A University Without Borders

By Edem Dorothy Ossai

Applications for the Mandela Washington Fellowship of the U.S. government has closed.  As we anticipate results enjoy stories from this year’s cohorts on their experience.

The first thing that struck me about Arizona State University was that there were no boundary walls separating the campus from the rest of the community. Right behind the law building stood the very cosmopolitan Sheraton Hotel, next to the impressive Walter Cronkite school of Journalism stood the grand Arizona Science Centre. Also a few blocks from the University student centre stood the tall glass offices of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. I had never encountered a University without walls or borders and so I had been in the ASU Downtown Campus in Phoenix, Arizona, for well over 10 minutes without realising. It wasn’t until we got to the front of an attractive student dormitory building called Taylor Place, which would be my home for the next 6 weeks that I suddenly understood. At that point I looked at the cab driver and escort with surprise and asked “when did we go through the university gates?”

EducationUSA: Providing Opportunities

Cross section of participants
during the graduate fair

It is sunrise in Abuja with the skies resplendent in white and blue. Looking at my wristwatch, it is almost nine, and my anxiety concerning the event hit me. As I paid attention to the gate and waited for students to come through the entrance, the admissions officers from different schools in the U.S. arrived, pulling out their trifold and other materials for the fair. Before I could look around, students from all types of schools, with different colors of uniforms arrived and were already signing in. The sight of them took me down memory lane as I recalled my own brown and white high school uniform.