Cheyney announces partnership with Ghana college, its initially global pairing

Cheyney University, a traditionally black college in Pennsylvania’s point out procedure, will partner with a new university in Ghana on a student, faculty, and cultural exchange method, but initial it will aid the college achieve its accreditation by presenting experience on a program it wants to start out.

The partnership with the soon-to-be-developed Oboseke College of Excellence in the Asebu Kingdom of Ghana’s Central Location is Cheyney’s first international collaboration with one more college, said Cheyney president Aaron A. Walton.

It’s just one of several partnerships that Cheyney has begun cultivating in the past number of decades to improve the university and enrich schooling for students.

Cheyney will share its expertise in aquaculture and aquaponics — a food production program that brings together increasing aquatic animals with cultivating vegetation in h2o — with Oboseke, which wants to start out tilapia fish farming and other aquaculture systems. Ghana’s accreditation board demands a mentor romantic relationship with a college that has an established application in an location of desire, Kwa David Whitaker, Oboseke’s rector, explained in a information launch. Cheyney, which just a handful of yrs in the past was struggling with monetary and enrollment woes and fighting to preserve its own accreditation, will supply that mentoring.

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“To be in a position to share our practical experience and expertise with this emerging African university, and potentially help the folks of Ghana create a far more accessible foods source, is an extremely important option for us, a tribute to our academic excellence, and an honor,” Walton explained.

Oboseke in return will offer resources to Cheyney such as land on the Ghana campus for initiatives of desire to equally schools. An official from Oboseke will go to Cheyney in a couple of weeks, Walton explained. He expects exchanges to start off in about a year.

“Students who may perhaps be fascinated in finding out overseas can expend a semester at this university and discover what is likely on there and vice versa,” stated Walton, who has led the 650-student college that straddles Delaware and Chester Counties for 4 decades.

The partnership came about after officers from Oboseke contacted Steven G. Hughes, a Cheyney biology professor and director of the Aquaculture Investigation and Education and learning Laboratory, who is serving to Oboseke plan its system, Walton reported. Cheyney grows tilapia on campus and the waste generated fertilizes basil, which is bought to area grocery retail outlet chains, he stated.

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Tilapia is a key foodstuff source in Ghana, and the nation now receives substantially of its offer from China, according to Whitaker. The college desires to assistance the place create its possess resource.

Cheyney also has been cultivating partnerships nearer to house. Very last 12 months, it welcomed to campus the Camden-primarily based Positive-BioChem Laboratories LLC, which presents microbial and chemistry testing services. The college signed an agreement with the organization to run a lab on campus. In January 2020, the college announced that ASI Chemical compounds, a get started-up firm that manufactures substances used in prescribed drugs, would run on campus.

Epcot Crenshaw Corp., an environmental technological know-how remedies enterprise Navrogen, a bio-pharma investigation and development company that will work on most cancers analysis and State-of-the-art Alchemy Labs, a corporation that grows and procedures hemp for health-related reasons, are among the other individuals.