UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

UT Tyler GATE Students Traveling to Ghana

June 10, 2016

Media Contact:  Hannah Buchanan
Editor/Writer–Strategic Communications & Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.539.7196 (cell)

The University of Texas at Tyler will send 18 students to the West African country of Ghana on June 12 for five weeks as part of the Global Awareness Through Education Program, Dr. Paul Streufert, executive director for special academic programs, announced.

"These GATE students, from a variety of majors across campus, developed their global awareness skills over a two-year period in which they studied the history, language and culture of this nation," Streufert said. "The GATE '16 cohort will study history and speech communication with UT Tyler faculty while in residence at the University of Ghana in Accra, the nation's capital."

Students also will visit places of historical and cultural significance including Cape Coast Castle, used in the 19th century slave-trade, and the Akosombo hydro-electric dam, an engineering feat which created Lake Volta, the world's largest man-made lake, he added.

The group will spend the last ten days of their travel study participating in a service learning project in the rural village of Okurase. This medical outreach, which provides care for more than a thousand residents, will place UT Tyler students alongside Ghanaian doctors, nurses and social workers. Students will use expertise learned in their own academic disciplines to assist the local team in helping the residents of Okurase and the surrounding communities.

This past spring, GATE staff and students raised more than $3,000 worth of medical supplies for the village as part of UT Tyler's commitment to this outreach program.

GATE students will record their adventures in the GATE blog, http://blogs.uttyler.edu/gate/.

For more information, contact GATE coordinator Londa Jensen, 903.565.5730 or ljensen@uttyler.edu.

One of the 14 campuses of the UT System, UT Tyler features excellence in teaching, research, artistic performance and community service. More than 80 undergraduate and graduate degrees are available at UT Tyler, which has an enrollment of more than 8,500 high-ability students. UT Tyler offers courses at its campuses in Tyler, Longview and Palestine as well as a location in Houston.