Francine Nana Afiba Arthur is well known on campus for many good things: she has an amazing work ethic, a massive talent for math and science, and a formidable builder of teams and technologies. To faculty, she is known for scoring “As”; to her mates, she is known for trying to push all around her to the top. A socially engaged scholar and engineer, she designed and implemented a program to support an under-resourced community secondary technical school.
Working with the head of the school, she identified teacher gaps, organized dozens of students as volunteer teachers, and raised funds to cover transportation to the school and back for these volunteers. When the volunteer teacher program ended, she organized a day of speed mentoring and fun academic activities to energize learners in the school.
On campus, she was active with the Ashesi Engineering Students Association as Programs Lead. She worked relentlessly with the Dean of Engineering and other students to help establish the Ashesi student chapter of one of the most prominent professional organizations for engineers: the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE or I-triple “E”).
As a United Nations Millennium Fellow, she ran a project connecting high schoolers in rural communities with university students around problem-solving. A remarkable initiative that redefined problems as educational opportunities, the high schoolers got their community problems tackled by young adults with relevant domain knowledge, while university students gained experience refining their knowledge and skills. She switched from Electrical to Mechatronic Engineering when that option became available at the undergraduate level.
She will graduate with the highest honors today and has combined stellar academic performance with many innovative technical projects: a technology for transcribing audio in Twi; a remote-controlled car; waste segregation technology; a mathematical model of Tanzania’s population; models for tracking and analyzing the effects of solar farms, among others. She is presently in the United States, applying her ample intellect and tremendous work ethic as a consultant in the Applied Methods and Research Experience program at the College of Wooster.
For excellence in multiple fields, we present this award to a thinker and doer, and model Ashesi student: Francine Nana Afiba Arthur.
Unable to attend the ceremony due to an internship programme in the U.S, Francine’s award was received by her mother.
