Current International Development Projects- Listing of MSU projects by continent/region (.xls)

Past International Development Projects

Click on bullets below to link you to project homepages

A map of the world with dots representing countries where projects are being done. Point on Map Point on Map Point on Map point on Cameroon in the map point on Cape Verde in the map point on Ghana in the map point on Kenya in the map point on Lesotho in the map point on Mali in the map point on Malawi in the map point on Mozambique in the map point on Namibia in the map point on Nigeria in the map point on Benin in the map point on Burundi in the map point on Rwanda in the map point on Senegal in the map point on South Africa in the map point on Madagascar in the map point on Tanzania in the map point on Ethiopia in the map point on Uganda in the map point on Zambia in the map point on Zimbabwe in the map point on Cambodia in the map point on China in the map point on Egypt in the map point on India in the map point on Indonesia in the map point on Korea in the map point on Laos in the map point on Malaysia in the map point on Thailand in the map point on Vietnam in the map point on Philippines in the map point on Brazil in the map point on Belize in the map point on Chile in the map point on Costa Rica in the map point on Dominican Republic in the map point on Ecuador in the map point on Honduras in the map point on Nicaragua in the map point on Jamaica in the map point on Mexico in the map point on Albania in the map point on Armenia in the map point on Bosnia in the map point on Bulgaria in the map point on Croatia in the map point on Poland in the map point on Montenegro in the map point on Romania in the map point on Serbia in the map point on Russia in the map point on Slovenia in the map

Click on the letters to view projects starting with that letter:

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The projects listed below are representative of the technical assistance and training activities conducted by MSU faculty in the developing world (project titles in alphabetical order):

Afrobarometer
The Afrobarometer project measures the social, political, and economic atmosphere in Africa. Since beginning in Zambia in 1993, surveys have been conducted in Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Additional countries to be surveyed in 2002 and beyond include Senegal, Cabo Verde and Mozambique. Topics covered in the survey include Democracy, Governance, Livelihoods, Macro-economics and Markets, Social Capital, Conflict and Crime, Participation and National Identity. Led by MSU, the Afrobarometer involves the core partners of The Institute for Democracy in South Africa and the Centre for Democratic Development (Ghana). This project has been supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Danish Governance Trust Fund at the World Bank, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Michigan State University. For additional information, please contact Dr. Michael Bratton, Professor of Political Science and African Studies, at mbratton@msu.edu, or visit http://www.afrobarometer.org/.

Dry Bean Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program
The Dry Bean Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP), managed by Michigan State University, is one of nine CRSPs nationwide supported through the Office of Economic Growth and Agriculture Trade/United States Agency for International Development-Washington. This long-term collaborative research and training program, first funded in 1980, begins a new grant period in 2002. The Global Vision for the Dry Bean Pulses CRSP is (1) to generate new knowledge and technological outputs that contribute to increased dry bean pulses production, utilization and consumption with the ultimate goals of enhancing food security, alleviating malnutrition and reducing poverty and (2) to develop the human and institutional capacity of agricultural universities and national agriculture research systems so that institutional academic, research and outreach programs can be self-sustaining and contribute to the long-term development of the dry bean pulses sectors in both less-developed countries and in the United States. The new grant involves a partnership between eleven U.S. universities and eighteen developing country universities/institutions to address constraints to the dry bean pulses subsectors in three target regions - East and Southern Africa, West Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean Basin. A total of seven MSU faculty currently serve as principal investigators or collaborators in the Dry Bean Pulses CRSP. This project is supported by funds from the United States Agency for International Development. For additional information, please contact Dr. Irv Widders, Director, at widders@msu.edu, or visit http://www.isp.msu.edu/CRSP.

Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems Collaborative Research Support Program
Led by the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems (BASIS) Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) is focused on land, water, labor and financial markets and their interactions as they relate to economic growth, food security, and sustainable resource management. MSU's project, titled "Institutional Dimensions of Water Policy Reform in Southern Africa: Addressing Critical Water-Land Intersections, " is attempting to increase access to water resources and encourage their sustainable use, specifically in the countries of Zimbabwe and Malawi. This project is supported by funds from the United States Agency for International Development. For additional information, please contact Dr. William Derman, Professor of Anthropology, at derman@msu.edu, Dr. Anne Ferguson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, at fergus12@msu.edu, or the Institute for International Agriculture, at iia@msu.edu. Also visit http://www.basis.wisc.edu/ or http://crsps.org/ for more information.

