Fall 2001

NC State–Ghana Connection Yields Rich Rewards

Chemical engineering students and faculty members at KNUST with
Dr. Christine S. Grant (in bright orange suit) during Grant’s 1998 visit to Ghana.

Imagine studying engineering with limited access to textbooks, calculators and computers — a challenging task.  Engineering universities all over the world want to provide their students the best possible equipment and resources, but in many areas this task proves nearly impossible.  However, our shrinking and complex world requires engineers everywhere to be trained to use state-of-the-art tools. 

Students at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa, attend the only engineering school in their nation.  These engineering students must learn their profession without the benefit of resources most American university students take for granted — textbooks, reference materials, computers and laboratory equipment.  Five years ago the students obtained virtually all of their engineering education through chalkboard lectures by their professors.

Now KNUST chemical engineering students will have an easier time getting the textbooks and computer equipment they need, thanks to the work of Dr. Christine S. Grant, associate professor of chemical engineering at NC State.  While her primary activity at NC State is research and teaching (she currently has close to $2 million dollars in active grants), four years ago Grant led a project designed to upgrade facilities and resources in the chemical engineering department at the Ghanaian university.

According to Grant, “The goal of the project is to bridge the global educational gap between the U.S. and Ghanaian students by interfacing educational aids such as computers and textbooks with innovative instructional technologies, with a focus on cutting-edge information technologies.”  To do this, NC State University, North Carolina A&T University and KNUST are collaborating on an initiative that could serve as a model for interinstitutional exchange programs at other universities.  A secondary goal is to develop educational materials to produce globally aware, U.S.-trained engineers.

This initiative has resulted in a solid foundation for expansion of the program.  Several Ghanaian students have enrolled in graduate school in the engineering departments at NC State and NC A&T.  An NC State engineering student visited KNUST through the NC State Study Abroad Program in 1999 to install a new unit operations laboratory experiment in the chemical engineering lab.  The project has provided more than 500 engineering textbooks, various reference materials and five new state-of-the-art computers as well as bookshelves, desks and air conditioning units for the combined computer laboratory/departmental library at the university.  To accomplish this, Grant acquired $81,000 from a variety of sources, including the NC State Committee on International Programs Seed Grant, the Engineering Information Foundation and the United Technologies Corporation.

Grant hopes the project will grow in the next several years.  “We hope long term to include an exchange of undergraduate students between NC State and KNUST, offer Web-based courses to students in Ghana over the Internet, further develop electronic communication between students and faculty at the two institutions and eventually arrange for participation of successful Ghanaian-born chemical engineers in the U.S. with KNUST through either teaching or laboratory development in their home country,” she said. 

Another long-term goal Grant hopes will result from this project is the creation of a West African Environmental Center located at KNUST.  This center could serve as a focal point for meetings, conferences and environmental summits among chemical engineers in academia, industry and government to discuss potential solutions to environmental problems.

Grant’s work has made a difference in the lives of these Ghanaian engineering students, opening doors to opportunities that wouldn’t have been available otherwise.  To honor Grant’s contributions the KNUST chemical engineering department renamed their departmental library and computer room the C. S. Grant Room — a fitting tribute to Grant’s energy and devotion to improving engineering education.

-- rudd --

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