The Campus Chronicle
Vol. XVII, Issue 36
for the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
June 14, 2002

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$1.2m Five College African Scholars
program launched

Writing and research are focus of effort

L ast week marked the inauguration on campus of the Five College African Scholars Program. Funded by a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and $200,000 grant from Smith College, the program will bring upwards of 25 scholars from African universities to the five campuses over the coming five years to work on their writing and publishing projects.

     According to the program's director, Anthropology Department chair Ralph
Faulkingham, faculty at African universities often labor under staggering teaching loads and few have the opportunity for sabbaticals to complete research projects and to bring them to print in journals with a global reach. Each scholar selected will be in residence for either a semester or a year, and will interact with other scholars and the Africanist faculty of the Five Colleges in a weekly brown-bag seminar. There are no teaching obligations, and each resident scholar is provided with a laptop computer and a modest research expense allowance.

     With one of the largest concentration of faculty with Africanist interests anywhere in the U.S. and with the African Studies Association's leading journal, the African Studies Review, being edited here, the Five College community is the perfect venue for African scholars to take a productive sabbatical and to lay the foundation for future collaborations with each other and with the host faculty, said Faulkingham.

     While African universities gain by developing their faculty's research and publication profile, there is a substantial payoff for the host faculty here as well, he added. The visiting scholars bring with them a wealth of experience, research, and insight into contemporary African realities, especially in the arts, humanities, and social sciences which will engage the interest and sociability of the host faculty.

     Faulkingham noted that when he and Mitzi Goheen of Amherst College began editing the African Studies Review, they resolved to increase the number and quality of essays authored by Africans based in Africa, primarily as a way to keep the journal grounded in contemporary African theories, interests, and sensibilities. The Five College African Scholars Program will directly facilitate that goal, Faulkingham said, as the resident scholars will have ready access to the journal's extensive international peer review network.

     Lee Edwards, dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, has made space available for the program in Herter Hall. Political Science professor Carlene Edie serves on the committee that is now engaged in selecting the first cohort of resident scholars who will arrive on campus next January. Assistant professor Léonce Ndikumana in Economics is a member of the program's executive committee.

 
    
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