Beatrice Adera, an Associate Professor of Special Education at West Chester University, was recently awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to travel to Kenya to work with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST) and Charles Omoke.

They will collaborate on a research project titled “Creating Awareness and Participation Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities in Educational Settings and Other Community Based Activities.” Working in collaboration with faculty from the Special Education Department at JOOUST, the two colleagues will also engage in curriculum co-development as they develop new coursework for the Ph.D. in Special Needs Education program. Adera will also engage in mentorship of graduate students at JOOUST.

The JOOUST project is one of 11 projects that will pair African Diaspora scholars with one of 12 higher education institutions and collaborators in Africa to work together on curriculum co-development, collaborative research, graduate training, and mentoring activities in the coming months.

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its fourth year, is designed to reverse Africa’s brain drain, strengthen capacity at the host institutions, and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations among universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya, which coordinates the activities of the Advisory Council.

A total of 397 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.