If you educate a girl, Part IX

When on sabbatical leave at the University of Ghana in 2008 I heard people say that the University of Cape Coast (UCC) had some of the best university science programs in Ghana. I was concerned, therefore, when I realized that among the Ghanaian students admitted to the African University of Science and Technology (AUST-Abuja), in 2008 and 2009, there were no UCC students.

In March 2010, on my way to a meeting at AUST, I decided to stop in Ghana and visit UCC. After contacting the Dean of Physical Sciences via e-mail, he kindly extended an invitation to me. I met with fifteen or so teaching assistants with first degrees in physics and chemistry, and shared with them the AUST vision, but never heard back from any of them. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when in the following July, three students (two females and a male) came up to me in AUST-Abuja, smiling, and introduced themselves as among the students who met with me at UCC.

In December 2011 these three UCC students will graduate with MSc degrees—two of them in Theoretical Physics and another in Materials Science and Engineering. Congratulations to them!

Continuing with my series on the education of females, I asked if the two women, Janet Sackey and Ivy Asuo, would be willing to share a bit about their experiences and what motivated them to pursue careers in science and technology:

If you educate a girl, Part VIII

The African University of Science and Technology (AUST)-Abuja opened its doors to students in 2008. This post-graduate institution offers masters degrees in four fields: mathematics, computer science, materials science and engineering, and petroleum engineering. Among the second batch of students (2009/10) were several women. I posted an interview with one of them previously.

I also spoke with two of the computer science students, Adedoyin Adegoke and Dorothy Maduagwu. They shared some of the challenges they have faced as they seek to pursue their academic goals.

If you educate a girl, Part VI

Yesterday (August 14, 2010) Grace Ofori-Sarpong officially became Dr. Grace Ofori-Sarpong. It was a pleasure to escort my student during the procession for Penn State University's Graduate School Summer Commencement exercise. When I put the hood on her I passed on to her my blessings with a quiet prayer that she would return to the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT, Tarkwa, Ghana) and help transform it from a man's world to a school that truly belongs to both women and men. As the first woman lecturer of this new university with a PhD, Dr. Ofori-Sarpong will no doubt have many opportunities to serve as a role model.

Grace's research on fungi-mediated aqueous processing of refractory (hard-to-treat) gold ores was supervised by Prof. Ming Tien and myself. This work is opening up new doors for biohydrometallurgy research. Dr. Ofori-Sarpong's findings established for the first time that certain fungi release metabolic products that can transform the chemical and physical characteristics of the natural carbon in such gold ores in ways that dramatically inhibit the otherwise undesirable uptake of dissolved gold cyanide complexes.

The challenge now is to find a way to keep her research work active as she returns to Ghana. She must set up an engineering microbiology lab from scratch in an academic environment which does not yet have a serious tradition of externally funded research. Given her track record at Penn State, I have every confidence that if there are research funds available anywhere in the world, she'll find a way to submit successful research proposals. Grace: Ayekoo!

If you educate a girl, Part V

I thought it would be interesting to hear from the women students at AUST a little bit about their backgrounds, their undergraduate education, what attracted them to their academic fields. . . Some of their answers were surprising. In this blog posting and coming ones, I'll feature short conversations I had with 4 of the women during my visit to AUST late last year.

The first video clip features Toyin Iyowu, a first year graduate student in petroleum engineering.

If you educate a girl. . . you educate a nation, Part I

Last year while in Ghana I attended some of the Founders' Day activities of Achimota, the boarding school I attended for 7 years (1960-1967) as a secondary student. It is a time set aside every year to reflect on and appreciate the school's founders and alumni. I was moved by one speaker's message who remarked how the founders could not imagine that over 80 years after Achimota's beginning it would make so many impressive contributions to the nation's development. The school's motto is Latin for "that all may be one," and its crest is black and white piano keys, representing how all must work together to create something harmonious.

The implied message that day was that there is value in building for the future. I liked that. One important area of the school's leadership was the introduction of coed boarding schools. Taking the logo seriously, the school applied this truth to many areas of life, including race and ethnicity, rural and urban, but especially gender. Coed secondary schools were unknown in the 1920s, and the idea was quite controversial. One of the founders, Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey, is credited with going around the country allaying the fears of parents with this mantra: "If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family." These words eventually became the famous quote: "If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a nation." Many important female leaders were trained at Achimota. A small sample includes Joyce Aryee (CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Mines), Dr. Esther Afua Ocloo (a pioneering woman industrialist), Dr. Susan Ofori-Atta (the first Ghanaian woman physician), and Judge Prof. Akua Kuenyehia (Judge, International Criminal Court, The Hague) and Dr. Letitia Obeng (Ghana's first woman scientist in zoology).

Originally girls made up 10% of the student body, but today the numbers of boys and girls are essentially equal. The current (Mrs. Beatrice T. Adom) and two previous (Mrs. Adelaide Kwami and Mrs. Charlotte Brew-Graves) principals of the school are all women. Also, the current President of the Old Achimotan Association (OAA) is a woman, "Akora" Sarah Nuno Mansaray to the left in the photo on the right, with another alumna who is a physician.

I must reflect sadly that despite this insightful vision of equality, the University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, both of which had their roots in Achimota, have yet to produce a female Vice-Chancellor (President).

I am intensely aware of the urgent need to reassert the importance of women in science and engineering education and to seriously encourage women to enter these fields. My next blog will present a few of the women who are role models for the future.