Acknowledgements

Exploring Africa is a program of the African Studies Center in collaboration with three other units at Michigan State University (MSU), with invaluable input from external educational consultants and teachers from throughout Michigan and the United States.

Primary funding and support for Exploring Africa has come from three main sources: the MSU African Studies Center; the MSU Office of International Studies and Programs (ISP)– John Hudzik, former Dean of ISP, provided strong support for the project at its inception; the U.S. Department of Education through grants that fund the African Studies Center as a National Resource Center for the Study of Africa.

The MSU College of Education provides on-going advice in the curriculum and assessment arenas.

MATRIX: Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, designed, and has updated, the Exploring Africa web-site and is responsible for all technical aspects of the project. Scott Pennington, former Assistant Director of MATRIX, was the original web-designer and coordinated the on-going development of the website until his departure from Matrix in 2011. Over the years he was assisted by numerous student associates. Mike Green is replacing Dan Jaquint as MATRIX liaison with Exploring Africa. He is responsible for the major upgrade to the current WordPress format.

A number of external educators provide invaluable input and feedback to Exploring Africa. Most importantly, Carol Egbo, former Michigan Teacher of the Year, Social Studies Coordinator for the Waterford Michigan school district, and nationally recognized expert on integrating Africa into K-12 curricula, is the educational consultant for the project. Her invaluable insights have greatly enriched the project.

Morgan Kinstner, English educator and MSU graduate, has provided invaluable input in the development of the redesigned Web platform (2014-2015) along with designing the newly offered lesson plans that accompany each unit’s learning activities. Katie Remesz, MSU College of Education graduate, wrote a majority of the lesson plans and helped transition Exploring Africa to the new web platform more smoothly.

The African Studies Center is in charge of developing all content for Exploring Africa inclusive of the five unit curriculum, current events pages, the national profiles, and monitoring and responding to posts to the Exploring Africa Forum.

The development of the content for Exploring Africa is a collaborative endeavor. During its development Exploring Africa has benefited from the expertise and creative contributions of a number of excellent advanced doctoral students and a post-doctoral fellow most of whom have gone on to illustrious careers in Africa and across the United States. These include:

Amzat Abbas (American Studies)
Kari Bergstrom (Anthropology)
Carmela Garritano (Literature/Film Studies)
Manelisi Genge (Post-doctoral Fellow/History)
Solomon Getahun (History)
April Greenwood (Anthropology)
Leslie Hadfield (History)
Amy Jamison (Education/History)
Cheryl Krohn (Education)
Kimberly Ludwig (Political Science)
Lillian Muofhe (Education)
Marita Eibl (Anthropology)
Lexi Hanson (Development Studies)
Marie Kujenga (Music)
Luvuyo Lalendle (Education/Music)
Prita Meier (Art History)
Mary Mwiandi (History)
Emily Riley (Anthropology)

John Metzler (Assistant Director, African Studies Center/Assistant Professor of African Studies and Teacher Education) has been the director of and team-leader for the Exploring Africa project since its inception.