Our Faculty
Ashesi faculty deliver courses with rigor comparable to that of any other high-quality university in the world, through a curriculum tailored to the African context.
Our faculty desire excellence in their teaching. They influence students’ critical thinking and communication skills and understanding of key concepts and investigative procedures of their discipline. Faculty also engage with colleagues on initiatives for curricular development and improved student learning, sharing their knowledge and skills, engaging the talents and experiences of others, and helping colleagues become more successful. As teacher-leaders they reflect on their teaching practice, setting ambitious yet attainable goals for improvement and innovation every year.
Our faculty strive to become scholars of excellence, seeking ways to influence their research field, and consistently striving for deeper expertise in the research area. They ask questions that broaden the conversation and connect with others in their chosen fields. Our faculty continue to build skills and engage in professional development throughout their career.
Our faculty aim to model excellent citizenship and leadership, through their influence on the institution, colleagues, and broader community. They strive to merge the institution’s values and mission into their work inside and outside the classroom, take the initiative, and go beyond the call of duty. They do this while recognising the long-term implications of their decisions and actions.
Our faculty incorporate aspects of our liberal arts core curriculum in a variety of ways to teach their disciplines in-depth. Faculty also teach Ashesi’s eight (8) transdisciplinary goals, which include curiosity, critical thinking, and professionalism.
Lectures and written assessments are not the only ways students learn at Ashesi, as faculty offer a range of experiential learnings and alternate assessments. These include debates, seminars, projects, group work, hands-on learning through labs, community service, and senior capstone projects. Final exams include essays, presentations, and oral assessments to a panel of faculty. Irrespective of the approach to student learning, fundamentally faculty require students to demonstrate learning through tackling complex, real-world problems and cases.
Ashesi is most known for pioneering the Ashesi Honor Code. During the first-year, using Giving Voice to Values (GVV) principles, faculty facilitate student-alumni discussions on real-life examples that bring clarity to the consequences of corruption. With continuing students, faculty use teachable moments to explore values and build ethical courage, which cannot be imposed. Faculty emphasize ethical, entrepreneurial leadership, not just in government, but also in computer science, engineering, business, and finance, and in our communities.
Faculty teach students from greatly varied economic, religious, ethnic, and over 30 national backgrounds; encouraging diversity of thought in problem-solving and emphasising the growth mindset as well as the value of learning from failure.
Faculty are engaged in discipline–based research individually and in research teams or clusters. Most faculty are conducting research on this year’s university-wide research theme “Future Cities”; research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; and department–wide research, e.g., Department of
- Computer Science and Information Systems – Intelligent Systems
- Electrical/Electronic Engineering – Renewable Energy
- Business Administration – Sustainability in Business
Faculty work with faculty interns to enrich instructional preparation; student learning, unlearning, and relearning; classroom operations; and the Ashesi learning culture.