Associate Award
SANREM CRSP is supported by the United States Agency for International Development and the generous support of the American people through Cooperative Agreement No. EPP-A-00-04-00013-00
The SANREM CRSP is managed by the Office of International Research, Education, and Development at Virginia Tech.
Agricultural Higher Education in Southern Sudan
The SANREM CRSP received an Associate Award in 2008 from USAID’s Sudan Mission to evaluate higher education needs in agriculture and natural resource management in the southern Sudan. Because the region’s higher education system collapsed during more than 50 years of civil war, few well-trained Sudanese are available to deal with agriculture and natural resource issues. SANREM’s goal is to assess education and human resource needs in the southern Sudan and to develop higher education curricula to meet these needs.
The Associate Award is being led by Michael Bertelsen, SANREM’s economic assessment impact coordinator and associate director of Virginia Tech’s Office of International Research, Education, and Development. Co-PIs are SANREM Program Director Theo Dillaha and Father Michael Schultheis, acting vice chancellor for the Catholic University of the Sudan. The program is developing curricula to promote ecosystem protection for the region’s degraded natural resource base, including shrub lands, savanna and grasslands, water and soil resources, and wildlife.
SANREM sponsored an international symposium Nov. 17-19, 2008, in Juba to review current knowledge on needs for higher education in agriculture and environmental sciences in the southern Sudan and to reach a conseusus on final project goals and objectives.
A second symposium in Juba on March 11-12, 2009, reviewed progress to date and presented preliminary findings of the Higher Education in Agriculture Needs Assessment survey.