African Studies Study Abroad Program

Program Overview

The African Studies study abroad program at the Palm is designed to give students a multifaceted experience both in and outside of the classroom. As a liberal arts university, our philosophy is to equip students with critical and creative thinking skills by offering quality education founded on the humanities and socials sciences.

Our student-oriented programs are designed to help our students acquire a holistic understanding of their society and that of others. We belief the ability to demonstrate critical thinking and problem-solving skills is fundamentally tied to expanding one’s cultural knowledge to developing a transcultural perspective. 

Our study abroad program offers students an in-class and experiential learning opportunity outside of their home universities and countries. The benefits of living, studying and experiencing a new culture is enormous but overall, it encourages students to be open-minded, culturally sensitive and develop better understanding of global issues and perspectives.

The Program

Extensive Orientation: Visiting students and or faculty are given days of extensive orientation to get them acculturated into Ghanaian culture. They (students and faculty) are also be taken through a thorough orientation about the program including in-class lectures and activities, money, security, food, transportation, host family, hostel, health, cultural and excursion trips information during the orientation.

Hands-on Group/Team Activities: Visiting students are paired with Palm students to ensure they learn from each other; be it in the area of politics, culture, cooking  etc. and each group is expected to participate in weekly and monthly group activities where they are required to share their experiences and interact with other visiting students who are not their associate partners. Topical issues emerging from the visiting students’ home country and in Ghana are discussed at these meetings as a way of whipping the student’s interest not just in keeping an open mind especially on controversial issues but also boosting their confidence levels, independent thinking and most importantly gain a cross-cultural understanding of global issues. 

By way of encouraging students’ participation, student’s birthdays are celebrated monthly where a traditional meal of the celebrant(s) are prepared and enjoyed by all participants. This is done amidst local singing, dancing and drumming. While this may be fun, it is also a way of teaching each other how to sing, dance and prepare a meal relative to their culture. Also, to complement their academic work, students are encouraged to volunteer at hospitals, orphanages, secondary schools, NGOs etc.

Social Events

Course field trips and excursions are organized amidst other numerous casual activities to expose visiting students to the Ghanaian culture. The course field trips include visitations to sites like Pigoro Slave Camp in the Northern Region of Ghana, Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River, Cape Coast Castle in the Central Region etc. 

Students are also taken to major tourist sites like the Kakum National Park, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, W. E. B. Du Bois Centre, the Independence Square and a visit to the Makola Open Market to experience market life in Ghana. In addition to the above, students would be taken to the Nzulezo Stilt Village, a small village built with stilts on Lake Tadane in the Western Region. Students would enjoy a canoe ride to the village and spend some time with the locals as they go through their daily routine on the water.

Program Objectives

At the end of the program, students would be expected to have acquired the skill to:

  • Understand/appreciate the cultural expressions of people other than those they are used to
  • Be culturally sensitive and develop a sense of cultural relativism
  • Appreciate the differences in social norms and values in order to be able to review one’s own point of view when making contributions on global issues
  • Able to teach others about their culture without romanticizing it
  • Able to understand marginalized groups and their concerns 
  • Improve their problem-solving abilities from a cross-cultural perspective