[The Ohio State University]

Edward Adelson

Edward Adelson is professor of music and associate executive dean of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Yale University. A noted violist, he has taught and performed extensively in this country and in Europe, and has given workshops and master classes at important schools and conservatories of music throughout the United States. He has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician, and has taught as a member of the artist faculty of the International String Workshops in Norway, Austria, Scotland, and France. He is past president of both the American String Teachers Association and the Ohio String Teachers Association, and has also been a member of national committees of other professional music associations. From 1990-1998, he was a member of the artist faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp. A recipient of both the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award and the School of Music Distinguished Teacher Award, his former students occupy important performance and teaching positions. A founding member of the ensemble Duo Contemporain, he has recorded for Koch, International Records and has premiered a number of significant new works for viola.

Tiffany Adler

Tiffany Adler recently graduated from the OSU Moritz College of Law. She is interested in working on improving access to health care for those infected with HIV/AIDS, particularly those in Africa. While in law school, she wrote a paper discussing a few African countries' approaches and policies regarding the AIDS epidemic. She plans to enroll in a Master of Public Health program specializing in International Health. She will also complete two years in the Peace Corps as her practicum for the graduate program, for which she will be working on HIV/AIDS programs in Africa.

Daniel Avorgbedor

Daniel Avorgbedor is Associate Professor and holds a joint appointment in the School of Music and in the Department of African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus. He received his PhD from Indiana University (Bloomington) with specializations in ethnomusicology and folklore. He has taught at the University of Ghana (Legon), Bretton Hall College (UK), and City College of New York. He served as editor of the international reference work, RILM, 1989-1994. His major research areas include urban ethnomusicology (rural-urban linkages and their impact on performance traditions in Africa; performance as site for negotiating ethnic identities in urban centers), theoretical and methodological issues in African diaspora studies, and contemporary musical traditions in African independent churches (AIC). His most recent research and teaching engagements focus on resources and interpretations of the African presence in the worldwide African diaspora. His publications include the edited volume, Interrelationships of Music, Religion, and Ritual in African Performance (2004); his essays appeared in Garland Encyclopedia of African Folklore: An Encyclopedia (2004), and Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture (2004) and in Research in African Literatures, Ethnomusicology, etc. He also served as guest editor for the journal, World of Music for the special issue on "Cross-Cultural Aesthetics"(2003). Personal Homepage: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/avorgbedor1/.

Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi, assistant professor in the Department of African-American and African Studies at The Ohio State University, earned a B.A. at Bologna (Italy); a B.A. and M.A. at Witwatersrand; and his Ph.D. at Witwatersrand . His doctoral dissertation in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is titled "Social Citizenship and the Transformations of Waged Labor in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa, 1994-2001." His research interests are in the study of African labor movements, with particular regard to Southern Africa , in relation to changing forms of employment, collective identities, civil society, social movements, and social policy. On these issues he recently edited (with Tom Bramble) Rethinking the Labour Movement in the 'New ' ( London: Ashgate, 2003). He also has published in various peer-reviewed scholarly journals, including the Journal of Southern African Studies, the Journal of Asian and African Studies, the Review of African Political Economy, the African Sociological Review, Antipode and the International Review of Social History.

Nina Berman

Nina Berman, associate professor of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University, earned her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. Her specializations include 20th century culture and literature (modernity, minority literature, drama); nationalism, colonialism, orientalism; Germany and the Middle East, Middle Ages to present; 19th and 20th century Germany and Africa; and comparative literature (postcolonial novel). Professor Berman is involved with "Disability Rights in Kenya," a collaborative initiative between OSU and Kenyan researchers designed as a long-term project to study various aspects of disability. This collaboration began in early 2005, and is entering its second phase. The long-term goals of this project are a general assessment of the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of disability in Kenya; enabling the Kenyan collaborators to conduct research on US disability initiatives during a stay at OSU; and developing collaborative research projects to study disability-related issues in Kenya. The Kenyan team is headed by Dr. Kimani Njogu (Director, Twaweza Communications) and Dr. Mbugua Wa-Mungai (Lecturer, Kenyatta University); OSU researchers in addition to Professor Berman include Brenda J. Brueggemann (Disability Studies); Philip Armstrong (Comparative Studies); Dorothy Noyes (Folklore); and R. Brian Stone (Design).

