Nosa Egiebor speaks with Molly Fryman (seated), international student adviser, at the Study Abroad Fair on Feb. 12 in the
Student Union lobby. DM Photo | Leah Gibson
From Africa to Canada to the United States, Nosa Egiebor has made his mark on college campuses. Now, his job is to connect the University of Mississippi with the rest of the world.
Egiebor was hired last summer as the University of Mississippi’s first chief international officer and executive director of global engagement. The office of global engagement is essentially being built “from scratch,” Egiebor said.
“It is a new office that is charged with the responsibility of leading the comprehensive internationalization of the University of Mississippi,” Egiebor said. “I have offices and departments that are coming from different parts of the university brought together under the office of global engagement. I have to find a way to get all of that unit to work together smoothly.”
In January, Egiebor traveled to Ethiopia with faculty and students from the School of Journalism and New Media. They met with students, faculty and administrators at Addis Ababa University.
“It (Addis Ababa University) is a university that has an excellent record,” Egiebor said. “Before now, Ole Miss did not really have much of a presence in Africa, and we are really pushing to make sure that this university establishes a pretty strong footprint throughout Africa. To that extent, Ethiopia is one of our initial countries, Nigeria is another one, and Burkina Faso is another one in West Africa.”
A new initiative called Ole Miss in Africa will contribute significantly to the university’s strategic objective of “bringing the world to Mississippi and taking Mississippi to the world,” according to UM Provost Morris Stocks.
“We are committed to broadening the university’s reach around the world,” Stocks said in a press release. “This will provide many more opportunities for our students to get real-world experience beyond the classroom and also allow our students and faculty to apply their knowledge to help solve global problems that affect us all.”
The university has similar initiatives planned in Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Australasia.
John Z. Kiss, dean of UM’s graduate school, was chair of the search committee that interviewed and recommended Egiebor for the senior international officer position.
“He has a wealth of international experience and was an international student himself, having studied in Europe and in Canada,” Kiss said. “He also has extensive experience in building international collaborations and will be an asset to the university as we move ahead in internationalizing the university as outlined in UM 2020.” UM 2020 is the strategic plan to move the university closer to its vision of excellence by engaging minds, transforming lives and serving others.
Egiebor, who is also a professor of chemical engineering at Ole Miss, said his plans to form relationships abroad have been influenced by his travels. One of his favorite places is Australia.
“The environment is kind of totally different from everything that I had been used to after in being in North America, in Europe and in Africa,” Egiebor said. “I am somebody who likes nature and wildlife a lot. My specialty is in environmental engineering and water treatment, so the variety of animals in natural structures in Australia just baffled me.”
Australia also has successfully internationalized its educational system, Egiebor said, and he plans to use Australia as a model for some programs.
Examples would include increasing the number of graduate students and undergraduate students from different parts of the world as one major community, and finding ways to have local students and international students interact as much as possible.
“We don’t have that here, but we’re working on it, and it’s really getting better,” Egiebor said. “That’s really part of internationalization, getting both sides to benefit. International students gaining a lot from local students in the culture and local students gaining a lot from students coming here to study, sharing experiences, cultures and the rest.”
In February, Egiebor visited each individual booth during the campus Study Abroad fair to ensure that he was familiar with each program and opportunity currently offered.
His day-to-day routine in Oxford is “busy and hectic, with everything coming from all different directions.”
“Sometimes dealing with different kinds of people is not easy. Then, you superimpose the need for students on top of that, and now you can see how complicated it can be,” Egiebor said, laughing. “That’s probably the biggest challenge, but it’s a good problem to have and we are working on it.”
Egiebor has more than 30 years of experience at the collegiate level as an administrator and faculty member. He has a chemical engineering degree from the University of Benin in Nigeria, a master’s degree from the University of Manchester in England and a Ph.D. from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. He was a professor at the University of Alberta. In 1996, he was invited to set up an engineering program at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and he worked there for more than 18 years.
During his time at Tuskegee, he became vice president for international education.
Now, he is in Oxford, and he has had to make a few adjustments. The biggest difference: athletics.
“Ole Miss is a much bigger institution and athletics is a much bigger part of Ole Miss than it is at Tuskegee, although Tuskegee has pretty good athletics, too,” Egiebor said. “On the other hand, the University of Alberta, where I started, is almost exactly the same as Ole Miss. So, I’ve had experiences and paid my dues everywhere, I can say.”
