Research and Advising
A major goal in this project is to mentor students in research. At present, IFORD has seven core faculty and annually recruits about 45 students for a two-year training cycle. The small size of IFORD’s core faculty, who share similar training and skills, limits the range of topics and methods explored by IFORD students. Furthermore, a heavy teaching and supervision load makes it difficult for IFORD faculty to mentor students beyond their end-of-training theses.
For IFORD students, the opportunities for publication are limited even though some clearly have the potential to do solid work. Cornell@IFORD provides mentoring to promising students so they can refine their work and submit it to peer-reviewed journals or to scientific conferences within and outside Africa. These students are groomed for graduate studies through a series of professional development activities including advanced English training and preparation for GRE exams.
Our belief is that this preliminary selection and grooming vastly increases the chances of success in graduate school, and will increase the likelihood that graduate schools and sponsors who invest in these students get a good return on their investment.
Cornell@IFORD mentors are graduate students and core faculty.