SEAS goes global - in Ghana

The national flag of Ghana may be red, yellow and green, but students and faculty at Penn Engineering are working to give the African nation a healthy dose of the red and the blue.

Through a partnership with the nation's main science and technology university and a variety of service projects and programs, SEAS has made Ghana a primary focus of its global outreach efforts - efforts they hope will provide benefits to both Penn and the African nation. Officials at the school hail it as both stable and open to engineering opportunities.

Penn's relationship with Ghana is one based on the University's numerous longstanding ties to the nation, including with the chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Sciences and Technologies, the nation's second public university and the largest devoted entirely to science and technology. The Engineering School is unique for the large number of projects it hopes to enact there.

Most notably on their list has been helping improve the engineering education available at KNUST.

"It's a quality institution," explained Sampath Kannan, who headed a recent Penn delegation on a trip to Ghana to assess needs and build relationships with the school.

According to Kannan, though, the university needs help implementing a bio-engineering department and training computer science faculty, something Penn hopes to alleviate through a series of faculty exchanges and teaching courses at the school.

"Going there motivated us to make this happen," Kannan explained, adding that Penn expects to begin full summer work with the faculty there by the summer of 2009.

According to Joseph Sun, director of Academic Affairs at the Engineering School, the partnership with the university in Ghana will also afford Penn the opportunity to send many students to study abroad there both during the year and over the summer.

Penn Engineering already has more immediate plans to hold a two-week service project in Ghana this summer, an effort organized by the CommuniTech Learning Club.

The group hopes to work to provide technical assistance to schools there and to rescue girls from an inhumane form of slavery common in the nation's Upper Volta region, Sun said.

And recent graduates are taking independent efforts to establish a presence in the region.

Jareau Wade, a 2007 Engineering graduate, heads a school of technology in Ghana run by the Norwegian information services company he works for and has "plowed resources" into getting the school up and running to train start-up software producers.

Such projects are important, Kannan said, because they allow Penn to spread its brand name and to foster relationships in up-and-coming nations like Ghana.

"We're enthusiastic about working there. If we do something concrete, it seems like they will ease our path for us," Kannan said.

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