Minnesota-Based Kenyan Professor Receives Carnegie Award for CBC Curriculum Reform at Kisii University

Minnesota State University, Mankato, and Kisii University in Kenya are embarking on a collaborative effort to revolutionize STEM education in Kenya.

The initiative is backed by the prestigious Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program. Dr. David Kimori, associate professor at Minnesota State, will work alongside Dr. George Areba of Kisii University to develop a comprehensive curriculum for training science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers.

This initiative directly addresses the challenges arising from Kenya's transition to a competency-based curriculum (CBC), a reform that emphasizes practical skills over rote learning. Kenya’s education system is undergoing its most significant transformation since the 1980s. The CBC, introduced in 2017, represents a shift away from the long-standing 8-4-4 model.

However, the implementation has been hampered by inadequate teacher preparedness. The new curriculum has placed an unintended burden on the parents as a result of a gap in teacher training. The collaborative program aims to equip educators with the necessary skills, knowledge, and competencies to effectively teach STEM subjects within the CBC framework.

The Carnegie grant will facilitate the curriculum's creation, with implementation slated for the summer of 2025. The program targets university faculty who will, in turn, train pre-primary and senior secondary school teachers. While Kenya's Ministry of Education centrally controls the education system, teacher training institutions have the autonomy to design their own curricula.

This allows Kisii University to position itself as a central training hub for STEM educators and a resource for other Kenyan universities. The partnership between Kisii University and Minnesota State University, Mankato, formalized in 2019 with a memorandum of understanding and expanded in 2021 to include student and faculty exchanges, signifies a commitment to fostering social mobility, educational excellence, and community betterment.

Dr. Kimori and Dr. Areba both express optimism about the collaboration's potential impact on Kenya's education landscape. Notably, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, an initiative of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, supports global education programs.