As SIT’s academic director in Ghana, Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang is responsible for two of SIT’s immersive study abroad programs—Globalization, Cultural Legacies, and Afro-Chic and Hip-Hop, Resilience, and Black Struggle, which include both U.S. and Ghanaian students. He also hosts SIT custom programs that bring groups of students from a single institution to study in Ghana.

Last fall, Opoku-Agyemang was named the recipient of Diversity Abroad’s 2022 Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion in International Education for Inclusive Excellence in Teaching. The award spotlights “strategies that tackle underlying inequities in global education and strive to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of global education.”

Opoku-Agyemang has directed SIT programs in Ghana since 2018, but his history with SIT goes back much farther. His mother, Dr. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, is a widely respected Ghanaian academic and politician who served for four years as minister of education. Among an array of prestigious roles at Ghana institutions, she was also academic director of the SIT program History and Cultures of the African Diaspora, which meant that her son got to know U.S. students early and often.

We reached out to Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang to talk about his recent award, his interest in international education, and how he supports diversity and inclusion.

Can you tell us how you approach diversity and inclusion on your programs?

I approach it from an African context. We don’t try to import America into Ghana. Students are coming into a cultural context that is different from what they are used to. There is an exchange of ideas—students and stakeholders are encouraged to ask questions. I try to create an environment where students are very free to ask anything they think of, even if it might come across as offensive. Our baseline is: Nothing out of malice. So they can ask and say pretty much anything. That helps with inclusion as they are being honest about their perspectives.

What are some examples of commons preconceptions that you encounter among your students?

Ghanaian students are usually shocked to find U.S. students who are working while in school because in their minds America is a rich place and everyone has money. So, they are surprised when they find a student who works as a waiter or a construction worker. A U.S. student might express that our modes of transportation are not acceptable. We don’t avoid those moments. They are ways of learning.

You have been working with and getting to know U.S. students for many years. What changes have you seen among U.S. students?

The most remarkable thing among our cohorts is that we’re seeing a lot of first-generation African students coming to Ghana. In a recent cohort of eight students, six had parents who come from African countries. For the past two cohorts we have had all black students. The semester before that was 90 percent black students. So those demographics are changing. These students tend to not see themselves as African, so we process the different black identities—African American, African Caribbean, African.

What about changes within U.S. higher education?

Academic trends are a reflection of a larger context. In America, there is a lot of cutting of funding to education. They use money for wars and other things, and not education. And when education does get funded it often goes to the football coach and not the professors. So, humanities and social sciences bear the brunt.

The thing about education policy and trends is that you don’t see the impact until it’s too late. Anytime you take a decision in education its implications are long-term. In the future you’ll see graduates who don’t know much outside the space that they are in. And when you don’t know things outside your space, you’re going to be ignorant of the world around you.

Students today are very focused on the job they can get after college. The irony is that African studies, social sciences—these build critical thinking, which is what you need to get a job.

What drew you, as an educator, to global education and study abroad, and what excites you most about your programs in Ghana?

I have always been interested in different cultures and have traveled a lot in my life. I was in Cape Coast, Athens, and Accra for tertiary education, for my undergrad, and my MA. I went to Germany for 10 months and learned a lot about different cultures, races, and people. I went to Senegal for three months and when I as in the U.S. for another MA and a PhD I traveled around a bit, which showed me how different America was. How Georgia is different than West Virginia or Washington state. All of this piqued my interest in intercultural learning.

I love the experiential nature of global education and how the students learn about themselves as the semester progresses. They come in with preconceived notions. Some who are African have a fair idea of the continent, but they realize even though they have a Ghanaian or Senegalese background, they might not fit as they expected. We offer very hands-on experiences that allow them to process these experiences and adapt in ways that make sense to them.

Students are partners within this learning exchange in which everybody is learning and giving, respectful of one another.

When you go to another country where certain things are not available to you—even things like the internet—these become moments to learn about the world around you. So, when you go to a place like an African country it’s useful to go through a program like SIT, a program with a structure.

