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University of Missouri South Africa Program Update

A Report from the University of Missouri South African Education Program Committee 91���Ѽ-Columbia 91���Ѽ-Kansas City 91���Ѽ-Rolla 91���Ѽ-St. Louis

December 2005

91���Ѽ South African Education Program Committee: Dr. Joel Glassman, Chair, 91���ѼSL; Dr. Robert Laudon, 91���ѼR; Dr. Jim McCartney, 91���ѼC; Dr. Judith McCormick, 91���ѼKC; Mr. Michael Middleton, 91���ѼC; Dr. Minion KC Morrison, 91���ѼC; Dr. Lois Pierce, 91���ѼSL; Ms. Jeanie Hofer, 91���ѼR; Dr. Nicholas Peroff, 91���ѼKC; Dr. Dan Stoll, 91���ѼKC; Dr. Gwen Turner, 91���ѼSL; Dr. Ralph Wilkerson, 91���ѼR; Professor Rodney Uphoff, 91���Ѽ/91���ѼC

2006 91���Ѽ/UWC Linkage Awards

The 91���ѼSAEP Committee met with Professor Jan Persens, UWC Director of International Programs, on November 22, 2005, in St. Louis to select faculty exchange participants for 2006. The Committee authorized awards to three UWC faculty members and five 91���Ѽ faculty members.

UWC faculty receiving 91���ѼSAEP awards (91���Ѽ hosts in parentheses): Heike Becker – Sociology (Shannon Jackson, 91���ѼKC)

Hester Julie – Nursing (Donna Taliaferro, 91���ѼSL)

Anita Maurtin-Cairncross – Leadership Development (Lora Lacey-Haun, 91���ѼKC)

91���Ѽ faculty receiving 91���ѼSAEP awards (UWC hosts in parentheses): Marjorie Fonza, 91���ѼKC – Nursing (Thembisile Khanyile)

William Lamberson, 91���ѼC – Animal Sciences (David Fisher) KC Morrison, 91���ѼC – Political Science (Keith Gottschalk) Nancy Shields, 91���ѼSL – Sociology (Kathy Nadasen)

Bart Wechsler, 91���ѼC – Public Affairs (John Bardill)

Projects Chosen for 2006 Partnerships Program Funding by 91���ѼSAEP

The 91���ѼSAEP Committee approved funding for the following partnerships projects for 2006:

Suzanne Pereira & Marjorie Sable (91���ѼC), to host a symposium featuring Dr. Mitchell Besser, Director of Cape Town’s Mothers Programmes, and Leszek Vincent (91���ѼC), Division of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources, to conduct research on Artemisia afra with colleagues at UWC and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

91���ѼSAEP Director

On April 21, 2005, President Elson S. Floyd named Professor Rodney Uphoff, the Elwood Thomas Missouri Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, to the position of Director of the University of Missouri South

African Education Program. Dr. Joel Glassman, Chair of the 91���ѼSAEP Committee and Associate Provost at 91���Ѽ-St. Louis, served as Interim Director until July 1, 2005. Dr.

Glassman played a critical role in guiding the program following the retirement of Executive Vice President Dr. Ron Turner.

ALO Project

In May 2004, 91���Ѽ received a two-year grant of $100,000 from the Association Liaison Office in Washington, D.C. under an agreement with USAID to develop an academic leadership program at UWC and to link 91���Ѽ faculty with UWC faculty in curriculum and staff development in nursing. Jan Persens has served as project director at UWC while Ron Turner, Joel Glassman and Rodney Uphoff have each served in that capacity for 91���Ѽ. In February 2005, following considerable planning, 14 UWC professors participated in a highly successful leadership workshop. That workshop was planned and implemented by Dr. Anita Maurtin-Cairncross of UWC and Dr. Lora Lacey-Haun of 91���Ѽ-Kansas City and facilitated by Dr. Rob Williams of The Fanning Institute for Leadership in Atlanta, Georgia. The UWC participants have continued to hold monthly meetings over the course of 2005. Additionally, a peer mentoring project was created as an outgrowth of this leadership project.

On the nursing side of the ALO project, a series of fruitful exchanges by faculty from both schools have led to research collaboration, the development of a Master of Nursing Education Program, and the identification of curricular strategies that may strengthen UWC’s nursing program. This year, Dr. Kay Libbus and Dr. Richard Madsen of 91���Ѽ-Columbia traveled to UWC while Drs.Thembisile Khanyile, Cheryl Nikodem and Nomafrench Mbombo visited the Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis campuses.

