Rutgers to Take Part in $18.5M Effort to Improve Liberian Infrastructure and Education

Rutgers University will help the nation of Liberia rebuild after more than a decade of civil wars by working with the country’s top schools to educate engineers and agricultural scientists, Rutgers President Richard. L. McCormick announced today.

“This initiative is going to be a model for American and African relations in higher education,’’ said McCormick at a reception to officially launch the project. “It’s the kind of deep international connection that we cherish at Rutgers.’’

The five-year program, called the Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development project, is funded by an $18.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Rutgers will receive $4 million of the grant, which will send 45 Rutgers faculty and staff to teach and work at the University of Liberia in Monrovia, the nation’s capital, and at rural Cuttington College.

Rutgers is part of a consortium of schools, including North Carolina State University and the University of Michigan, involved in the project, which will stimulate the reconstruction of universities and infrastructure throughout Liberia.

During the most recent period of Liberian civil wars, which ended in 2003, the nation’s schools and universities were often closed. Both the University of Liberia and Cuttington College lost many faculty members, and several instructors who now work there have only bachelor’s degrees. A goal of the project is to aid Liberian engineering and agricultural faculty through training, research efforts, and sharing knowledge. Some Liberian faculty and staff will come to Rutgers for graduate degrees before returning to Liberia.

Emmet Dennis, the president of the University of Liberia, and formerly dean of University College at Rutgers, said the initiative will steer Liberia toward economic self-sufficiency by supporting efforts to rebuild the nation’s decimated infrastructure and bolster its agricultural system.

“Before the war, we were almost self-sufficient in the production of staples, like rice,’’ said Dennis. “But now, because of the war, much of our food is imported.’’

Dennis fled Liberia in 1980, at the start of the civil war, which killed more than 250,000 people.  In his homeland, he was director of the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research. At Rutgers, he taught courses in human parasitology and was also vice president of student affairs. The nation’s new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, appointed him president of the University of Liberia in 2008.

Dennis called Rutgers “my foundation.’’ As head of the University of Liberia, he has already incorporated many of the ideas and practices he learned at Rutgers, he said.

Joanna Regulska, vice president for International and Global Affairs, said Rutgers has much to learn from the Liberian schools. “Such partnerships are key for advancing our goal to institutionalize global learning and global understanding,’’ she said.

An important component of the Liberian project will be to boost gender equity at the schools, which have a shortage of female engineers and  agricultural scientists, said Dennis.

Abena Busia, chair of  women’s and gender studies at Rutgers, said that although Liberian women have been a galvanizing force in the country, lobbying for peace and running for office, they are often discouraged from careers in engineering or agriculture.

 “Women grow food and are the market women, but they’re not in the formal agricultural sector,’’ said Busia, who is part of the project. “In West African culture, there are many deeply-held ideas about who can grow what and different social taboos.’’

Busia and her colleagues are formulating a plan that would make education more accessible for  young Liberian girls and support them through college, where an increasing number will hopefully pursue engineering and agricultural degrees.

Already, the new program has made a difference. “We have more female engineering students than male this year,’’ said Dennis. “That’s historic for us.’’

Although the educational efforts in Liberia will be focused on engineering and agriculture, other disciplines and administrative offices will also be involved, including the humanities, library sciences and student affairs, Dennis said.

“What makes it so deep and varied and rich is that it stretches across all departments,’’ McCormick said.

Dennis hopes Liberia’s newfound stability will lead to a “rebirth’’ made possible through education. Efforts like the Rutgers project will help ease the transition from a traumatized “war-time mentality’’ to a peace-time mentality, he predicted.

One of the most joyful moments since his return to Liberia was finally seeing children in uniform, heading off the school, he said. “It was beautiful.’’

Jim Simon, who headed the Rutgers committee that helped obtain the grant, said the project shows what’s possible when institutions work together across the globe.

 “It shines a light and shows that things can change,” said Simon, director of the New Use Agricultural and Natural Plants Program in the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology at Rutgers. “It gives hope.’’