Our programs are famous for being based in experiential learning. From when students get off the plane to when they get back on the plane, everything is part of their experience. So, while it’s important to consider that the whole environment has to be seen as a place where they can be safe to a large extent, it’s also important to think about other stakeholders. If you privilege the students and leave others out, students are seen to be different from everybody else. Students are partners within this learning exchange in which everybody is learning and giving, respectful of one another. And we see the field as an inclusive space regardless of whether it’s a site visit, a lecture, or a homestay.

How do you do that?

We try to identify and curate culturally appropriate safe spaces, but if the whole country is going to be part of their learning experience, inclusive spaces should not necessarily be confined to particular areas. We try to create an experience in which students can feel confident, can be themselves and engage with experiences that can help them become better people, both academically and personally.

Students stay in homestays that have received training, and that serves as a bridge between the country and the program. In a country like Ghana, a lot of the issues that an American student would take on a serious level might not necessarily be issues a Ghanaian would care about. That doesn’t necessarily mean the student should struggle because the things they take seriously are different. Our homestay families understand that students might have certain issues that bother them, but our families engage in a way that the student learns about Ghanaian culture.

Ghana has certain laws and cultural norms around LGBTQI+ people. How do you create safe spaces for those students?

Legislation left from the colonial period has become part of the cultural imagination about LGBTQ people that can be offensive to those who identify as such. But there is also a huge LGBTQ subculture in Ghana. So, we have students who are LGBTQ who find their community. We help to create safe spaces for students to find communities where they are free to express themselves in ways that make sense to them.

One student recently did an Independent Study Project on how Ghanaian queer folks imagine a sense of belonging. Last semester we looked at how Ghanaian queer artists think about the future and how religion affects Ghanaian LGBTQ folks and their sense of nationalism.

We help to create safe spaces for students to find communities where they are free to express themselves in ways that make sense to them.

We also train our staff regularly about how to address some of these issues. Our programs spend about a month going around the country, including to places that are quite rural. We ensure students know how they can respect these spaces, and we try to help them understand what it means to be culturally appropriate in this space.

We have allies throughout the country who have connections with LGBTQ communities. One student who was here in spring 2022 came back to Ghana recently to work with a group called the Drama Queens who provide safe spaces for LGBTQ communities.

At the Diversity Abroad awards ceremony you said you hope African countries and programs will “continue to be recognized for the work we do in improving notions of diversity and inclusion.” Could you talk more about what you mean by that?

A lot of times the approach to diversity and inclusion is very western, addressing issues that concern America and Europe. My hope is this award sheds light on how Africa is influenced by this work. Sometimes it’s tied to the larger understanding of how the continent is perceived. There is a perception that Africa is a country. When something happens in one African country the average American thinks the whole continent is on fire.

There is a history of seeing Africa in these ways. World maps scale down Africa to be around the size of the U.S., which makes no sense. Just the Democratic Republic of Congo is half the size of western Europe in total. There is a need to work against these notions.

‘My work is about representing underrepresented communities in unconventional ways’

For filmmaker Angela Tucker, an SIT Study Abroad arts and culture semester in Ghana in the ’90s proved pivotal. It was there, she says, that she first got behind the camera.

“It was a formative time in life,” she says. As a theater and African-American Studies major at Wesleyan, she found Ghanaian ideas about where art and culture reside different in some interesting ways. “In America, you go to a play or watch a film and that’s what art is, where art is. That’s a very western idea. But someplace like Ghana—art and culture is everywhere.”

Angela says her SIT program was focused on the idea of going somewhere in the country, having an experience, then writing about it. “We did something with the national theater in Accra—a performance art thing. The actors would go into areas where women were selling skin-bleaching cream, and they’d provoke a conversation about bleaching.”

It’s about Black joy—and that’s radical in a world that wants to show Black pain.

When the students went to observe, Angela ended up with the job of filming. “I had never done anything like that! It was my introduction to filming something.” Angela went from Wesleyan to Columbia, where she received an MFA in Film. The native New Yorker now resides in New Orleans.

These days, as an Emmy and Webby award-winner, it’s pretty easy to find Angela’s work. Christmas 2022 saw the debut of her first Lifetime Christmas movie, A New Orleans Noel. And she’s done many documentaries, including All Skinfolk, Ain’t Kinfolk on PBS’ Reel South; Black Folk Don’t, an intriguing web series of shorts including interviews about perceptions of what is and isn’t “Black”; and (A)sexual, a look at people for whom sexual attraction is not a part of life.

