from agroforestry to e-learning modules for nursing, and from ethnomusicology to military mental health. The program has now selected and approved a total of 169 Fellows since its inception in 2013.
The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship program facilitates engagement between scholars born in Africa who are now based in the United States or Canada and scholars in Africa on mutually beneficial academic activities. The Advisory Council selected forty-one African universities to host the Fellows, based on collaborative project proposals submitted by faculty members and administrators at the African universities, to meet specific needs at their universities. This innovative program is managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United State International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, through Dr. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, who chairs the Advisory Council, and is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
About the Fellows and Hosts
Public and private higher education institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda were eligible to submit project requests to host a scholar for 14 to 90 days; prospective hosts were invited but not required to name a proposed scholar in their project requests. Scholars born in Africa who live in the United States or Canada and work in an accredited college or university in either of those two countries were eligible to apply to be on a roster of available candidates. IIE maintains a scholar roster to facilitate matches, according to the discipline specializations, expertise, activities and objectives described in a project request. The Fellowship for the project visit includes a daily stipend, transportation, visa funds and health insurance coverage.