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UTEP Research Assistant Professor Selected for Summer Fellowship in Tanzania

Last Updated on December 18, 2018 at 12:00 AM

Originally published December 18, 2018

By UC Staff

UTEP Communications

A research assistant professor at The University of Texas at El Paso will strengthen curriculum and ties to African institutions of higher learning through a fellowship that will take him to Tanzania in summer 2019.

Stanley Mubako, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management (CERM) was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP).
Stanley Mubako, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management (CERM) was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP). He will travel to Tanzania in the Summer of 2019 to work with the University of Dodoma (UDOM) on a project geared toward enhancing geographic information system and technology (GIST) mapping and promoting graduate student team-mentoring and training through a bolstered GIST curriculum.

Stanley Mubako, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management (CERM) was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) to travel to Tanzania in the Summer of 2019 to work with the University of Dodoma (UDOM) on a project geared toward enhancing geographic information system and technology (GIST) mapping and promoting graduate student team-mentoring and training through a bolstered GIST curriculum.

Mubako will collaborate with Kalista Higini Peter, Ph.D., professor in UDOM’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. The pair will work to help students acquire enhanced problem-based learning skills through exposure to training opportunities in cloud computing GIS technology for research, modeling, and assessment of environmental issues. Students will also receive assistance in developing dissertations and projects. In addition, a student mentoring system also will be developed, connecting graduate students at UDOM to mentors at UTEP. Through the project, UDOM and UTEP will explore opportunities for conducting collaborative interdisciplinary research across the two continents.

“I am excited to be selected as part of this fellowship and wish to express my gratitude to the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program,” said Mubako, who was also selected as a CADFP fellow to the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania in 2017. “I look forward to the opportunity to work as part of this international collaboration to facilitate research and education between UTEP, the University of Dodoma and other African universities. I hope to share the work we conduct with UTEP and CERM, and continue discussions with African researchers to foster opportunities for collaborative research and student exchange.”

The UTEP/UDOM project is part of a broader initiative that will pair 51 African Diaspora scholars with one of 43 higher education institutions and collaborators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda to work together on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities in the coming months. The visiting fellows will work with their hosts on a wide range of projects that include controlling malaria, strengthening peace and conflict studies, developing a new master’s degree in emergency medicine, training and mentoring graduate students in criminal justice, archiving African indigenous knowledge, creating low-cost water treatment technologies, building capacity in microbiology and pathogen genomics, and developing a forensic accounting curriculum.

CADFP, now in its sixth year, is designed to develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya, which coordinates the activities of the Advisory Council. A total of 385 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.