No matter the format or length, Angela says there’s a common thread running through everything she does: “My work is about representing underrepresented communities in unconventional ways. I think my Christmas movie had a place in my work as much as a documentary about forced sterilization. It’s about representation, and the importance of showing the experiences of Black people.”

She puts a finer point on it, too. “It’s about Black joy—and that’s radical in a world that wants to show Black pain.”

Black Folk Don’t is a good example of how that difference manifests in her work. The series is often funny, and consistently insightful. In it she examines, primarily through interviews, things that are often considered outside the usual Black cultural parameters, like, for instance, yoga.

From that premise, Angela says, “I just thought, ‘How do you make something that explores stereotypes?’ So many are problematic, and some are based in truth.”

Many filmmakers reside primarily in the world of narrative feature or the world of documentaries. Angela has explored both and finds each rewarding in its own way. “What I love about doing a documentary is that you can keep moving it along yourself; you don’t need a big entity to give you money. Life-wise, that’s really nice, to have a lot of control over what you’re doing. But with documentaries, you also have to give over to whatever happens.”

With narrative films, she says, there’s a different kind of control. “There’s a lot of time that goes into writing and planning, and then the experience of making it is actually a very short experience.” That kind of shorter experience, she says, has been “lighter. It’s given me the strength and stamina to do the other work.”

When you spend time with her work, you may notice a through-line of an aesthetic sort, too. There’s a somewhat similar look throughout. And that, of course, is intentional. “The lighting of brown skin—making brown skin look beautiful—it’s often about finding a crew and a team that knows how to do that.

“I also think about color palette a lot. I can’t always control that, though. I think going to film school for fiction was probably good, in that I didn’t come at documentary from the perspective of being a journalist. I came to it from having to understand look and feel and the aesthetic piece first. That’s always on my mind.”

The recent arrival of New Orleans Noel may well help Angela reach more people and realize more opportunities in all the varieties of work she pursues. The chance to make a film for Lifetime, she says, came about through a New Orleans-based producer who’d pitched a Christmas movie. Lifetime, she explains, wanted a Black writer and director, preferably based in Louisiana.

The lighting of brown skin—making brown skin look beautiful—it’s often about finding a crew and a team that knows how to do that.

The filming took longer because of the pandemic, but finally wrapped for a Christmas 2022 release. The experience was different in some highly specific ways, Angela says. “There’s a whole way of doing things. Lifetime—they have their own rules and trends. This year, for instance, there are a lot of movies about architects. But this film was always primarily a vehicle for Keisha Knight Pulliam.” And, it bears noting, New Orleans Noel also attracted a big name in singer Patti Labelle.

From here, this SIT alum hopes to open new doors and explore some intriguing new projects. “I’m working on a feature documentary about [trailblazing Texas congresswoman] Barbara Jordan. And another about holistic ways for women to take care of their bodies. And I’m working on something about an older love affair.” It’s all a through-line that stretches back to picking up a camera to film the arts and culture of Ghana with SIT.

New SIT programs for 2023 feature hip-hop in Ghana, diplomacy in South Africa, traditional medicine in Vietnam

School for International Training opens summer 2023 registration today with 39 extraordinary study abroad programs around the globe, including three new immersive opportunities in Ghana, South Africa, and Vietnam.

Ghana: Hip-Hop, Resilience, and Black Struggle examines how artists are using hip-hop to question traditional representations of Africa, imagine Africa’s future, and raise consciousness about globalization and (in)equality. In one of the most innovative countries in Africa, you will have the chance to study, engage, and perform with international hip-hop artists and activists such as Kojo Cue, Wiyaala, Cina Soul, M.anifest, Wanluv, Angel Maxine, Worlasi, and Koo Nimo. Excursions include Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region and home to the biggest market in West Africa; Cape Coast, the first capital of Ghana and near two of the oldest sites of the transatlantic slave trade; and Tamale, where Islamic cultural practices flourish due to cultural influences from north of the Sahara. Earn six credits on this six-week program and participate in one of the most innovative study abroad experiences available today.