Claudia Buchmann

Claudia Buchmann is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University. Her areas of expertise include comparative and international sociology; social stratification; education; race and ethnicity; and family dynamics. Her prior research includes case studies of stratification and mobility in Africa, and cross-national and comparative studies of the impact of economic policies and institutional forces on educational outcomes and social well-being. Her current research focuses on race, class, and gender inequalities in higher education in the United States; educational and labor market inequalities in South Africa; and the consequences of globalization and worldwide educational expansion for economic and social development. At the heart of all her research is an interest in understanding how institutional factors intersect with family-level processes in determining social inequality.

John Casterline

John B. Casterline is an assistant professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. He is a social demographer who conducts research in low-income countries. Most of his research concerns childbearing -- determinants and consequences. Over the years he has been involved in projects in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Ghana. His collaboration in Ghana has been with the University of Cape Coast, from 1994 to the present. This was an investigation of reproductive attitudes and behaviors, and their inter-relations with social networks. Eight rounds of panel survey data were collected in three regions in southern Ghana. This research was funded by awards from NIH and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Miriam Conteh-Morgan

Miriam Conteh-Morgan is an associate professor and the subject specialist for African Studies, French, and Linguistics at OSU Libraries. She holds a B.A. and Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the University of Sierra Leone, an M.A. in Linguistics and English Language Teaching from Leeds University, and a Master’s in Library Science from Kent State University. Her other professional experiences include teaching undergraduate linguistics in Sierra Leone, English as a Second Language in Columbus-area universities and Harvard Summer School, and African literature at OSU.
Her current research interests center around electronic publishing in and on Africa, and trends in literary research. She is the author of articles and books including two reference sources -- The Undergraduate’s Companion to African Writers and Their Web Sites (2005) and The Literary Map of Africa, an electronic bibliographic database (in development) funded by the American Library Association.

Cynthia Dillard

Cynthia Dillard is a professor in the School of Teaching and Learning (in the College of Education and Human Ecology) at The Ohio State University. She funded out-of-pocket the building of a preschool and community center in Mpeasem (Ghana) in October 1999 and which opened in January 2001. As a result of this project, Dillard was enstooled as Nkosua Ohemaa (Queen Mother of Development) by the Village Chief, Elders, and community of Mpeasem in 2001, an honored role that she continues to embrace in her work across Ghana and the United States.

Dr. J. Mark Erbaugh has over 25 years experience in coordinating and managing human resource development and institution building programs for agricultural research and extension and natural resource management. He presently serves as the Associate Director of the International Programs in Agriculture Office, in the College of Food , Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University. He has designed and implemented overseas development contracts in 14 countries funded by USAID, USDA and/or The World Bank, including management of degree and short-term technical training programs and multi-disciplinary research programs. He is currently Site Coordinator for the Regional IPM Program for East Africa, Co-PI on the Sorghum and Millet CRSP New Market Development Project in and , and Project Director for the Higher Education Partnership for African Development Project (HEPAD) in East Africa . He has designed and led various field training programs for farmers and extension agents; conducted multiple field surveys, designed and led participatory appraisals and farmer field schools; and, coordinated multi-disciplinary and institutional research and extension teams in Uganda, Mali, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa and Swaziland.

Richard Freeman is a professor of Physics and Dean of the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at The Ohio State University. He earned his B.A. at the UNiversity of Washington and his master's and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He would like to engage the faculty at the major universities in South Africa in science collaboration and interchange of faculty.

