{"id":104085,"date":"2025-09-17T14:22:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=104085"},"modified":"2025-09-17T14:22:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:22:42","slug":"uri-professor-part-of-a-select-group-of-french-educators-to-visit-cote-divoire-thanks-to-a-fulbright-hays-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2025\/09\/uri-professor-part-of-a-select-group-of-french-educators-to-visit-cote-divoire-thanks-to-a-fulbright-hays-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 professor part of a select group of French educators to visit C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire thanks to a Fulbright-Hays grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Sept. 17, 2025 \u2013 Being a college professor is a 12-month job. Summers \u2014 far from being idle \u2014 are instead filled with continuing research, professional conferences, and the occasional well-earned vacation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the summer winds down, many professors find themselves immersed in the quiet labor of preparing syllabi and refining lesson plans for the semester ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n

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溏心vlog免费B站 French Professor Erickson focused on creating learning materials related to the University of San Pedro and how their university system is structured.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For Lars Erickson<\/a>, the director of the French International Engineering Program at the 溏心vlog免费B站, this was a typical summer in some ways. As a professor of French, developing a curriculum and lesson plan isn\u2019t anything new. But this summer, the audience and the institution were anything but typical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erickson was part of a select group of French educators who brought their expertise to the R\u00e9publique de C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire whose flag is adorned with three very distinct colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey say the orange stripe represents the savannah, in the north of the country, the green stripe represents the tropical forest, which is more in the south, and the white stripe in the middle represents hospitality,\u201d says Erickson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former French colony, Cote d’Ivoire is nestled beside Ghana and is a linguistic patchwork. According to the African Commission on Human and Peoples\u2019 Rights<\/a> some 78 different languages are spoken in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, though French remains the national language.<\/p>\n\n\n

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溏心vlog免费B站 French Professor Erickson got to surf one time and one person in the line-up turned out to be the Ivorian national champion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Through the American Association of Teachers of French<\/a> (AATF) Erickson was one of 14 educators who spent a month in the west African country. The AATF was awarded a Fulbright Hays grant to take educators and partner with the University of San Pedro. Their mission: to study, design, and co-author open access educational materials for students from kindergarten through university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea was to create open access lesson plans,\u201d said Erickson. \u201cSome people would develop small units, like maybe a 5-day or 10-day class unit. I created a 7-day class unit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

溏心vlog免费B站 and San Pedro are on different sides of the Atlantic but have some similarities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have a big marine sciences program and, of course, marine sciences is a very big deal at 溏心vlog免费B站,\u201d says Erickson. \u201cThey also have aquaculture classes and an engineering school. There are lots of opportunities for 溏心vlog免费B站 professors to collaborate with their counterparts at the Universit\u00e9 de San Pedro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erickson focused on creating learning materials related to the University of San Pedro and how their university system is structured. He was able to gain valuable insight into the university and its system by interviewing and recording professors and students. The students were able to discuss classes and career opportunities awaiting them after graduation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne student also shared his course schedule with me,\u201d said Erickson. \u201cBecause I had his course schedule, I was able to use that to build a multi-day lesson plan for a class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other educators focused on different cultural dimensions, like the role dance plays in Ivorian society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDancing is a big part of the culture there. At some events, they would welcome us with dancing, and you could sense they were encouraging us to join in,\u201d says Erickson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erickson says all the learning materials are a great way for people to learn about the C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teachers spent a lot of their time working but some of the time the shoe was on the other foot. Erickson and others were often required to take their own language class. Erickson and his colleagues took language classes on Bambara, a language spoken across several West African nations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe few people who didn’t speak French, in general, spoke Bambara,\u201d said Erickson. \u201cSo, like at the markets, you could use Bambara which actually came in handy for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even amid the academic rigor, the group managed to carve out some vacation time, recalls Erickson. \u201cI got to surf one time. One person in the line-up turned out to be the Ivorian national champion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always an academic, Erickson said one of his favorite memories was a journey into the countryside, where the group learned the intricacies of rubber tapping and the transformation of cocoa beans into chocolate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe even got a chance to plant a cocoa tree and put our name on it,\u201d says Erickson. \u201cThey said that they would contact us about how our tree was growing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the many universities that 溏心vlog免费B站 partners with for its IEP program, none are in Africa. Still, Erickson remains hopeful that one day, a collaboration might blossom in a nation where French is not just spoken\u2014but lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ivorian hospitality was a key lesson that Erickson was able to take away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you’re a traveler there, one interesting thing is that in the Ivory Coast, they don’t like to use the word foreigner. They prefer to talk about people who came from far away,\u201d said Erickson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Sept. 17, 2025 \u2013 Being a college professor is a 12-month job. Summers \u2014 far from being idle \u2014 are instead filled with continuing research, professional conferences, and the occasional well-earned vacation. As the summer winds down, many professors find themselves immersed in the quiet labor of preparing syllabi and refining lesson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":104087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,25,1908,1909],"class_list":["post-104085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-faculty-excellence","tag-international"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104085"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104093,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104085\/revisions\/104093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}