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South Africa: Internship in Diplomacy, Politics, and International Relations is an exceptional, seven-week opportunity to explore career paths, meet diplomats and politicians, and enhance your understanding of non-western perspectives in the field of international relations. Your program base is Durban, one of South Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities with a rich fusion of African, western, and South Asian influences, and home to key historical figures like Albert Luthuli, the first African awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, and Mahatma Gandhi. The core component of this program is a five-week internship with one of SIT’s partner civil society NGOs. These include the Africa Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, the Institute for Global Dialogue, Institute for Security Studies, and Centre for Conflict Resolution. On an excursion to Maputo, Mozambique, you’ll learn about the strong historical and political bonds between the two countries and the role Mozambique’s ruling party played in the liberation struggle against apartheid. You will also visit Johannesburg and close out this groundbreaking experience in Cape Town. Earn eight credits on this mind-opening, career-expanding summer opportunity.

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Vietnam: Traditional Medicine and Community Health provides an unparalleled look at the ancient yet flourishing practices of traditional Vietnamese and Chinese medicine. You will observe ethnic folk medicine practices, get an introduction to yoga philosophy and practice at a yoga training center, and visit a monastery to study the concepts of life and death in Buddhism, and participate in meditation sessions. Visit local public health and traditional Vietnamese medicine clinics in the Mekong Delta to compare rural community health practices to those in urban Ho Chi Minh City, the program’s base. Through visits with doctors, professors, and traditional medicine practitioners, you will gain a multidimensional view of healthcare and health delivery among diverse groups including marginalized and Indigenous populations. Choose to study either Vietnamese or Chinese language on this six-week, six-credit program that will broaden your understanding of medicine and enhance your career and academic prospects in the medical, health, NGO, or other fields.

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These three innovative programs are among 39 immersive and virtual language and internship programs offered by SIT for the coming summer and available for registration through April 1, 2023. Click here to learn more about these and all of SIT’s “not your ordinary” program offerings.

Dr. Cheikh Thiam will lead SIT’s large and diverse portfolio of sub-Sahara programs

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont – Dr. Cheikh Thiam, academic director for SIT Study Abroad in Senegal, will become SIT academic dean for Africa South of the Sahara starting Jan. 1, 2020, School for International Training announced today.

Thiam co-leads SIT Study Abroad programs in Senegal focused on global security and religious pluralism, and designed a pioneering undergraduate program that explores how hip-hop artists and cultural influencers are redefining Africa’s future. “I am looking forward to taking on this expanded role at SIT, while drawing from my research examining collective imaginations of being and identity in Africa and the African diaspora in the colonial and postcolonial era,” said Thiam, who has directed study abroad programs in Senegal for the past 10 years.

As academic dean, Thiam will lead one of the broadest portfolios of programs in Africa of any U.S. institution. SIT’s multidisciplinary portfolio of accredited undergraduate programs covers nine sub-Saharan countries and encompasses subjects such as biodiversity and wildlife management, multiculturalism and human rights, health policy and social transformation, and even offers a journalism program. Several of SIT’s Global MA programs also have components based in Africa, including climate change in Tanzania, humanitarian assistance in Uganda, global health in Kenya, and international diplomacy in South Africa.

Cheikh’s outstanding scholarship and network of relationships across Africa and the United States, combined with his passion for student-centered study abroad classrooms, make him an outstanding addition to our leadership team.

—  SIT President Dr. Sophia Howlett

Thiam brings to his new role a strong background in U.S. higher education. He has an MA and a PhD in comparative literature from Binghamton University, an MA in French from the University of Provence in Aix-en-Provence, as well as a BA from Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. He served as associate professor of African American studies, African studies, and French at The Ohio State University. He is the author of “Return to the Kingdom of Childhood: Re-envisioning the Legacy and Philosophical Relevance of Negritude,” published by Ohio State University Press in 2014.

Thiam also was the editor of Negritude Reloaded, a special issue of Journal on African Philosophy, an associate editor of Research in African Literatures, and has published widely in literature and philosophy journals such as Ethiopiques, West Africa Review, La Revue Africaine, La Revue du Graat, French Review, Research in African Literature, Dalhousie French Review, and Journal on African Philosophy. He recently completed a second book manuscript, “Epistemologies from the South: Negritude, Modernity, and the Idea of Africa.”

