EAAU:
A New University for Ethiopia
June 15, 2004
The Ethiopian African
American University (EAAU) is one major historical
event and a bright spotlight for the future of
Ethiopia and Africa as a whole. The university
will play a major role in the development of
higher education in Ethiopia once it formally
began its operations on the ground and ushers its
unlimited potential to meet the cognitive and
affective domains in education and in all
development related areas. EAAU was conceived at
California State University, Stanislaus in 1998
and its unique name reflects that this higher
institution of learning will be located in
Ethiopia, serve the continent of Africa and is
modeled after American university systems.
44 colleges and universities have already
endorsed the University across the board in the
United States. It is an autonomous public private
partnership in higher institution of learning that
is aimed at fully developing a synergy of a
private world class hospital, adapted education,
practical training, and research and development
(R&D). EAAU will be run and administered by
highly qualified educators and professionals and
will function under a chancellor (accountable to
Board of Regents) with at least six vice
chancellors: Academic affairs, applied research
and development, governmental affairs and
international liaison, student affairs, business
and facilities, and university development.
The organizational design
of the university also includes regents, the grand
patron, honorary chairperson, honorary founders,
executive management team, and under the latter
there are several teams including fundraising,
auditors and treasures, faculties, legal guidance
and institutes, facilities and construction; the
fundraising team, in turn, will accommodate a
marketing group and development leaders; the
faculties team will constitute college deans,
department chairs, and heads of schools; and the
research centers and institutes team will be
served by center and institute directors.
Dr. David Blankinship of California State
University at Stanislaus had the following to say
about the EAAU: “The Ethiopian-African American
University is a quest, it is a passion, and it is
a life calling. Ethiopia is an ancient land and
it has a profound significance for all of us. The
mounting scientific evidence suggests that East
Africa is the cradle of humanity; it is where we
all began---it is Eden. Genetic analysis suggests
we all share a common family tree and roots that
trace back through our parents, and their parents,
and their parent’s parents back through 150,000
years to East Africa, where our most ancient
grandmother lived; probably in Ethiopia’s Great
Rift Valley. What we do, we do in honor of our
most ancient grandmother. It is our sacred
obligation to all of her children in Ethiopia, in
Africa, and in the world. Ethiopia is the key to
Africa; our thoughtful help responding to their
compelling invitation, will accelerate this
ancient country’s recovery and we will have made
the world a better place.”
The Institute of Development and Education
for Africa (IDEA), following the fruitful
conversation with Dr. Donald Johnson, managing
director of the EAAU, fully endorses the mission
and objectives of the University and will
cooperate in the making of this historic
institution.
By way of dialogue and meaningful discourse
with the EAAU, on top of the mission and
organization of the university, IDEA wishes to
propose a general guideline in educational
parameters that the EAAU must incorporate into the
corpus of its educational policy.
EAAU should seriously consider the
implementation of indigenous knowledge systems
(IKS) in an attempt to revive (hence, renaissance)
a comprehensive and holistic knowledge base, which
in turn is an integral part of culture. EAAU’s
respective departments must consciously employ IKS
to rewrite African history and re-discover its
civilizations. In effect, the university will have
an opportunity to engage in paradigm shift that
elegantly integrates policy, development, and
action. Beyond the nexus of practical training,
adapted education, and applied R & D, the
university must promote a dialogical strategy, not
only for employing the epistemological (epistemic
cognition) dimension of education, but also for
developing an educational policy that effectively
concatenates policy, academia, and the larger
society. Ultimately, this means the university
will have created a bridge between grounding
theory and methodology and enabled Ethiopians and
Africans to have their own development visions.
The ‘practical training’ motto of the
EAAU must necessarily translate itself into
‘entrepreneurship education’ to further
enhance the developmental potential of Africans
and enable respective African nations to compete
in the increasingly complex globalized world. The
entrepreneurship paradigm, however, must not be
perceived in its narrow (business relations)
dimension; it should be catalytic to a
knowledge-based economy in higher education, a
link between highly skilled educated people and
economic development. This, of course, should not
simply resonate the old theory of ‘human
capital’ where an elite is produced vis-à-vis
an illiterate population. On the contrary, its
mission should be to transform society and meet
the pressing needs of the population, and also
paving a way toward a prosperous larger society.
Above all, since EAAU is an educational
institution aimed at fostering quality higher
education, and not an NGO focused on relief
projects, its policy formulation should be
grounded on the philosophy of education. In its
micro sense, educational philosophy looks more
specifically at questioning the essentials of
effective teaching; in its macro sense, it
encompasses at least four component parts: 1)
perception of students; 2) beliefs about teaching
and learning; 3) an understanding of knowledge; 4)
determining what is worth knowing.
On top of the above four parts, EAAU’s
educational philosophy must revolve around
‘social reconstructionism,’ a belief that
society must make significant changes in how it
operates, and that higher institutions of learning
are one of the best agents for carefully planned
transformation. Under the social reconstruction
perspective, the ‘perception of students’ is
that they are the hope for future development and
change and are capable of doing so if given
necessary knowledge and skills; ‘beliefs about
teaching and learning’ entails exemplary
teachers who lead by modeling democratic values in
social change; ‘understanding of knowledge’ is
simply informatics with a directive of positive
change; ‘what is worth knowing’ incorporates
life skills necessary for serving as successful
change agents are sought.
‘Change’ is the key word in the
‘social reconstructionism’ philosophy of
education, and IDEA truly believes that the EAAU
could serve as agent of change and social
transformation with intention to infuse into the
curriculum democratic ideals of social justice,
equity, and capacity building.
IDEA calls upon all Diaspora Ethiopians and
other Africans to extend their support and provide
their expertise input to EAAU in any way they can.
Questions, feedback, and criticism are most
welcome.
Copyright © IDEA, Inc. 2004
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