David Fooce is a doctoral student in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education program in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership. For his doctoral program and after, his primary research interests include comparative education, politics and religion in science education and anthropological studies of educational policy and practice. David earned a B.A. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology from Ohio State. With Dr. Jeffery K. McKee he has traveled to South Africa twice for research and excavation projects. Field excavation experiences have taken place in Ohio and South Africa. He also has two published cover photos in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 120, No. 4; Vol. 122, No.3) one of which is of the fossil site Taung, a site best known for the 1924 discovery of a child's skull that first indicated that Africa was the continent of human origins. Peer-reviewed, co-authored publications have included topics such as biological conservation, health trends in the western hemisphere, and the philosophy of scientific education. He is currently working on developing, with Dr. Don Batisky from the College of Medicine, a short-term study abroad program in South Africa with an emphasis on health care and medicine. This program will have a service learning component and will expose undergraduate and first year medical students to cultural differences in health care delivery and needs to underserved populations.

Richard A. Gordon is Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Portuguese-language literatures and cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University, and associated faculty of Film Studies and Comparative Studies there. His work intersects with colonial and post-colonial studies, centering on Brazilian and Spanish-American historical cinema and eighteenth-century Luso-Brazilian culture. His book manuscript, ³Cannibalizing the Colony: Cinematic Adaptations of Colonial Literature in Latin America,² is forthcoming with Purdue University Press. He is currently researching late eighteenth-century popular theater in Lisbon, popular medical treatises in eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, and Cuban and Brazilian cinema on slavery. He has held the Mendel Fellowship at the Lilly Library and the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento fellowship at the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa. He has articles in Hispania, MLN, Luso-Brazilian Review, Letras peninsulares, Colonial Latin American Review, and Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; and another is forthcoming in Dieciocho.

Professor Dan Gray and his colleagues in Ohio State’s Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University have entered into a formal exchange program with the Faculty of the Arts at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, R.S.A. Three faculty members from Ohio State have visited Pretoria, where, in the summer of 2006, Dan designed, and OSU Professor Lesley Ferris directed, a production for the TUT Faculty of Theatre. Professor Allan Munro of TUT completed a quarter in residence at Ohio State, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses on various aspects of South African theatre and drama. The department plans to continue faculty exchanges and hopes to initiate student exchanges and tours in the next few years.

Mary Ellen Jenkins, assistant executive dean in the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, received her undergraduate (Political Science, Phi Beta Kappa) and law (J.D.) degrees from The Ohio State University. Prior to assuming the role of assistant executive dean in the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences , she directed the Arts and Sciences Honors Program for six years. She serves as secretary of Ohio State’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, co-advisor to one of the sophomore class honoraries, and a mentor for law students in the Moritz College of Law.

Grace Johnson is director of study abroad in the Office of International Affairs at The Ohio State University. She serves on the Arts and Sciences International Action Advisory Committee and is keenly interested in international initiatives related to the continent of Africa.

Laura Joseph is assistant director in the Center of African Studies, Office of International Affairs. Her experience includes eight years development experience in sub-Saharan Africa, including two and a half years working with HIV/AIDS projects in Uganda through Catholic Relief Services. Her work there encompassed development and management of projects dealing with prevention, extension of treatment through community-based health care workers, and provision of support in the form of medicines and income-generating projects for persons with AIDS. In Uganda she worked with Nsambya and Rubaga Hospitals and Kamwokya community outreach programs in Kampala, as well as Villa Maria Hospital mobile care unit in Masaka. At OSU, the Center for African Studies has promoted awareness of the epidemic in a number of ways, including the compilation of an OSU Institutional Capabilities Study for HIV/AIDS relief in Africa, participation in World AIDS Day events, and presentations for K12 and community groups on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Cathe Chapin Kobacker has been a hospice volunteer for twenty-five years. Her passion for hospice care began with the loss of a friend in a city where hospice care was not yet available. Cathe began her training with Hospice of Columbus and became the first Home-Care volunteer with Hospice of Riverside, now Hospice of Riverside and Grant. In 1994, Cathe traveled to Russia and Poland with a group from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. On this trip, Cathe recognized the importance of improving and expanding training programs for hospice volunteers. Since, she has been a leading proponent of fully incorporating volunteers into hospice teams.