In announcing his appointment, SIT President Dr. Sophia Howlett said, “Cheikh’s outstanding scholarship and network of relationships across Africa and the United States, combined with his passion for student-centered study abroad classrooms, make him an exceptional addition to our leadership team.”

Thiam will join Howlett’s Council of Deans, a group that oversees SIT’s undergraduate programs, the SIT Graduate Institute, and SIT’s stable of more than 80 study abroad programs in Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, Latin America, and the International Honors Program.

Thiam succeeds Dr. Daniel Lumonya, who has served as academic dean for the region since August 2015. Prior to that time, Lumonya was SIT academic director in Uganda. Lumonya completed his PhD in development sociology at Cornell University. “I have had the chance to work with Cheikh on our evolving programs in the region and I welcome the depth of experience he brings to this position,” Lumonya said.

Lumonya is leaving to pursue a career in research, teaching and community service from his country, Uganda. “I want to thank Dan for his dedicated work and stellar contributions to SIT, both as an academic director and dean,” Howlett said. “We will all miss him.”

Ousmane earned his PhD in 2002 at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar where he has been teaching literature and translation. In addition to teaching courses at UCAD and teaching French for SIT, he has initiated important community development programs in and around Senegal, particularly related to sustainable development and building eco-communities. His teaching has been hailed by students as hands on and engaging.

Sidy has been teaching Wolof to American students for over twenty years. He received training from the Peace Corps on competency-based and community-based teaching and was an assistant coordinator for many years, training teachers to teach Wolof. He also worked for USAID, the Embassy of United Arab Emirates, Amnesty International, and many other NGOs as a Wolof instructor. He has the well-earned reputation of being one of the best Wolof teachers in town.

Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang is academic director for Ghana: Africa in the 21st Century. And although he’s relatively new to the program, SIT is not new to Kwabena. His mother was an SIT academic director before him, so, SIT students have always been a presence in Kwabena’s life.

Today, he holds a master’s degrees from the University of Ghana and West Virginia University, and a PhD from West Virginia University in English with a focus on African electronic literature. In addition to his work with SIT, he teaches at the University of Ghana.

My interest was how people use African digital creative expression in [digital] ways, but also, of course, if you’re looking at Africa, oral tradition and oral literature are very significant portions of African culture.

In this video, he talks about why Ghana is a great place to rethink ideas about Africa and how, by living and studying in Ghana, you’ll develop a critical perspective on mainstream representations of Ghanaian and African society.

… one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is they think Africans simply consume digital technology.

… typically Americans have this idea of Africa or Ghana based off what they watch on CNN or some major mainstream media. And in the reverse … the idea that Ghanaians have about America is also based off of Hollywood movies.

… when they come to Ghana they will see that, yes, there are some of the stereotypes hold true to an extent. After all, stereotypes are not necessarily wrong. The problem with a stereotype is you take that single truth and make it to represent everybody else.

So they will see some of the things that they’ve seen on CNN … but they’ll realize that that’s not the only thing, and then they will see that people are as normal as they are. They have the same anxieties. They have the same strengths. They have the same worries. They have the same things that they find interesting. And they will converge and diverge on different points.

Ghana has so much to offer in terms of both formal and non-formal educational opportunities.

They will learn how different people communicate cultural norms, and how some of the things that they are used to will be challenged just by staying with another family, another culture. The homestay [family] will also learn from these American students as well … both will teach each other, and that, I think is the beauty of experiential learning.

Juliana, who is affectionately known as Nana Ama,  has worked with SIT since 2011. She has a certificate in catering and participated in an international exchange program where she spent six months in Dingan, China. She loves to sing and cook.

Thelma was born in Takoradi and grew up in Obuasi, a mining town that is responsible for most of the gold that Ghana exports. She got her PhD in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom after earning her undergraduate and master’s degrees in pharmacy from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. She teaches in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Ghana and enjoys reading and writing.

Dr. Opoku-Agyemang holds a PhD in English literature from West Virginia University, where he also taught undergraduate courses in the Department of English. His research interests revolve around African literature, and he has authored publications that have focused on African electronic literature, video gaming, literature and gender, and oral literature. He teaches various undergraduate and graduate level courses in the University of Ghana’s Department of English, where he enjoys mentoring and interacting with students.

SIT Study Abroad Programs

• Ghana: Africa in the 21st Century