Breast Cancer in Women of Polish Ancestry Study
MSU's Department of Epidemiology is studying why Polish women experience a breast cancer incidence one third that of U.S. women, but the breast cancer mortality rate for Polish immigrants to the West is similar to the rates of the host-country, a transition rate not seen among other migrant populations. This study compares Polish-born immigrants in Cook County, Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit Metropolitan Area, Michigan, and Polish natives from Gliwice, Katowice, Pozan, and Bialystok. This project is supported by funds from the United States National Institutes of Health. For additional information, please contact Dr. Dorothy Rybaczyk Pathak, Professor of Epidemiology, at pathak@msu.edu or Julie Wirth, Research Associate, at wirthj@msu.edu.

Climate-Land Interactions Project - CLIP
The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.75 million four-year grant under the Biocomplexity in the Environment Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program for research on, "An Integrated Analysis of Regional Land-Climate Interactions" to a team led by Michigan State University (MSU) geographers David Campbell, Jeff Andresen, David Lusch, Jennifer Olson and Jiaguo Qi; and by Marianne Huebner, Lijian Yang (MSU Statistics and Probability), Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University and Brent Lofgren of GLERL, NOAA. The team also includes colleagues at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia and Edinburgh University in the UK; the International Livestock Research Institute and the University of Nairobi in Kenya; the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; Makerere University and the governmental Department of Meteorology in Uganda; and North Carolina State University. The research will illuminate the magnitude and nature of the interactions between land use and climate change at regional and local scales in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda). For additional information, please contact Dr. David Campbell, Professor of Geography, at djc@msu.edu or Jennifer M. Olson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography, at olsonjj@msu.edu, or visit http://clip.msu.edu/.

Integrating Educational Improvement with Environmental Resource Management to Reduce Poverty in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam
This joint project between Michigan State University and Cantho University in Vietnam promotes sustainable community development through small scale projects to improve household income. The project links schools and communities in new ways. Students apply concepts learned through active classroom participation to natural resource issues in their communities (e.g., overuse of fertilizer and pesticides). Then they work with villagers on integrated pest management projects, household gardens, and aquaculture (fish raising) projects, among others. This project is supported by funds from the Shell Sustainable Communities Programme. A related project with Cantho University focuses on improving the teacher training program at Cantho University, so teachers know how to use this approach to learning when they start their teaching career. This project is funded by the United States Department of State. For additional information, please contact Dr. Christopher Wheeler, Professor of Teacher Education, at cwheeler@msu.edu.

Land Use Change Analysis as an Approach for Investigating Biodiversity Loss and Land Degradation
The Land Use Change Impacts and Dynamics (LUCID) project addresses the conservation of biodiversity and prevention of land degradation through identification and monitoring of changes to the landscape. This project is supported by funds from the United Nations Environment Programme/Global Environment Facility, United States Agency for International Development, International Livestock Research Institute and several universities involved in the project. For additional information, please contact Dr. David Campbell, Professor of Geography, at djc@msu.edu, or Jennifer M. Olson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography, at olsonjj@msu.edu.

The Preperation Gap: Teacher Education for Middle School Mathematics in Six Countries (MT21)
MT21 studies how well a sample of universities and teacher-training institutions prepare middle school math teachers in the U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Bulgaria and Mexico. Specifically, 2,627 future teachers were surveyed about their preparation, knowledge and beliefs in this area. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, please contact Dr. William Shmidth at bschmidt@msu.edu.

Partnership in Food Industry Development - Fruits and Vegetables
Begun in 2001, MSU's Partnership in Food Industry Development - Fruits and Vegetables (PFID-F&V) project is one of two university/food industry partnerships to improve food industries in developing countries and encourage competitive participation in the global trading system. PFID - Fruits and Vegetables has worked in Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa, and India. U.S. private sector and NGO collaborators include The Produce Marketing Association, International Food Policy Research Institute, TechnoServe, Inc., Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center and CARE International. The project is supported by funds from the United States Agency for International Development. For additional information, please contact Dr. Hamish Gow, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics, at hgow@msu.edu.

Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa
The Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa is an independent effort formed by U.S. and African public and private sector institutions and international humanitarian organizations. The goal of the partnership is to formulate a vision, strategy, and action plan for renewed U.S. efforts to help African partners cut hunger significantly by 2015. For more information, please visit http://www.africanhunger.org/ or http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/africanhunger/index.htm.

Pattern to Process: Research and Applications for Understanding Multiple Interactions and Feedback on Land Cover Change
This project looks at the human drivers of land use and land cover change, and the biodiversity impacts resulting from such changes. A model is being constructed at farm level for the Brazilian Amazon that scales up from household level decision-making to regional landscape change. Biodiversity studies of bird populations are being conducted in Costa Rica that link measurements of diversity to characteristics of the landscape. The project is supported by funds from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration. For additional information, please contact Dr. Robert Walker, Associate Professor of Geography, at rwalker@msu.edu.

