October 29, 2020
English Language Program awarded FHI 360 grant
Submitted by Office Of International Programs
This year, the English Language Program has been awarded a grant from FHI 360, a nonprofit human development organization that serves more than 70 countries and all U.S. states and territories.
The grant is for developing and then teaching two online courses that will improve the ability of African Union civil servants and officials in Ethiopia to use English professionally while building mutual understanding between people of the U.S. and other countries. The first course is called English for Public Policy and the second is called Keys to Diplomatic Writing.
The team involved in developing the courses includes:
- Project coordinators: Leena Chakrabarti, associate director of student services, and Ketty Reppert, associate director of academics.
- Content developers: Andrea Law, Virginia Brunner-Livingston, Jolene McConnell, Svetla Ben-Itzhak, Mary Wood and Agnes Chikan.
- Tech team: Rebecca Everley, Virginia Brunner-Livingston, Aziah McNamara, Shalin Hai-Jew — consultant.
The team has completed the first course and is currently developing the second course. Teaching is slated to begin in February 2021 and end in May 2021.
All course components are open educational resources and will be available free to anyone. The African Union will continue to use the course materials in other virtual and face-to-face offerings of both courses.
Special thanks go out to Nancy Muturi and Samuel Mwangi from the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and Grant Chapman, associate provost for international programs, for their contributions; and Timothy Dalton and Jagger Harvey from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet for sharing their expertise and knowledge.