Cathe partnered with the late Catherine Ray and with Gary Gardia as an advocate and educator for hospice volunteers. She was part of the leadership team that partnered with the Ohio Hospice Palliative Care Organization and brought more than 700 people to Columbus, Ohio for a National Volunteer/Volunteer Management conference. She made her first of several trips to sub-Saharan Africa in 2001 to meet with volunteers, nurses, doctors, and patients and exchange ideas on the best ways to support patients and families when facing end-of-life decisions. From these visits, Cathe gained a perspective on the global challenges of caring for millions people suffering from HIV and AIDS. To develop partnerships between hospices in sub-Saharan Africa and in the U.S., Cathe has worked with the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, Cathe led a team of six women to South Africa to study hospice care from a variety of perspectives. A film crew documented their experiences and a documentary film is being produced.

Cathe is a graduate of Bradford College (Haverhill, MA) and took a certificate at the Banff Centre in visual arts and photography. She studied photography with Nathan Lyons at the Visual Studies Workshop. She has been an active community volunteer serving in such roles as: president of Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio, Chair of the YWCA Endowment Board, a founding member of the Women’s Board of Marburn Academy, and an advocate for Heritage Day Health Centers.

David Kraybill is professor of development economics in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics and director of the Center for African Studies. His recent research projects deal with household poverty, governmental decentralization, education, and HIV/AIDS. He teaches two undergraduate Africa-related courses: Economic Development of Sub-Saharan Africa (IS/AED Econ 436) and Food Security and Globalization (IS/AED Econ 434). He also teaches a graduate course with Africa content: Regional Economic Growth: Theory and Methods (AED Econ 840). He directs a short-term OSU study abroad course in Uganda each December. He has lived in Africa a total of five years (Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Uganda), working as a high school teacher, agricultural development worker, government advisor, and university professor. In 2003-04, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Makerere University in Uganda. He speaks Swahili and French.

Barbara Lehman is a professor in the School of Teaching and Learning (in the College of Education and Human Ecology) at The Ohio State Univ ersity, Mansfield campus. She was a Fulbright lecturer/researcher in South Africa from July 2004-June 2005 at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town. She taught children's literature, researched South African children's/youth literature, and served as consultant/advisor for graduate programs and research in the education and science faculties. Her particular research interest is in the relationship of children's literature and national identity in the new South Africa. She has teaching interests in exploring the possibility of setting up a field experience for pre-service teacher education students in South African schools. She has many personal and professional connections in Cape Town.

Trevon Logan, assistant professor of economics at The Ohio State University, received his B.S. degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; M.A. degrees in economics and demography, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California , Berkeley . He is an economist who specializes in economic history, economic demography, and biodemography. He also does work that intersects with health economics, applied econometrics, applied microeconomics and development economics. His research agenda covers three general areas: (1) Historical Living Standards. This includes analysis of nutritional well-being, household allocation of resources, economies of scale in the household, and comparative measures of living standards over time. He is currently branching out to work that looks at childhood health in the past and at various aspects of economic change in the last two centuries. Most of his historical work uses historical household surveys, but also includes some new data to look at topics such as the returns to education in the early twentieth century. (2) Biodemography. In this area Logan is currently looking at the modeling of physiological capital, estimating the rate of transmission of physiological capital (mother to child) in the twentieth century, and looking at the convergence in biomarkers between groups in the last two hundred years. In particular, most of his work in this area looks at longitudinal sources to measure the extent and consequences of human physiological change, with an eye towards projecting future trends in health, mortality and morbidity. To that end, he also is investigating the use of cohort BMI and height in mortality forecasting models. (3) Applied Demography. His largest project in this area looks at the phenomenon of dowries in South Asia with his co-author Raj Arunachalam. So far, they have looked at the different motivations for dowries and have found some evidence for heterogeneity in dowry motives. They also are looking at the issue of dowry inflation and the role that family planning programs have on dowries in this part of the world. In addition, Logan also is returning to work that looks at the role of human capital in the migration of African Americans before World War I. Recently, he has started a project with Stacy Sneeringer that is looking at the impact of HIV/AIDS on fertility timing in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Jeffrey K. McKee, Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State University, earned his Ph.D. at Washington University , St. Louis . From 1986 to 1996 he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg . While in , he led an excavation at the fossil site of Taung, a site best known for the 1924 discovery of a child's skull that first indicated that Africawas the continent of human origins. McKee has also led an excavation at Makapansgat, the oldest hominid-bearing fossil site in , and continued excavating there over the past four years. Recently McKee was part of a team that successfully bid for Taung and Makapansgat to become World Heritage Sites.

Jeri A. Mikosz, M.Ed., M.S., is a family therapist with the Life Transitions Center, Inc., an affiliate of the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care. She is currently the Coordinator of Community Health and Hospice Bereavement Programs. Jeri is an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Department teaching Death and Dying, and in the School of Social Work Continuing Education Program teaching Trauma and Grief and Treatment Modalities. Also an adjunct at Daemen College, she teaches Death, Dying, and Bereavement.

Since 2002, Jeri has made yearly trips to South Africa to work with the hospice systems that provide services to those impacted by the AIDS crisis. The Center for Hospice and Palliative Care has partnered with a small, rural hospice in Middleburg, SA – Good Shepherd Hospice, which provides a large part of the community’s health care. Good Shepherd Hospice (GSH) has adopted St. Boniface Primary School – a school where 68% of the children have tested HIV+. Because of the location of the school and the make-up of the community, there are virtually no funding sources. To ensure that the children have access to quality education and materials, the retirement community of the Sisters of St. Francis in Western New York is in the process of fundraising for them.

Jeffery Morawetz is a graduate student in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. He has been working in Africa since before he began his graduate career. His first opportunity to travel to Africa came shortly after he finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked as a field assistant for four months in Tanzania and Gabon. This trip fulfilled a lifelong dream, and also helped Morawetz refine his ideas for graduate research, focusing on the African flora. Since coming to graduate school he has been back to Africa seven times for research, having worked in Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia, both on his own and as an assistant for his advisor. He also recently attended a conference in Cameroon that was held by a group of scientists who specialize in studies of the flora of tropical Africa. This group, AETFAT, meets every three years, and provides a forum where a diverse group of researches, from Africa and elsewhere, can gather to present our research, discuss ideas, and form collaborative projects. Morawetz is studying the evolutionary history of a group of parasitic plants in Africa related to the snapdragons (the technical name of the plant family is Orobanchaceae, the broomrape family).

Janet Parrott is an assistant professor in the department of Theatre at The Ohio State University. A filmmaker and director, Parrott serves as the director of the film Women’s Work, the project led by Cathe Kobacker. With Cathe and others, she spent three weeks in the summer of 2005 filming in South Africa and has continued to film here in the United States on specific occasions as the project unfolds. She and Cathe continue to develop a narrative that documents the lives of women who are fiercely battling HIV/AIDS in South Africa and the lives of a small group of American women who wanted to learn from and work with them.

Dianne Radigan is the Chief Operating Officer of Children’s Hunger Alliance, a statewide organization focused on ending hunger for Ohio children and assuring all children have access to healthful food in nurturing environments. She is a registered dietitian with a Master’s degree in Nutrition from Michigan State University and more than 20 years experience developing and managing community nutrition programs. Prior to joining Children’s Hunger Alliance, she served as a food and nutrition specialist for the University of Missouri; a private consultant to hospitals, physicians and community wellness programs; director of food service and clinical nutrition for several large geriatric facilities; and as a consultant with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). Radigan has earned many honors in for her commitment to children, including being named a Woman of Achievement by YWCA in 2004 and a Healthy School Hero by Action for Healthy Kids in 2002 and one of 50 Wise Women by Deloitte in 2007. She is a member of the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation Board, the American and Ohio Dietetics Associations and the Rotary, serving on the International Services Committee.

Jacqueline Jones Royster is Executive Dean of Arts and Sciences and Senior Vice Provost, and professor of English, at The Ohio State University. She came to Ohio State in 1992 from Spelman College, the institution that awarded her B.A. degree, and where she had been both assistant dean for freshman studies and associate dean for advising. Her M.A. and D.A. degrees were conferred by the University of Michigan.

