Students get glimpse into African education

The Coverdell Institute offers GC&SU students the opportunity to experience a piece of former Sen. Paul D. Coverdell’s time as Peace Corps director by bringing an African schoolroom to campus.

The hut, constructed outside the Arts & Sciences building during spring break, hosted approximately a dozen elementary students on Thursday to recreate an African schoolroom experience as part of the Symposium & Exhibit of Coverdell. Former Peace Corps volunteer Jane Moore was stationed in Malawi as an educator and was on campus for the day to teach elementary students in the African schoolroom.

“Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and the African schoolroom is very typical of where elementary and high school students go to school in Malawi, Africa,” Coverdell Institute Director Gregg Kaufman said. “The schoolroom is modeled after one that was built by Habitat for Humanity in their global village in Americus.”

Kaufman began working closely in November with Nancy Davis Bray, special collections, and Lamonica Sanford, museum curator, to plan the event.

“We thought that a late twentieth century African schoolroom placed next to a late twentieth century multi-million dollar university building would be a very interesting position for the structure,” Kaufman said. “It illustrates the dramatic differences in cultures.”

The African schoolroom is part of a full day of events sponsored by The Coverdell Institute. There will be former Peace Corps volunteers and staff on campus that worked directly with Coverdell.

“There are guests coming from Washington D.C. to speak at the event,” Kaufman said.

“I am very excited to meet such influential people,” Coverdell Scholar Elizabeth Pearce said.

Students will have the opportunity to attend panel discussions featuring those who worked closely with Coverdell and the Peace Corps. There are many faculty and staff members who have spent years serving as Peace Corps volunteers.

“We are blessed that our president is a former Peace Corps volunteer in India and that many faculty participating in the program are former volunteers,” Kaufman said. “Dr. Brian Mumma served as a moderator for the event, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana.”

The event also provided an opportunity for students to speak with Peace Corps recruiters in the format of a special evening informational session.

“The Peace Corps [was here] for the entire day recruiting students who are contemplating serving,” Kaufman said. “The Coverdell Institute would like to see more GC&SU graduates become Peace Corps volunteers. The university is working on establishing a relationship with the Peace Corps and hoping to get more interest in Georgia colleges.”

Kaufman has worked closely with students while preparing for the event. He commissioned Art Major Ruel Lee to design the logo for The Coverdell Institute and student Marshal Coats to compose a jazz piece specifically for the Coverdell event.

“We are really excited that two of our students have created art pieces that will carry on the legacy of Sen. Coverdell and be associated with the institute,” Kaufman said. “I have really enjoyed working with these students and watching their creative process.”

Lee tried to come up with a design that would represent who Coverdell was in life and politics.

“I used the base of a column in the logo because Coverdell was such a big part of the foundation of learning,” Lee said. “It appears at first glance to be a very simple design, but there is a lot of background to each part of the logo.”

“I really hope this experience will allow students, faculty, and the community to learn more about the Coverdell Institute and Paul Coverdell himself,” Pearce said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 1 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry