From mid-September to mid-October, seven Egyptian faculty members from five universities in Egypt are getting a crash course in how to develop more effective college horticulture classes. They were each assigned to a faculty mentor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois to help them either develop a new course or revise an existing one.

Daniel Warnock, horticulture professor at U of I, explained why these faculty from Egyptian universities want to learn from professors here. "The practical application of knowledge in Egyptian universities is lacking," he said. "They need to do curriculum assessment in order to identify their strengths and limitations and look at how successful their graduates from the program are. When they graduated, did they get a job? Were they able to use what they learned?"

This program is just one phase of a much larger one. In July 2005, Warnock and another horticulture professor, Robert Skirvin, held workshops at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. They shared information on things like how to write a course syllabus, how to develop a course in horticulture, and how to assess its success.

So, why not just photocopy course curricula and syllabi and send them to Egypt? Warnock said that they need to develop it themselves in order to truly buy into it. "Simply transplanting the U.S. system is not an option. It wouldn't work. It needs to be Egyptian driven."

One component in the bigger program was to interview 250 Egyptian agricultural employers and 1,000 recent graduates from Egyptian universities. "What we learned from the survey is that their graduates need many of the same things that our U of I students need – improved written and oral communication skills, business management, ability to work in teams and to run horticulture software.

"But, the difference is that we have good faculty, good facilities, strong administration support and motivated students. They don't have that in Egypt, so we need to help them build it." Warnock said that in Egypt high school students take a test. Based on their scores, they are placed in a career track. The highest scores go into medical fields, while the lowest scores are placed in the college of agriculture. "So these students didn't choose agriculture and don't want to be there in the first place. They aren't motivated to learn the material."

The seven Egyptian faculty members went through a highly selective process in order to participate in this program at the U of I. They had to have a strong command of English and had to go through an extensive interview process. In Egypt, Warnock said that most courses are typically team taught, so it will be their job to go back and educate their Egyptian colleagues on the methods they learned here.

Warnock said that he has already noticed mentorships developing, and ideas and teaching materials being exchanged. "There have been networks building between the five Egyptian universities participating, and there have been relationships developing between Egyptian faculty and U of I faculty mentors," he said.

This type of international collaboration can be a valuable experience from the givers side as well as the receivers. "My perceptions of Egypt before I went there were very different from what I saw when I was there. This has invigorated me by causing me to step out of my comfort zone and experience some big challenges. It has also shown me where I need to make some cross-departmental connections here at the U of I."

The $5.4 million project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is being implemented by six cooperating universities in the United States under the auspices of the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities, Inc (MUCIA). The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the lead university for this four-year project.

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