Royster has three complementary areas of professional interest: the rhetorical history of women of African descent, the development of literacy, and contexts and processes related to the teaching of writing. She has authored numerous articles and books that illustrate this confluence of concerns. Most recently, she has completed Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003 (Ohio University Press, 2003) in support of the State of Ohio's Bicentennial celebration. In 2004, this publication was awarded first place in both the Ohio Professional Writers Communications Contest (non-fiction book) and the National Federation of Press Women's Communications Contest (in the same category).

In addition to her teaching, administrative, and scholarly activities, Royster is active in a number of professional organizations and has filled a variety of roles on committees, task forces, and commissions. She currently serves on the Writing Advisory Board of the College Board's National Writing Commission. Such leadership roles are evident on the Ohio State campus as well. From 2001-2003, she was the inaugural chair of the President's Council on Women's Issues, and she has served on numerous departmental, college, and university committees.

Among the honors and awards that she has received are the Ohio Pioneer in Education (for higher education) by the State of Ohio Department of Education (2000); Braddock Award (2000) from the Conference on College Composition and Communication's for the best article in its journal, College Composition and Communication; Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize (2001) from the Modern Language Association's in recognition of her book Traces of a Stream; University Distinguished Diversity Award (2002) from Ohio State; University Distinguished Lecturer (2003) from Ohio State; Exemplar Award (2004) from the Conference on College Composition and Communication; and a YWCA Woman of Achievement Award (2004) for the City of Columbus.

Royster has spent all of her career as a scholar in the history of rhetoric studying the rhetorical practices of women of African descent (and particularly African American women) as they have participated actively in various discourse arenas and engaged passionately in social change. Her recent work has included looking at the participation of African American women in health discourses, especially as HIV/AIDS has become an increasingly devastating issue for this group. In 2005, she joined the Kobacker project to engage in dialogue with South African health activists and returned to the OSU campus with the desire to organize this working conference in order to determine what might be more systematically done to bring the expertise and experience of scholars and researchers across the campus to bear in meaningful collaborations of various kinds with leaders in the southern/South Africa region. After her return from this trip, she began the process of forming the Africa Network at Ohio State.

Richard Sayre, professor of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology at The Ohio State University, is the Director of the BioCassava Plus Program (http://biocassavaplus.org/). BioCassava Plus is a multi-national development project involving ten institutions. It is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The objectives of BioCassava Plus are to engineer nutritionally enhanced cassava for sub-Saharan Africans. The targeted traits include increased iron, zinc, protein, vitamin A, and vitamin E. In addition, the team is developing plants with enhanced virus resistance, reduced cyanogen levels, and increased shelf life. The Phase I (2005-2010) target countries are and . It is anticipated that improved varieties of cassava will be field tested beginning in 2008. These studies will be carried out by African scientists at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture and the National Root Crops Research Institute in , and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Nairobi . Sayre’s research specifically focuses on reducing cyanogen levels, increasing iron and protein content, and extending shelf life. Currently, scientists from and are working on the BioCassava Plus project in Sayre’s lab. The Sayre lab is also conducting research on increasing starch production in cassava roots. Sayre has joint appointments in the Departments of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Chemistry.

Mark Shanda is professor and chair of the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University. He and his colleagues have entered into a formal exchange program with the Faculty of the Arts at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, R.S.A. Three faculty members from Ohio State have visited Pretoria, where, in the summer of 2006, OSU Professor Lesley Ferris directed, and OSU Professor Dan Gray designed, a production for the TUT Faculty of Theatre. Professor Allan Munro of TUT completed a quarter in residence at Ohio State, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses on various aspects of South African theatre and drama. The department plans to continue faculty exchanges and hopes to initiate student exchanges and tours in the next few years.

