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Training faculty and modernizing the curriculum are the first steps toward improving agriculture education. "The faculty have been cut off from the world for nearly 20 years," says Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer, director of IPIA and associate dean of Purdue Agriculture. "They need to learn new teaching ideas."
Making up for lost time
In the years since the fall of the Taliban, Faizi has attended programs in Europe to help get his teaching and research skills back up to par. He and Kabul colleague Zikrullah Safi spent the fall semester at Purdue through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Faculty Exchange Program. In conjunction with faculty mentors Janna Beckerman (botany and plant pathology) and John Graveel and George Van Scoyoc (agronomy), Faizi and Safi worked in labs, modernized courses and updated teaching materials.
At Purdue, Faizi's daily routine was nearly indistinguishable from that of hundreds of other faculty. He split his time between the lab and an office where he wrote lectures and prepared PowerPoint presentations on a laptop. One difference was that he created his teaching materials in two languages. The Afghanistan Ministry of Higher Education plans to transition universities back to the English-based system of the 1970s, so Faizi wrote the lectures and a textbook in English but created handouts in Dari, one of the country's main languages.
Starting from scratch
Faizi and Safi, who earned a master's degree at Northwest Frontier Province Agricultural University in Pakistan, are among the handful of faculty still at Kabul. The majority of professors left the country during more than two decades of war and political turmoil. The few who remain range from a 77-year-old professor who received his Ph.D. in the United States to junior faculty who have only a bachelor's degree from Kabul. "Faculty who were educated at Kabul after 1990 have no lab experience, statistical training or computer skills," says Purdue agricultural economist Kevin McNamara, who has spent much of the last two years overseeing reconstruction of the agriculture teaching facilities at Kabul.
Faizi, Safi and McNamara presented a seminar for Purdue Agriculture faculty in September to discuss the many challenges ahead to rebuild Kabul's agriculture program. "We have no labs, no equipment and few teaching materials," Safi says. Classes are held in a renovated boiler room. Two computers provide intermittent Internet connection. "Students have only 10 minutes a day on the Internet, which is about enough time to print one page," he says.
The only thing not in short supply is students. After years of oppression, Afghans are flocking back to the country's educational institutions. More than 68,000 showed up to take entrance exams for 6,000 slots at Kabul. Currently, more than 1,000 students, 90 of whom are women, are enrolled in agriculture. Original facilities were designed to house only about a third of that amount.
Trading places
The Kabul professors and McNamara also hope to generate interest in faculty exchange. "When I am here, there is no one to teach my classes," Safi says. Faculty are needed to spend a semester or year teaching at Kabul while Kabul faculty work on advanced degrees. Visiting faculty are also needed to help with course modernization, teaching assistance, research collaboration and technical assistance/training.
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