Public Health Mentor: Collaboration with the University of Ghana-Legon

This spectacular trip was sparked by the DePaul University Global Learning Experience (GLE). I have been a Teaching, Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences Department for nearly 4 years. Many of you know that teaching was not a part of my career plans...but I absolutely love it! I spent so many years acquiring public health knowledge that after graduating I felt a call to share all this knowledge. Even as I have morphed from a junior faculty member to feeling like a more seasoned one, I sm still excited to still find innovative ways to teach.

The Global Learning Experience is just the beginning of integrating a global teaching perspective into our Health Sciences Department. I am collaborating with Dr. Richmond Aryeetey at the School of Public Health, University of Ghana-Legon (UGH) for a bit of a study abroad without traveling abroad! Briefly, I will teach my students at DePaul and Dr. Aryeetey will teach his students at UGH. The students will exchange conversations, presentations, and critiques around discrete assignments related to maternal and child health issues and nutrition. They are all undergraduate students so we fully expect that they will chat, text, and Skype each other outside of the assignments. While we have formal learning objectives, our main learning objective is for the students to become engaged with other students from across the globe. DePaul is working very hard to ensure our students graduate with global exposure and this is the first step for our Health Sciences Department. UGH is equally eager to engage our students so we expect this to be the first of many iterations of the DePaul-UGH GLE. This collaboration would not be possible without the generous funding and support from the Global Learning Experience.

I have been meeting with Dr. Aryeetey and we are putting the final touches on our course details which will take place in the Spring Quarter. Nothing beats meeting face-to-face and it has been an honor to represent DePaul in Ghana. The students at UGH are taking their final exams this week so every student I encountered was courteous but clearly focused on studying! Enjoy some pictures from campus:

University of Ghana, School of Public Health