Overview
Appalachian State University and the University for Development Studies are building a unique rural-to-rural university partnership that seeks to connect underserved students and communities in the historically neglected regions of Appalachia and northern Ghana. Both institutions serve regions that have been represented as “underdeveloped,” yet offer rich cultural heritage and models of sustainable and inclusive development, cooperation, and food security that have not been showcased in the international arena.
The two universities are working together to create a partnership committed to applied research and training that contributes to the creation of just and sustainable communities in Ghana, the US, and beyond. The partnership aims to create applied research that changes development policy and practice, while also influencing cross-cutting issues. We also aim to train students to be effective practitioners and professionals who address real community needs in different contexts. We seek to do this through innovative research and teaching collaborations that leverage information technology to create global networks.
Background (and successes)
Faculty from the University for Development Studies in Tamale, northern Ghana and Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, USA have been working together for a number of years, initially meeting through Dr. Jacqui Ignatova’s Fulbright-funded fieldwork in northern Ghana in 2012. In 2017-2018, a Fulbright Scholar grant enabled the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultative Services (IIR) to host Dr. Anatoli Ignatov’s research on land conflict and governance in Ghana. The grant supported the launch of a long-term institutional collaboration between the two universities; it facilitated trips to Ghana by Dr. Jesse Lutabingwa, Appalachian’s Associate Vice Chancellor for International Education, and Dr. Rick Rheingans, Chair of the Sustainable Development to meet partners from UDS’s International Office, IIR and Third Trimester Program. In 2018 the two universities signed a Memorandum of Understanding. While the MOU is intended to embraced students and researchers from across the universities, it is led by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (IIR) and Faculty of Communication and Cultural Studies at UDS and the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State. All three units are committed to interdisciplinary scholarship and training of students to the development of just and sustainable communities.
The first year of the partnership marked several important accomplishments:
In April 2019, Dr. Edward Salifu Mahama, Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Cultural Studies and former Director of IIR, visited Appalachian State to meet with students and university partners, and to co-teach a course on endogenous development with Dr. Anatoli Ignatov.
2019 also marked the first time Appalachian State students participated in UDS’s unique Third Trimester Field Practical Programme (TTFPP), which places students in rural Ghanaian villages to participate in a 2-month participatory development assessment process.
The second year of the partnership launched this website and a series of Virtual Workshops on collaborative research and grant writing to build the capacity of the partnership and identify promising areas for research collaboration.
During the Spring semester of 2021, the Sustainable Development Department at Appalachian State University hosted Dr. Eliasu Mumuni, Head of the Department of Communication, Innovation and Technology at UDS. Dr. Mumuni was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar and his research focused on deploying health information through mobile technology to support maternal and postnatal education in Ghana.
For the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in November 2021, Dr. Jacqueline Ignatova (Appalachian State), Dr. Anatoli Ignatov (Appalachian State), Dr. Eliasu Mumuni (UDS), and Dr. Helen Azupogo (UDS) organized a roundtable centered on the theme, “Contesting Discourses of Land Administration and Agricultural Reform in Ghana.” A second roundtable on the same theme was held at the meeting of the Ghana Studies Association at the UDS Dungu campus in Tamale, at which the four panelists were joined by Dr. Mamudu Akudugu (UDS) and Dr. Felix Longhi (UDS).
In Spring 2023, Dr. Mamudu Akudugu will be joining Appalachian State’s Sustainable Development Department as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence.
Mission
To support the creation of just, sustainable, and prosperous communities in Ghana, Appalachia, and beyond through the development of applied interdisciplinary scholars and engaged global learners.
Goals
- Building a model partnership for international academic collaboration between Southern and Northern institutions
- Collaborative research that contributes to community development, equity, and sustainability in Ghana, Appalachia, and beyond
- Innovative curriculum and programs that transforms students and contributes to community development, equity, and sustainability
- Ensuring impacts
Strategies
The partnership uses four integrated strategies to meet these goals. The strategies are based on a Theory of Change that links our activities and specifies how we anticipate they will contribute to the achievement of our intended impacts.
Partnership building
- Faculty exchanges
- Student exchanges
- Regular communications to build networks and personal connections
- Sharing of institutional models and lessons
- Resourcing strategies (designed to avoid a common obstacle)
- Research and educational collaborations
Research
This partnership is unique given the University for Development Studies’ and Appalachian State University’s respective locations in marginalized rural areas of our respective countries (northern Ghana; Appalachia) that have historically been framed as “underdeveloped,” yet offer rich cultural heritage and important insights into the relationships between culture, sustainable development, and food security. The partnership aims to develop research collaborations along three clusters, reflecting our unique strengths in the following areas: conflict and development communication; food security, agriculture, and livelihood change; and contemporary issues in sustainable development (which will be adapt to pressing issues of the day, e.g. COVID- and climate-adaptation).
These collaborations will be developed through:
- Research clusters
- Faculty and student exchanges
- Collaborative publications
- Grants
- Shared lessons and capacity building
- Student research (grad and undergrad)
We not only aim to develop research collaborations in those topical areas, but also to theorize how these faculty and student exchanges, research cluster discussions, and knowledge co-production can be equitable and sustained. That is to say our goals are the pursuit of collaborative and impactful research that contributes to policy and practice and advances research in development studies. Grants are a means to that end, but collaborative writing and ensuring impact are also important.
Curriculum
- Joint teaching (building off of exchanges and clusters)
- Virtual courses
- Third Trimester
- Coordinated graduate programs (App students to UDS, UDS students to App, and global colloquia; Global Sustainable Development Master’s)
Ensuring Impact
- What are our impacts on students, faculty, communities, and models for collaboration?
- How do we measure or assess?
- What activities can help ensure it?
- Expanding the partnership
- Strategically engaging other global partners (institutions, researchers, students, practitioners, communities)
- What impacts look like:
- Students. We want to contribute to transformation of truly engaged global learners who are capable of contributing the creation of just and sustainable development. Varied and repeated engagement with their global counterparts adds to understanding, perspective, skills, commitment, networks.
- Faculty and researchers. The partnership adds something unique to faculty and graduate student researchers from both sides. They share networks and perspectives. Provide each other with unique institutional lessons. Co-develop models of international research partnerships. Create research that is rigorous, innovative, relevant, and impactful.
- Faculty exchange to build understanding, community, and networks
- Successful examples of extended co-teaching, including bringing UDS faculty to Appalachian and/or virtual course collaboration
- Several virtual conversations between larger group and smaller clusters of UDS and ASU faculty through video conferencing
- A virtual class success
- Teaching and student exchanges
- Progress toward a joint publication or presentation on the approach taken by the partnership
- Plans for and progress towards a first collaborative scholarly publication
- Develop and submit one collaborative grant and make progress towards the preparation of additional grants
- Articulating and communicating a shared vision for the partnership
- Shared document laying out goals and strategies
- Social media stories and strategies
- Website
- Building institutional support and recognition for the partnership
- Partnering with ASU Office of Research, OIED, and others
- Obtaining strategic partnership funding
- Strategies and requests are made within each institution
- Incorporate into ASU/FAA development strategies. This includes compelling materials and presentation to donors. Need to agree on what to target.
- Develop modalities for graduate course collaboration including how the partnership could support UDS’s PhD in Human Development and ASU’s Masters in Global Sustainable Development
UDS-Appalachian Partnership 