Cox Center Receives Grant from ALO For Project with Unity College in Ethiopia
The Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO) has awarded the James L. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research $97,800 for a two- year project to assist Unity College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in expanding its journalism curriculum.
The Cox Center will help Unity strengthen and expand its journalism curriculum, develop a presence on the Internet, and gain expertise in a variety of curricular areas.
Cox Center Director Dr. Lee B. Becker will visit Unity College in both years of the project and supervise it throughout. He will be assisted by Dr. Elizabeth Lester Roushanzamir, a professor in the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, in which the Cox Center is a unit.
Dr. Melinda Robins, professor at Emerson College and former Cox Center research assistant, also will collaborate on the project.
Drs. Becker and Roushanzamir visited Unity College in Ethiopia in 2000 to lead a Cox Center workshop on how to teach journalism and to assist in curricular development.
Unity, the first private college in Ethiopia, began offering journalism courses in the spring of 2000. The college began as a language school in 1992 and officially became a college in 1998. Approximately 8,000 students now are attending classes at the College on four different campuses, three in the Ethiopian capital and one in the city of Nazareth.
The journalism program began as a two-year curriculum and represents the first private, independent journalism education initiative in the country.
"It is particularly meaningful to the Cox Center mission and to me as an educator to be granted resources to follow up the work we began in that Workshop," said Dr. Becker.
Dr. Becker and Dr. Roushanzamir will visit Ethiopia in late 2001 to meet with Unity College administrators and faculty to outline the two-year development program and its specific activities.
Dr. Roushanzamir will return in May, 2002, with Dr. Melinda Robins, to teach classes and continue working with faculty on curriculum and development of a web site for the journalism program.
A representative of Unity College will visit the United States in 2002 and 2003 to participate in meetings and observe operations at selected colleges of journalism.
Dr. Becker and Dr. Roushanzamir will visit Unity College in late 2002 to evaluate results to date and complete planning through the conclusion of the project.
Drs. Roushanzamir and Robins will teach additional classes at Unity College in May, 2003, and then participate with Dr. Becker in evaluating the full project and presenting a final report to the Association Liaison Office at their annual meeting in August, 2003.
The full cost of the project is $164,000. The Association Liaison Office, which is sponsored by six national university and college associations, is awarded limited funding each year by the United States Aid to International Development program in order to establish global partnerships between United States institutions of higher learning and similar institutions in developing countries.
