PHHE/SENCER Africa collaboration. (News and Information).

Four leaders from the Nairobi-based, pan-African NOC, African Women in Science and Engineering (AWSE), attended the SENCER Summer Institute in Santa Clara in August 2001. While in the U.S., AWSE worked in collaboration with AAC&U, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the International Women in Science and Engineering (IWISE) at Iowa State University to develop activities--including a workshop in Africa--to achieve three purposes:

1. mobilizing resources within African colleges and universities to focus on reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

2. Improving science education within the challenge of improving general education at the postsecondary level by using the SENCER approach.

3. Supporting the growth, development, and influence of AWSE as an organization. In December a delegation of the American partners (AAC&U, AAAS, IWISE) traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to participate in the three-day workshop organized by AWSE for teams from twelve universities and research institutes in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. A central activity of the workshop was to present the SENCER and PHHE approaches and to develop applications for attendance at the SENCER Summer Institute 2002, to be held at Santa Clara University in August.

The most significant outcome of the Nairobi meeting was the decision by participants to form a consortium of institutions dedicated to collective action on HIV in particular and science reform in general, coordinated by AWSE.

More information on the African initiative will be available on the PHHE and SENCER pages of the AAC&U Web site: www.aacu-edu.org/phhe or aacu-edu.org/sencer.