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Searching for a Better Understanding of Mentally-Disordered Perpetrators of Violent Crime |
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McCormack Institute Forms New Partnership in Senegal |
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Two New Computer Labs in McCormack Hall: Students Networked for Success |
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The McCormack Institute has launched a partnership with the Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis in Senegal thanks to a two-year, $100,000 grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This marks the first time USAID has awarded a grant to UMass Boston. This highly competitive grant will allow the University to strengthen Gaston Berger's capacity to offer instruction and conduct research in political science, the needs of local government, and business law, as well as promote economic development in the surrounding communities.
Three representatives of UMass Boston recently went on a ten-day assessment trip to Gaston Berger. They were Professor Edmund Beard, director of the McCormack Institute and the principal investigator for the project; Professor Jemadari Kamara, chair of the Africana Studies Department; and Margery O'Donnell, administrator for the Center for Democracy and Development of the McCormack Institute. While there they met with Babacar Kante, director of the Unité de Formation et de Recherche de Sciences Juridiques et Politiques, who is Beard's counterpart at Gaston Berger.
This partnership will present Gaston Berger with an American educational model to compare with the French model that they are presently using. To accomplish the goals of the grant, there will be faculty exchanges, workshops and site visits, networking and outreach programs, and fund-raising with the goal of eventually creating an African-based public policy research center. Though the project was proposed by the McCormack Institute, it does not exclude participation by the rest of the University.
That was made quite clear during the assessment trip by the video conferencing technology that was transmitted from UMass Boston by John Jessoe of the Distance Learning Center. The technology will soon link UMass Boston with Gaston Berger. This new capability will allow students and faculty to interact with counterparts in Africa as never before.
O'Donnell acknowledges that the McCormack Institute has a "deep commitment to Africa" and has other initiatives in Mali and Cameroon. These other connections in Africa bring their own reward. O'Donnell asserts that "each time we set foot in Africa we generate and develop new initiatives that are subsequently funded by outside agencies."