The project will draw to a close in the spring of 2006.

TICIPS

In September, 2005, the University of Missouri in partnership with University of the Western Cape received a $4.4 million NCCAM grant to study African plants for medicinal properties.

Described as a hotspot of botanical diversity, there are more than 20,000 indigenous plant species in South Africa. Several thousand of them are used by traditional healers every day in that country for treating a range of problems from the common cold to serious diseases such as AIDS. How safe and effective these treatments are will be the focus of The International Center for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies (TICIPS), a collaborative research effort between the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. The center will be funded by a $4.4 million, 4-year grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicines (NCCAM), a division of the National Institutes of Health.

“The American and South African citizens have strong interests in complementary and alternative medicine practices, but little is known of their safety and effectiveness,” said Bill Folk, senior associate dean for research in the School of Medicine, principal investigator of the grant and co-director of TICIPS.

Folk and U.S. research teams from MU, University of Missouri-Kansas City (91���ѼKC), Missouri Botanical Garden, University of Texas and Georgetown University will partner with Quinton Johnson, director of the South African Herbal Science and Medicine Institute and co-director of TICIPS at the University of the Western Cape, University of Cape Town, University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZ-N) in South Africa, and South African traditional healers. Together, they will study the medicinal properties, safety and effectiveness of several African plants in use today by traditional healers. South Africa is home to more than 200,000 traditional healers who care for more than 27 million people.

“TICIPS is especially significant, since it presents the very first opportunity for medical doctors, scientists and traditional healers to internationally cooperate as equal partners in exploring indigenous African phytotherapies for AIDS, secondary infection and immune modulation,” Johnson said. “Furthermore, TICIPS creates a unique bridge between Western and African medicine systems, with the aim of bringing hope, health and healing to all.”

The Center’s first projects will examine two plants used widely in South Africa. One of those projects, led by Kathy Goggin of 91���ѼKC and Doug Wilson of UKZ-N, will investigate whether Sutherlandia, or Lessertia frutescens, is safe in HIV-infected patients and prevents wasting. A previous, small pilot study by TICIPS researchers studied the safety of Sutherlandia in healthy adults. This was the first study of its kind, according to Folk.

Other projects will focus on Artemisia afra, which is widely used to treat respiratory infections. There is suggestive evidence that A. Afra might be useful in treating tuberculosis, which will be explored by TICIPS researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston and the University of Cape Town. Another project will examine the plant’s potential for preventing or treating cervical cancer. TICIPS researchers from Mizzou, Georgetown University, UKZ-N and the University of the Western Cape will collaborate on the project.

“A real strength of TICIPS comes from the contributions of colleagues outside of the life sciences. Communication is a strong component in order to let the public know what we find,” Folk said. “Working with the MU School of Journalism and colleagues at the University of the Western Cape will ensure that our findings about the safety of these plants are distributed among the public, and only in South Africa, but throughout the world. Also, we enjoy a very strong partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of the world’s outstanding botanical centers. Nature has thousands of secrets that we have yet to discover. This is a big first step in uncovering some of those secrets and seeing how we can better understand these alternative medicines.”

MU and UWC Offer Summer School at UWC

The MU School of Law once again joined with the UWC School of Law to offer a comparative law program for 91���Ѽ and UWC students in Cape Town in June and July 2005. The program, directed by UWC Professor Pierre de Vos and MU Professor Rodney Uphoff, enrolled 18 students from the U.S. who joined South African students in taking courses in comparative constitutional law, criminal justice and alternative dispute resolution. Given the success of the program, Professor Uphoff expects that this program will be offered each year.

FAPRI

MU’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) received a partnership grant in 2005 to continue working with faculty members at the University of Pretoria, a collaboration which was initiated in 2002 with an earlier 91���ѼSAEP grant. FAPRI has worked with faculty at Pretoria to create modeling capacity that allows the South Africans to provide projections in the agricultural and food sectors. In 2005, Peter Zimmel and Brent Carpenter of FAPRI-University of Missouri traveled to rural areas in the Northwest Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces. Ferdinand Meyer of University of Pretoria traveled to Missouri to continue working on their modeling projects.

