Summary concept paper:

Proposed partnership between UCLA, UCAD and EREV

Introduction:
The University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and its partners, Earth Rights Institute (ERI), Los
Angeles, and ERI’s Dakar office, Earth Rights Ecovillage Institute (EREV) have discussed with the
University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD) their interest in developing a joint UCLA-UCAD
Master’s program in Senegal, to be co-accredited by both institutions. UCAD has accepted this proposal
as an idea worthy of further exploration and development. This document summarizes conversations held
on this topic before and during the visit to UCAD of Professor Andrew Apter, Director of UCLA’s
African Study Center in preparation for a meeting next week between Annie Goeke, representative of
UCLA and Director of ERI, representatives of UCAD and other proposed partners of this initiative.
Overall Objective:
To create a UCLA Masters program in Sustainable Development co-accredited within the UCAD system.
This English language “Anglo-Saxon” program would follow primarily US academic procedures and
regulations, and would be funded largely by UCLA student tuitions. It also would be cross-cultural,
enrolling equal numbers of Senegalese and American students:
Specific Objectives:
• For UCLA, it would potentially become the Master’s program of the Department of International
Development Studies (IDS). Now an undergraduate program, IDS enrolls about 700 students and has
expressed an interest in developing a Masters program.
• For UCAD, the program would serve the Senegalese university system in the role of a "laboratory"
for the L.M.D. transition to the “anglo-saxon” system, and an opportunity to pilot bilingual education.
It would provide opportunities to learn and experiment with the administrative procedures of US
higher education and to adapt US teaching strategies to the needs of national development. It also
would contribute English language materials not readily available in the francophone system to
UCAD’s existing programs in education for sustainable development.
• For EREV, it would permit the contribution and further development in a national context of 10 years
of experience with the educational approach known as "University Community Service Learning."
This model recently was selected by USAID for its new partnership program with the University
Campus Rural Bambey. It engages university students in working directly with grass-roots
community members as trainers and action researchers. Working with vocational training
institutions, university community service learning is itself an advanced form higher education, using
action research and cascade methods of competency/results-based-learning. Becoming a part of
UCAD also would permit EREV’s program to share its valuable experience in teaching and managing
mixed classes of Senegalese and international students, in cross-cultural programs that include a focus
on global citizenship, peace and justice.
• For ERI, it would expand an already extensive African network of environmental and ecovillage
promotional, educational and advocacy activities, and would provide a model of collaboration that
might be applicable in other African countries in ERI’s network.
Possible Roles of partners:
• UCLA: will recruit, enroll and monitor American students and the overall quality of the program.
UCLA also will propose the sustainable development curriculum and other courses, for discussion
and agreement with UCAD, and will make available to the program each academic term a professor
specializing in state of the art technologies in environmental sciences and policies and in areas of
sustainable development discourse in which French language publications are relatively unavailable
or inaccessible.
• UCAD: will contribute to this program its agenda for the development of Senegal’s university
system, and the opportunity to participate in its existing activities. These range from excellent rural
campus initiatives to a wide variety of educational and collaborative research activities carried out
with European, North American and other universities development partners worldwide. •
• EREV: will provide initially, with the possibility of long-term continuation:
− A core staff, including two Senegalese program directors, Academic Director Ousmane Aly
Pame (also Professor of English, UCAD) and Dr. Oumar Diene, action research instructor
and program director. They are largely responsible for the program's success over the past six
years, during which they have gained extensive knowledge and experience in building strong
cross-cultural student groups dedicated to global citizenship and sustainable development,
action research in villages, and in the detailed design and management of academic
programs, administered according to US procedures. Also part of the core staff are a
computer science training program director/teacher and a computer mantenancier engineer.
− A "sub-campus” : including classrooms, a computer laboratory with 40 computers and other
infrastructure in the EREV building (equipped with WiFi and air conditioning), located in
Ouest-Foire, opposite the Ecobank in Yoff Layenne. EREV’s 20+ homestay families, trained
and experienced in hosting American students since 1996, are located near the beach in the
Yoff’s traditional fishing village.
− The possibility of a rural campus in the Eco-Commune of Guede Chantier, of which
Professor PAMEs the mayor, and thus well positioned to provide opportunities for students to
work in meaningful local development projects. ERI: will recruitment students, and
volunteers for the "Green Wall" and other citizen initiatives, raise funds, and link this
program to its network of individual and institutional partners around the world.
Next steps
Possible programs envisioned for the coming year will operate simultaneously on two levels:
undergraduate (L.) and Masters (M.) - with different academic requirements.
Renewal of this year’s summer program: UCLA and EREV will set as a goal to repeat this year’s eight
week summer program in 2011, formally linking it to UCAD. Next year’s program would be modified to
take into account important lessons learned from this first year’s experience. Never the less, the scope
and the accomplishments of this year’s program are worth noting for future reference. This first edition of
a UCLA Travel Study Program enrolled 52 students (23 Senegalese and 29 U.S.). Of this number, 19
were Americans formally inrolled by UCLA; 19, Senegalese students enrolled by EREV; and 14 were
enrolled in a Masters level Practicum. The Practicum students were coordinators-in-training (CIT) and
Instructors-in-training (IIT), with an academic program of their own.
The program conducted a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in Guédé Chantier, during which 12 teams
of undergraduate students, led by CIT and IIT practicum students, worked with community members of
Guede Chantier and collected data in the following areas below:
 1. conventional agriculture
2. livestock
3. women’s organic market gardening
4. fishing and fish farming,
5. food security and nutrition,
6. Entrepreneurship and Value Chains,
7. Expansion of piped water
8. Education
9. Sociodemographic factors
10. Climate Change
11. Gender and
12. cultural ecology.
Introduction of a UCLA “quarter” coinciding with the second semester of UCAD academic year
It is possible to envision a full UCLA academic year with three trimesters in reasonable phase with
UCAD’s academic calendar. But this would be difficult to put in place before 2012. One trimester might
commence with UCAD’s October term and run through December, with a second from about March 23 to
June 10. A final trimester could follow from July through September, perhaps coinciding with a Travel
Study Program. A goal in these calculations would be to permit students regularly enrolled in either
UCLA or UCAD to participate in the individual trimesters of the joint program without interfering with
their continuing studies.