The Ohio State University

As a Country Director, I am responsible to lead the implementation of a wide array of Global One Health projects in Ethiopia. I will also be responsible for the strategic partnership between Ohio State Global One Health and other key partners and stakeholders in Ethiopia and the Region.

Country Director

Deputy Country Director

The Global One Health initiative (GOHi) is an affiliate of The Ohio State University, Ohio Columbus. GOHi has Head Quarters in Columbus, Ohio and Eastern Africa Regional Office based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As Regional Admin Director for the Ohio State Global One Health initiative, I am responsible for leading the overall administrative strategies and activities. I am also responsible for leading various projects including our food safety project (TARTARE), Leadership, Management and Governance (LMG) Project, GOHi Global One Health Summer Institute (GOHSI), GOHi-RO training capacity, .. etc. I am also involved in the technical as well as administrative activities in CDC GHSA and CDC- CARES Projects. Overall my role covers both administrative and technical leadership and management issues.

Administrative Director

The Global One Health initiative connects Ohio State to Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, China, India and beyond in a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach to improve health, build capacity, and provide learning opportunities for students across the globe. Initiated in 2009, the program expanded in 2012 to include Ohio State’s seven health sciences colleges as well as the colleges of agriculture, arts and sciences, business, education and human ecology, engineering and social work. The Eastern Africa Regional Office, based in Addis Coordinates various one health projects and programs. As Associate Regional Director, I am responsible for managing various projects and programs.

Associate Regional Director for Global One Health Initiative, East Africa Regional Office

University of Gondar

After serving as vice president for academic, research and community services for more than 7 years in this institution, am serving now as a president since December 2015.  My role as a president was to lead the University to accomplish its mission in terms of high quality education, problem solving research and long range of community services. I am very optimistic and I strongly believe in motivational leadership. It is my belief that motivation does not always come from incentives, it comes from recognition and encouragement of workers on their work place. Additionally, motivation comes from creating a better working environment and human resource development. We invested huge capital budget for teaching and research facilities including ICT infrastructure and graduate research labs. With the successful implementation of two (five year each) strategic plans, The University of Gondar grew to be one of the biggest public Universities with better facilities for teaching, research and community services.

Since my presidency in 2015, the University of Gondar stood first in two annual performances (2015/16 and 2016/17) among all first generation Universities in Ethiopia and received Prize from the Federal Ministry of Education. We were also able to get three first level quality awards from the Ethiopian Quality award Organization in 2015/16 and 2016/17.  We received the two awards from H.E President Dr Mulatu Teshome and the third one from the current president of Ethiopia, Sahlework Zewde. These are the few among the many recognitions we got from different institutions locally and globally.  The various international, national and local institutional and community recognition we got in the last many years were the witnesses for the institution to be a well recognized and reputable institution. I feel honored to have served this great institution and to be a member of the University community.

President

I came to this position when my previous office, office of the vice president for academic, research and community services of the University of Gondar, was expanded into office of the vice president for academic affairs and office of the vice president for research and community services as a result of the increase in the volume of work in the areas of teaching learning, research and community services. As an academic vice president, I was responsible for leading all undergraduate, graduate and other continuous professional development trainings in the University. I was also responsible for all activities related to academic partnerships (national and international), issues related to curriculum, staff development, laboratory management, educational quality assurance, student support, gender and HIV/ AIDS issues and other activities related to academics. In the years I was in this position, we have been able to expand the number of undergraduate and postgraduate programs from 25 to 64 and from 8 to 76 in four years. Our campuses grew from three to five, the number of students grew from 12,000 to 35,000. The number of local and international partners and the number of academic projects have shown great increase. As we opened various new academic programs, we were able to significantly increase the number of faculty, technical assistants and administrative staff. In our effort to improve the academic status of our faculty, we have been able to send more than 750 of our faculty for graduate study in Ethiopia and abroad. As we saw from the contributions of the faculty with senior qualifications, we understood that investing on faculty played a significant role on the fast growth of the institution in terms of academic, research, community services, international partnerships and other core missions of the University.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Tropical Veterinary Medicine

I came to this position after serving as an academic programs officer of the University for one year. In this position, I was responsible for managing all teaching learning, research and community service activities at University level. I was responsible for supervising college deans, research directors and department heads. We have been able to prepare a five year strategic plan for running all academics, research, community services and governance issues at all levels. In doing so, we have been able to expand the number of undergraduate and postgraduate programs from 25 to 54 and from 8 to 66 in four years. We have been able to establish different staff development programs like the higher diploma program and research grant writing and manuscript writing capacity building trainings. Accordingly, we have been able to grant as many as 250 research proposals every year in the last three years. We have been able to run various research and community service projects working with local and international partners.  The number of our academic, research and community service projects have shown great increase in the last four years. As the volume of work increases, it was decided to split this office into academic vice president and research and community service vice president offices starting from May 2013.

