OAU, US varsity collaborate on research, exchange programmes
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, Osun State and the Penn State University, Pennsylvania, United States have explored areas of collaboration between the two ivory towers.
The Pennsylvania State University three-man team was at the OAU campus on Saturday to meet with management of the school, as well as inspect available facilities.
The team led, a Professor of Electrical Engineering, Peter Idowu after the facility tour expressed delight with the quality and rich depth of the University, saying it shared similarities with Penn State University.
He said: “The university is seeking to form a partnership and collaboration with universities in West Africa, and when we were scoping out for universities, OAU fit into our mission. It is very large, diverse, with a wide range in programme and a comprehensive university like Penn State University.
“We want to partner with as many universities as possible looking at those who have a similar mission as ours. The goal is to start with one or two universities to look at how to do it and see how fruitful it is.
“OAU stand apart from many other universities because we see an extremely very vibrant university with substantial infrastructure and with beautiful facilities. We have a lot of conversation with the Vice Chancellor and others, we see that they have great ideas which our university will be happy if we take the report back to them.”
In her remark on behalf of the Vice-Chancellor, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academics, Professor Omobola Babalola described the partnership programme as a win-win situation for the two schools, saying it is aimed at expanding frontiers of teaching and leaning.
“We have a team from Penn State University visiting OAU, we have had meetings with stakeholders in the university looking at area of collaboration in terms of staff/student exchange, research and grant proposal writing.
“We will have a kind of programme and the leader of the team Professor Idowu made mentioned of 3 plus one programme that is if you have a programme running for four years, the students could spend 3 years in Nigeria and the last year in the United States of America at the Penn State University”, she added.
Also, OAU’s Executive Director Center for Research, Professor Ebunoluwa Adejuyigbe said the partnership would benefit, not just OAU, but Nigeria as a whole, as it would enable bringing knowledge from the developed world to Africa via Nigeria and propel the country towards becoming a developed nation through research.
“Research is very key to every aspect of life, to moving the country forward, particularly this time when we have Artificial Intelligence(AI) and machine learning, those are things we want to bring in from the developed world to the south, we also have things that we will exposing them to, so that the collaboration will be beneficial to both OAU and the Penn State University,” she said.