Rural and Agricultural Incomes with a Sustainable Environment (RAISE) Plus
RAISE is a field support program to help USAID missions and geographic bureaus identify and pursue investments in natural resource-based industries. MSU is a member of a consortium (one of three RAISE indefinite quantity contracts awarded) led by Development Alternatives, Inc., with Abt Associates, Conservation International, Fintrac, Inc., Management Systems International, and Winrock as subcontractors. The focus is on industries that substantially raise incomes, are environmentally sound, and promote community-based natural resource management. The project is supported by funds from the United States Agency for International Development. For additional information, please contact Dr. Dan Clay, Director of the Institute for International Agriculture, at clay@msu.edu, or visit http://www.raiseplus.com/.

Severe Malaria in African Children and Training Medical School Faculty to Tackle Malaria in Malawi
Working six months in Malawi and six months on the MSU campus each year, Dr. Terrie Taylor has focused on tropical medicine, specifically the mechanisms and treatment of cerebral malaria among children. Recent funding has allowed Taylor and her team to develop a network of clinical trial sites across Sub-Saharan Africa. This network will establish within Africa the capacity to conduct large scale clinical trials of new antimalarial treatments. This project is supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center. For additional information, please contact Dr. Terrie Taylor, Professor of Internal Medicine, at taylort@msu.edu.

South African National Cultural Heritage Training and Technology Program
The South African National Cultural Heritage Training and Technology Program (SANCH), working with South African and U.S. universities, archives, and museums, helps South African institutions manage the rich national cultural heritage of South Africa. Using technology, the program will also make these collections more accessible to communities and scholars within Africa and around the globe. SANCH is sponsored at MSU through the MSU Museum, the African Studies Center, and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online. This project is supported by funds from the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations. For additional information, please contact Dr. C. Kurt Dewhurst, Director of the MSU Museum and Professor of English, at dewhurs1@msu.edu, Dr. John W. Eadie, Director of the Consortium for Inter-Institutional Collaboration in African and Latin American Studies and Professor of History, at jweadie@msu.edu, Dr. Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX and Associate Professor of History, at mark@mail.matrix.msu.edu, or Dr. David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center and Professor of Sociology, at wiley@msu.edu. Also visit http://www.sanch.org

South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy Program This project creates on-line educational materials that explore the end of apartheid and the emergence of democracy in South Africa. These educational resources present the stories of the lives and actions of ordinary citizens as well as prominent leaders during and immediately after the apartheid years in South Africa, utilizing audio, video and first person accounts in combination with select secondary materials. This project creates age-appropriate curriculum materials for United States schools and colleges. It is supported by funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For additional information, please contact Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX and a Professor of History, at kornbluh@msu.edu. Also visit http://www.overcomingapartheid.msu.edu

Tegemeo Agricultural Monitoring and Policy Analysis Project (TAMPA II)
The TAMPA II project is a collaborative effort, started in 1997, between Egerton University, the Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development (TEGEMEO) in Nairobi, Kenya and MSU's Department of Agricultural Economics. The project focuses on agricultural policy research, training, and outreach. Through its recent involvement in various government initiatives, the project has begun to provide a more objective vantage point for discussions on agricultural policy and poverty reduction strategies. The project is supported by funds from the United States Agency for International Development. For additional information, please contact Dr. Thomas Jayne, Professor, International Development, Department of Agricultural Economics, at jayne@msu.edu, or Dr. Eric Crawford, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, at crawfor5@msu.edu, or visit http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/kenya/index.htm.

Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M)
TEDS-M 2008 is a comparative study of teacher education with a focus on the preparation of teachers of mathematics at the primary and lower secondary levels. The study is carried out under the aegis of the International Association for the Evalutation of Educational Achievement (IEA), a consortium of research institutions in 60 countries. TEDS-M will pay particular attention to the links between teacher education policies, practices and outcomes. The study will provide participating countries with a valuable opportunity to conduct research on their own teacher education system and to learn from approaches used in other countries. For more information, please contact Dr. Teresa Tatto at mttatto@msu.edu.

Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
MSU's College of Education operates the U.S. national center for this international educational assessment of the 1990s, with over 50 countries participating in the study. This study is the largest to date in a series of international studies sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The study looks at national systems of science and mathematics education, instructional resources available, and provides detailed descriptions of students' achievement at various grade levels. The project is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation and National Council on Educational Statistics. For additional information, please contact Dr. William Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology, at bschmidt@msu.edu, or visit http://ustimss.msu.edu/.