R. Brian Stone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design in the College of the Arts at The Ohio State University. His work has garnered numerous awards for design excellence, usability, and user satisfaction. Professor Stone’s research is concerned with the creation of screen-based forms that enable interaction. These forms are manifested into products such as web sites, interactive CD-ROMs, multimedia presentations, and kinetic typographic messages. He is the author of several articles on the subject and has presented his research at several international venues. Of recent concern is the advancement of telecommunication, wireless technologies, and the Internet with respect to accessibility. These technologies offer many modes of empowerment for those with varying degrees of disability. We are already seeing the application of mobile phone text messaging for the hearing impaired, text to speech technology for the visually impaired, and broad access to products and spaces that assisted those with physical impairments via the Internet. Through research and collaboration with our colleagues in Kenya and the interdisciplinary team at OSU, the potential for delivering more appropriate, useful, and cost effective solutions to our disabled constituents can be realized.

Mary Tarantino is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University. In 2004, she traveled to Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa, to deliver a bilateral exchange agreement between Ohio State’s College of the Arts and Tshwane University of Technology to develop student and faculty exchange opportunities.

Darrell Ward, a medical and science writer at The Ohio State University Medical Center, earned his Masters degree in zoology. He writes mainly about the work of OSU cancer researchers and clinicians for the Medical Center’s Department. of Communications. In the mid-1990s (and outside of his OSU work), he wrote a book to help people understand the science of HIV disease and AIDS. Mathilde Krim, PhD, co-founder of The American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), assisted in the writing of the book, which was published in late 1998 as The AmFAR AIDS Handbook: the complete guide to understanding HIV and AIDS (W.W. Norton). This work led to a Fulbright grant that allowed Ward to spend six months in Botswana, Swaziland and Zimbabwe working with Africans who were fighting the AIDS epidemic. In Zimbabwe, he spent several weeks at St. Albert’s Mission Hospital witnessing the work of its Zimbabwean director, Elizabeth Tarira, MD, MPH, and the two women doctors who assist her. He greatly admires their dedication and courage as they struggle to provide care in a poor, rural area of the country despite wretched and worsening economic, political and social conditions. Thus, he gives talks to university and civic groups about St. Albert’s Mission Hospital, and he and his wife maintain a web site about the hospital. He last visited Dr. Tarira in February 2006 and also has returned to Africa several times to participate in HIV workshops for reporters and NGOs in Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa.

Andrea Wolfe is an associate professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. Her research relates to the biodiversity issues of South Africa. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot with more than 10% of all flowering plants on the planet contained in only 1% of the landmass of earth. The unique flora of the Western Cape province has been designated as a Floral Kingdom. The people of South Africa value the diversity of plant species to such an extent that a tourist season is scheduled for the spring flowering season. Visitors from around the world travel to nature reserves and wilderness areas to photograph and experience the profusion and diversity of plants in bloom. Economic pressures for land development compete with the economic pressures for preservation and ecotourism. The existing system of nature reserves, national parks, wilderness areas, and biosphere reserves offer a buffer for biodiversity preservation.

Alan Woods directs the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, and is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University. His research areas include popular culture and the creation and reification of stereotypes; he is also teaches in the area of censorship. He is active in archiving new works for the theatre, and ­the TRI now includes over 500 manuscripts of new plays. His own short plays have been produced in and the . Instrumental in arranging an exchange agreement between the Tshwani University of Technology in Pretoria and OSU’s Department of Theatre, Woods has visited in recent years to participate in meetings of the Shakespeare Society of South Africa, attend the Grahamstown Festival, and negotiate the beginnings of the exchange program. Contacts: 292-6614; woods.1@osu.edu

Mindy Wright received her B.A. in English and mathematics from Wittenberg University, her M.A. in English from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in English, Composition Studies from The Ohio State University in 1996. She has taught in the Department of English since 1977, connecting student coursework and faculty research with the public schools and with local nonprofit organizations. Wright is Director of Community Partnerships in the Office of the Executive Dean, Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, at The Ohio State University. In that role, she works with faculty, staff, and students to develop and sustain projects and relationships with local and global communities. She is involved in several projects that have connections with work in Africa : (1) A university-wide committee developing a proposal for an international service-learning program at Ohio State; (2) 2007 U.S. Language Summits: Ohio ’s Roadmap to Language Excellence; (3) A partnership with Community Refugee and Immigrant Services to train and place student interns and to sponsor a community-service event in conjunction with the autumn 2007 Arts and Sciences Buckeye Book events (What is the What).