Mokgweetsi Masisi, president of the African nation of Botswana earned a master’s degree in education at Florida State University. When he returned to his alma mater last fall, he expressed interest in forging a relationship between Florida State and universities in his own country.
Recently Florida State faculty members traveled to Botswana to explore potential collaboration with the University of Botswana, the nation’s first institute of higher education, along with the Botswana International University of Science and Technology and the Botswana Institute of Technology Research Innovation. Christopher Coutts, a professor in the department of urban and regional planning, and Claudius Mundoma, director of the Physical Biochemistry Facility in the Institute of Molecular Biophysics, met with faculty and administrators at Botswana universities to talk about possible cooperation between the institutions.
Professor Coutts said discussions included a number of ways to build and strengthen this relationship that could lead to a more encompassing memorandum of understanding and also involve students and faculty, He said student exchanges, faculty exchanges, research collaborations, and curriculum development were ideas for possible cooperation. Other potential areas of collaboration were in education, physical education, health and recreation, architecture and planning, social science and geography.