Community Violence Project

The Department of Sociology and the School of Social Work at 91���Ѽ-St. Louis are collaborating with the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at UWC on a research project to investigate the relationship between exposure to community violence and behavioral and psychological symptoms. Drs. Nancy Shields and Lois Pierce of 91���Ѽ-St. Louis and Kathy Nadasen and Sharyn Spicer of UWC will be interviewing approximately 250 students from St. Louis and 250 students in Cape Town. In May 2005, UWC’s Kathy Nadasen visited 91���Ѽ-St. Louis to work on refining the research design and to pretest the instruments that will be used in the project.

Leadership Academy

Since 2000, the 91���ѼSAEP Committee has supported exchanges to develop and create a leadership academy in South Africa to provide South African school administrators badly needed professional development. Working with former UWC Dean, Dr. Harold Herman, who participated in the Missouri Satellite Leadership Academy, 91���Ѽ-St. Louis faculty members Dr. Carole Murphy and Dr. Carl Hoagland traveled to South Africa in April 2005, to put together several grants to support the funding for this leadership academy. In June 2005, the 91���Ѽ-St Louis team learned that the Shuttleworth Foundation committed to funding the project and the team is hopeful that additional grants will be secured. Robin Bates, who has also participated in the Missouri Satellite Leadership Academy, has been selected to serve as the director of the South African academy.

I Walk With Ndebele Exhibition

Dr. Adrienne Walker Hoard of the 91���ѼC Fine Arts Department has spent a decade of field research observing and documenting the Ndzundza Ndebele women artists in Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces in South Africa.

Funded in part by a 91���ѼSAEP grant, Dr. Hoard arranged for eight women artists to have access to art supplies. The art they created was subsequently exhibited from May to July 2005 at the Pretoria Art Museum. This exhibition represented the first international art exhibition comprised solely of living indigenous women artists and the largest exhibition ever of Ndebele contemporary art. Seven thousand visitors attended the exhibit which was enthusiastically reviewed on television and in print across South Africa.

91���Ѽ and UWC Visitors in 2005

2005 91���Ѽ visitors to South Africa included: Rodney Uphoff & 18 students, Law, 91���ѼC; Carole Murphy, Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, 91���ѼSL; Marjorie Sable, Social Work, 91���ѼC; John Henschke, Adult & Continuing Ed, Lifelong Learning, 91���ѼSL; Donna Taliaferro & Roberta K. Lee, Nursing, 91���ѼSL; Richard Madsen, Statistics, 91���ѼC;

Stephen Lehmkuhle, Administration, 91���Ѽ/91���ѼKC; Vicki Curby, McNair Scholars Program, 91���ѼC; Adrienne Hoard, Art, 91���ѼC; Charles Korr, History, 91���ѼSL; Ganesh Venayagamoorthy, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 91���ѼR; Peter Zimmel and Brent Carpenter, Agriculture, 91���ѼC; Kay Libbus, Nursing, 91���ѼC; Joshua Millspaugh, Wildlife Conservation, 91���ѼC; Lora-Lacey Haun, Nursing, 91���ѼKC; Tanya Whitehead, ALO Project Evaluator, 91���ѼKC; Cheryl Phelps, Graduate Student, 91���ѼKC.

2005 UWC visitors to Missouri included: Jan Persens, International Relations; Robin C. Botes, Graduate Student; Craig Bosch, Law; Kathy Nadasen, Sociology; Thandi Puoane, Social Work; David Fisher, Medical Biosciences; Charlene Africa, Medical Biosciences; Thembisile Khanyile, Nursing; Cheryl Nikodem, Nursing; Nomafrench Mbombo, Nursing.

91���Ѽ Faculty Proposals for 2007 Projects

In February 2006, the 91���ѼSAEP Committee and the UWC Senate International Relations Committee will release the request for proposals for exchange projects for calendar 2007.

91���Ѽ/UWC Faculty Exchange Summary Update

91���Ѽ Visits 175

UWC Visits 203

Grand Total 378

91���Ѽ South African Partnerships Program Participants, 1997-2005

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Total

3 4 6 9 1 0 7 3 5 38

Henry Mitchell Scholars

UWC graduate student Gabila Fohtung has been selected as a 2005-2006 Henry Mitchell Scholar. Gabila spent the fall semester at 91���ѼC studying economics. He is UWC’s 9th Mitchell Scholar.

20th Year Celebration

On August 29, 2006, UWC and 91���Ѽ will celebrate the 20th year of their partnership at the UWC campus in Bellville, South Africa. We are still planning the event and would encourage you to watch for announcements regarding the celebration.