Independent/Directed/Research Study

KSAP includes an independent/directed/research study course component, offered through university departments at 4000/6000 levels (3 credits), are intended to provide students with educational, cultural, and natural experiences through immersion in Kenya's diversified physical, biological, and cultural environments in the contexts of education and the arts and sciences. To meet individualized needs, students will design their course of study, teaching experiences, and research investigations as independent field studies. Independent field studies will require conferencing with UGA faculty and Kenyan professionals. Kenyans will include Moi University faculty, teachers, wildlife experts, and community elders. Prior to initiating a research project you should read the Required Selected Readings that will provide you with a historical background of the area around the Keiyo Escarpment and Kerio Valley and the nature and form of research studies.

Students in the Honors Program should investigate possible international study abroad Court scholarships (http://www.uga.edu/honors/) and developing a study that could be presented in the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) program.

See http://www.uga.edu/honors/curo/index.html).

Expectations for your research project:

1. Prior to departure the research project will include:

   1. a research question or questions to be investigated,
   2. a literature review (with at least 8 citations from referred professional journal articles), and
   3. descriptions of your methods for data collection.
2. During the safari:

   1. Your data will be collected
3. Upon return from Kenya you will complete:

   1. your data analysis,
   2. construct your results, and
   3. conclusions with implications that will be
   4. written as a formal paper including a title, abstract, and references; and
   5. submitted to both UGA and Moi University participating faculty/mentors.

Possible areas in Kenya's cultural and natural environment that KSAP participants might investigate include:

1. Perspectives on class management and discipline in Kenyan schools (secondary and primary schools).
2. Lives of Kenyan students (male­female, primary-secondary) in day or boarding schools.
3. Experiences in teacher education/university for Kenyan students,
4. Design, selection of materials, and construction of traditional homes and grain stores, methods of food production (crops and domesticated animals) and storage of products.
5. Current health delivery systems in relation to long-term disease related problems versus short-term problems (Moi University has a medical college, referral hospital, and district and dispensary facilities. And, a tropical medicine exchange program with several medical schools in the United States).
6. Traditional (customary) civil and criminal law, challenges in retaining a two-system legal system.
7. Interview and analyze Kenyan coaches and world-renowned runners/athletes and their perspectives of training and organized sports.
8. Examine and document the traditional sports structure and compare to the contemporary systems in the states,
9. Documentation and analysis of indigenous knowledge and applied uses (natural history and the arts including crafts, carvings, music, and dance), and
10. Analysis of indigenous and introduced economic and political systems.
11. Anthropology, biological sciences (e.g. animal census/behavior, plant taxonomy, ecology, ornithology, genetic and biogenetic research), geography, historical and social phenomena.