AESEDA Centers
Center for Global Health
Director: Dr. Collins Airhihenbuwa (aou@psu.edu)
Dr. Airhihenbuwa is Professor and Head of the Department of Biobehavioral Health at the Pennsylvania State University. His areas of expertise include the role of culture in the health and behavior of African Americans and Africans. His teaching interests include Global Health; African Health and Development; and Health Promotion Interventions. More information about Dr. Airhihenbuwa may be found at http://www.personal.psu.edu/aou/.
The Center for Global Health and Georesources Management will advance the mission of AESEDA by focusing on the development of a new framework for global health in Africa. The Center will establish and promote the training of future scholars (domestic and international) for both programmatic and policy implementations related to national development in Africa. To accomplish this goal, the Center will be organized to facilitate, promote and nurture collaboration among scholars from several disciplines primarily in the social sciences, medicine, and georesources. Although these areas will be the primary disciplinary foci, the field of law and the humanities will be other important academic areas to the Center. For example, current debates over intellectual property rights in the manufacturing and distribution of drugs for HIV/AIDS and the human right challenges in addressing this pandemic are evidence of the need to partner with legal and human right scholars in developing a comprehensive package of solutions to address global health problems.
Center for Educational Enrichment
Director: Dr. Tanya Furman (tfl3@psu.edu)
Dr. Furman is professor of geosciences and associate director of AESEDA. She earned a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. Her current research interests include using geochemistry of mafic lavas and phenocrysts to unravel melt generation, segregation and transport processes in the lithosphere and asthenosphere, with particular interest in continental rift zone magmatism and the development and maintenance of mantle reservoirs.
Dr. Furman has developed innovative programs to help increase the number of underrepresented students considering STEM-based careers and has built collaborative partnerships with other institutions that now use her programs. In 2005, Furman received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation Program, Opportunities to Enhance Diversity in the Geosciences (OEDG). The grant, $900,000 of which is administered by Penn State, is entitled "Building and Maintaining a Pipeline for Diversity". This is a four-year program that builds upon AESEDA's partnership with Jackson State University (HBCU) by providing longitudinal training, mentoring and support opportunities for students from underrepresented groups to achieve success in the geosciences. Furman collaborated with Jackson State colleagues to assist with the establishment of a department entitled Physics, Atmospheric Sciences and Geosciences. The new curriculum in Earth System Science was approved by the university and the state board of education, and went on line in summer 2007. More information about Dr. Furman may be found at http://www.geosc.psu.edu/people/faculty/personalpages/tfurman/index.html.
The mission of the Center for Educational Enrichment is to develop programs that will increase participation of underrepresented students in the science and engineering disciplines within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and across Penn State. The Center oversees a wide variety of pre-college and college programs including Summer Experience in Earth and Mineral Sciences (SEEMS), and Summer Research Opportunities for undergraduate students. The Center has led numerous collaborations between Penn State and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Center for Africa Array
Director: Dr. Andrew Nyblade (aan2@psu.edu)
Dr. Nyblade's research is focused on understanding the structure and evolution of continental lithosphere and its relationship to mantle dynamics. Topics of interest include the formation of rift valleys, the origin of hotspot tectonism, the deep structure of Archean cratons, and plateau uplift. Dr. Nyblade was born and raised in Tanzania, and has spent the better part of the past 20 years conducting geophysical studies in eastern and southern Africa, including seismology, heat flow, gravity, and paleomagnetics. During the past 10 years, Dr. Nyblade, together with students and colleagues, has conducted broadband seismic projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Cameroon. More information about Dr. Nyblade can be found at http://geosc.psu.edu/people/faculty/personalpages/anyblade/index.html.
AfricaArray (http://www.africaarray.psu.edu/) is an initiative to promote, in the full spirit of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), coupled training and research programs for building and maintaining a scientific workforce for Africa's natural resource sector. AfricaArray's initial focus is on geophysics to:
- Maintain and develop further geophysical training programs in Africa, in response to industry, government and university needs.
- Promote geophysical research in Africa, and establish an Africa-to-Africa research support system.
- Obtain geophysical data, through observational networks in participating countries, for studying scientific targets of economic and societal importance, as well as fundamental geological processes shaping the African continent.
Center for Climate Change
Director: Dr. Robert Crane (rqc3@psu.edu)
Dr. Crane is professor of geography and director of AESEDA. Most recently, he served as interim dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (2006-2007) and as associate dean for undergraduate education in the College (1993-2007). His primary research is on global climate change with a particular focus on regional climate impacts in sub-Saharan Africa. More information about Dr. Crane can be found at: http://www.geog.psu.edu/people/crane/.
Center for Sustainable Resource Extraction
Director: Dr. Petra Tschakert (pxt14@psu.edu)
Tschakert has a PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences with a minor in Applied Anthropology from the University of Arizona. She joined Penn State in 2005. Most of her research is on human-environment interactions. She has been working in West Africa since 1992, mainly with poor and disadvantaged resource users, initially on soil management, household food security, and desertification and more recently on climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as small-scale gold mining. She is PI on two PSU grants on human-environmental health and sustainable livelihoods among marginal gold miners in Ghana and Co-PI on an NIH-funded educational project on global health and georesource management in Nigeria.
Through the Center for Sustainable Resources Extraction, Tschakert coordinates collaborative and interdisciplinary faculty research and outreach and learning activities related to sustainable mining initiatives in Africa. She advocates a systems approach to mining that addresses the multifaceted complexities of georesource management and development. This means to link technical, ecological, and economic thinking with an understanding of social, cultural, institutional, and political drivers to promote environmentally responsible and socially just mining engineering in Africa.
Center for Land and Community Development Studies
Director: Dr. B. Ikubolajeh Logan (bil2@psu.edu)
Dr. Logan is professor of geography and African studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught at the Department of Geography at Old Dominion University in Virginia from 1984-1988, and at the Department of Geography, University of Georgia from 1988-2004. He specializes in the political economy and political ecology of African development. His present focus is on political economy transformations in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Logan has written extensively on African development and has consulted often with the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations.
The Center for Land and Community Development Studies, a social science component of AESEDA, undertakes, among other areas, research pertaining to the relevance of traditional institutions in Africa's dual governance structure. As one example, the Center is currently engaged in a collaborative research with the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa, titled, 'Identity and Cultural Diversity in Conflict Resolution and Democratization for African Renaissance'. This work involves twelve African countries.