Selected teams announced for the COIL Faculty Fellows Program — Africa

Michigan State University’s Global Youth Advancement Network, Alliance for African Partnership and Office for Education Abroad are pleased to announce the selected teams for the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Faculty Fellows Program — Africa. Sponsored by AAP, this program is an opportunity for higher-ed teaching faculty (i.e., faculty or academic staff with teaching appointments) from any discipline to explore the theory and practice of COIL through global partnerships connecting AAP Consortium institutions.

Almost 30 highly esteemed teaching faculty expressed interest in partaking in this fellowship program, and the selection committee was so impressed by the quality of all the team applications received that seven teams were selected, rather than six teams, as initially planned.

Through COIL projects scheduled to run in 2024, MSU fellows representing the Broad College of Business, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, College of Arts and Letters, College of Natural Science, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Lyman Briggs College will collaborate with African fellows from Egerton University (Kenya), Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Malawi), Makerere University (Uganda) and the University of Nigeria Nsukka (Nigeria).

Among the selected teams, two Broad College faculty members have been chosen as fellows to participate in the program: Antoinette Tessmer, fixed-term faculty of finance, and Raymond Pirouz, fixed-term faculty of marketing. By making global learning accessible to their students and actively engaging in intercultural exchanges, Tessmer and Pirouz will help advance internationalization plans and strengthen ties between the Broad College and the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

Tessmer will partner with Nkadi Onyegegbu, professor in UNN’s Department of Science Education, to provide an opportunity for their students to discuss global issues affecting their lives and environments (such as waste management and waste recycling) and learn how to enact positive change in their own local communities.

Earlier this year, Tessmer was trained in COIL methods and applications. After partnering with faculty from Setsunan University in Osaka, Japan, she was able to bring these learnings into her existing sustainable finance course, which she’s taught for many years. It was such a positive experience for her and her students that Tessmer is now leading a faculty learning community on COIL to encourage and inform her peers in the MSU teaching community about the benefits of this approach.

Pirouz will work with Felix Uzochukwu Asoiro, lecturer in UNN’s Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering, to bring students together to learn and apply “SPIN selling,” a practical and useful professional sales technique in the food value chain leading to the enhancement of food safety and food quality control.

For more information on the COIL teams and projects, view the official announcement at globalyouth.isp.msu.edu, and stay tuned — a second call for fellows will open in the near future.