March 2002

Professor Helps Fight the Spread of AIDS through Science Education

By Michelle Nery

In 16 sub-Saharan Africa countries, more than one in 10 adults is infected with HIV. In seven of those nations, one in five adults carries the deadly virus. Despite those numbers, most African governments have for years denied the severity of the AIDS problem. Now the tide has turned, and leaders have realized that without action, the disease that has destroyed countless lives and crippled the families of their nations will also threaten the stability of their economic futures.

In December, Karen Kashmanian Oates, professor of integrative studies and a biochemist, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, for a workshop with science and engineering faculty from 12 African colleges and universities. Oates was invited to attend the workshop based on her experience with the national program she developed called Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) with the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The program seeks to improve science education through an innovative approach to learning by delving into complex public issues like HIV, the Human Genome Project, environmental issues, and more.

"HIV can serve as a door for students to understand science. This model fits exactly into what we know about cognitive development and how people learn. It's not that the science is different, it's that the approach is," she says.

Faculty from the African universities first learned about SENCER through the Africa Office of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Last summer, four African faculty members attended the SENCER Institute at Santa Clara University in San Jose, Calif. "They were very enthusiastic and got to see the whole range of SENCER modeled courses being taught across the nation as well as one HIV model course," Oates says. They were particularly excited by the civic engagement component of the courses because the key to reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa is to link the learning in the classroom to the community.

Oates was invited to Kenya to help faculty members rethink how science education is taught by moving from the general survey course model into more in-depth approaches, provide model courses of teaching science through HIV and AIDS, show how the courses could connect to the community, and help support the growth and development of women scientists and engineers in Africa.

Participants at the workshop decided to form a consortium of pan-African institutions dedicated to science reform to collectively address HIV as a curricular subject through which scientific concepts and ideas can be explored. "The majority of African countries have accepted the problem and want to do something inexpensive, which they can do through education," Oates says. "The scientists and engineers who attended the workshop ranged from pediatricians to agriculturalists. They were all concerned about HIV in their countries but from different angles such as medical, agricultural, and economic," she says. The agriculturists were concerned with nutrition, which if improved could help buoy the health of those infected. They proposed introducing new crops including the sweet potato, which has more nutrients that the potato that is currently grown. Oates is helping the consortium members apply for a National Institutes of Health grant to support their endeavors, and she is also helping to bring 16 African faculty members to the SENCER summer institute this year.

Several of the African universities plan on modeling their HIV and AIDS courses after the NCC course called AIDS: Impact on Society and the Biomedical Implication of HIV course taught at Rutgers University. "The faculty want to develop a rigorous science curriculum around the topic of HIV and AIDS, and the timing is now right for that to happen. What has changed is that the governments are now supportive of these efforts and encouraging faculty involvement because the government realized how severely HIV adversely affects economic growth and development," says Oates. "The faculty members are very excited because they can now talk freely and openly about AIDS and can connect the classroom to community needs by having students serve as community educators in their villages. The government also likes the idea of civic engagements because they are getting twice the AIDS prevention 'punch' for the money expended," Oates says.