Vice President for Academic, Research and Community Services

Enhancement of managerial skills and knowledge is essential to understand the complexity of higher education and deal with new strategic requirements in the sector. The Leadership and Management Capacity Development Project in Ethiopian higher Education (LMCD/NPT/EHE) funded by NUFFIC involved eight public Universities in Ethiopia including University of Gondar. The objective of the project was to contribute towards establishing a Higher Education sector that will produce responsible and competent citizens who meet the quantitative and qualitative demand for a high-level trained labour force based on the socio-economic development needs of the country through quality education and research. The inception phase of the LMCD project started in November 2008 and the project comes to an end in June 2012. The total budget was € 2,993,585. 

On top of my vice president position, I had the privilege to be the coordinator of this project at the University of Gondar during the mentioned period. During the project period, all administrators, the president, the vice presidents, deans, department heads and team leaders had the chance to get various trainings in higher education leadership and management. Working as a project coordinator, I have been able to get exposure visits to Universities in South Africa and the Netherlands which helped to improve my leadership experience.

As the final report indicated, this project has helped in improving the leadership and governance skills of the administartors of these Universities. The University of Gondar has benefited from this project especially in developing a new five year strategic plan which is intern attributed to the tremendous changes registered in terms of academic, research and community services in the last few years.

Project Coordinator, Leadership and management Capacity Development Project

I was appointed as academic programs officer of the University of Gondar in August 2008. In that position, I was working for the academic vice president and I was responsible in coordinating the teaching learning, staff development, laboratory and practical field studies and student support. I have been also responsible for coordinating the national curriculum reform at the University of Gondar. This was the time that I started getting  experience in leadership and management in higher education. As I showed a great passion, commitment and hard work, I was appointed as a vice president.

Academic Programs Officer

I was employed as Assistant Professor of Veterinary Medicine and I was responsible for teaching various courses to Doctor of Veterinary Medicine students. I was also responsible for advising students on their research, clinical work and field practicums. I was a member of various committees including curriculum review, establishment of veterinary hospital, strategic plan development and various other committees.

Assistant Professor of Tropical Veterinary Medicine 

Ministry of Education

The council is chaired by the Minister of Education and all presidents and vice presidents of public Universities are members of this council. The council discusses in academic, research, community service, technology transfer, University - Industry linkage and governance issues and is responsible for the overall governance of higher education in Ethiopia. The council meets every quarter and evaluates the performance of Universities with respect to their plans. I have been a member of the council since 2009 and it has been a great experience for me to closely understand the developments in Ethiopian higher education and I strongly believe that I have made contributions towards the same.

Member of National Higher Education Transformation Council

The council, chaired by the state minister for higher education is responsible for the implementation of the educational policy and strategies designed to improve the quality of education in higher education. Issues related in input, process and output including physical infrastructures, facilities, human resource, curriculum, academic policies, etc are among the agenda that the council discusses and gives directions. All academic vice presidents of public Universities in Ethiopia are members of this council. Being a member of this since 2009, I have learned a lot about Ethiopian higher education and I believe that I have also made contributions towards the developments in higher education administration.

Member of the National Higher Education Curriculum Council

Forum of Public Higher Education Institutions in Amhara Region

The Forum of Higher Education Institutions in Amhara Region was established in 2012 by the initiation of the seven Federal Universities in Amhara Region namely, Bahir Dar University, University of Gondar, Debre Markos University, Debre Berhan University, Wollo University, Woldia University and Debre Tabor University. The new Universities under construction, Debark, Enjibara and Meqdela Amba will also be members of this forum. 

The sole objective of establishing the forum is to support the regional government in research, capacity building and community engagement. On top of the individual efforts of the Universities, the forum tries to bring the Universities to work together as one team to improve the life of the people of the region through undertaking various researches in the area of agriculture, education, environment, health, industry, business, etc. 

Since my presidency position at the University of Gondar, I have received the chairmanship position of the forum from the previous chairman, Dr Bayle Damte, President of Bahir Dar University. I believe that with the commitment and involvement of the leaders and University community of member institutions, the forum will bring an impact on the region's livelihood in the years to come.

NAFSA Association of International Educators

NAFSA: Association of International Educators is a non-profit professional organization for professionals in all areas of international education including education abroad advising and administration,  international student advising, campus internationalization, admissions, outreach, overseas advising, and English as a Second Language (ESL) administration. As of 2010, it served approximately 10,000 educators worldwide, representing nearly 3,000 higher education institutions. 
As a Global Dialogue Fellow, I will be working on sharing the Ethiopian experience on higher education – success stories, challenges and opportunities for creating international partnerships. I believe that my experience as an academic programs officer and as a vice president in the last seven years will help me to closely understand and share the possible areas of international partnerships in the areas of academics, research and development. My Fulbright experience in the United States will also help me understand the interests of higher education institutions in the United States. The whole issue of being a NAFSA Global Dialogue Fellow is to contribute towards the efforts being made in internationalizing Ethiopian Higher Education. I am serving as a fellow while I am in my presidency position at the University of Gondar. 

I participated in the 2016 NAFSA Annual Conference and Expo in early June in Denver Colorado. More than 9600 people have participated in this annual conference and expo. I have shared my experiences and I have learnt a lot on the conferences I participated including my presentation at the global dialogue fellows session. I was encouraging higher education leaders, academic community, global educators, business people and other organizations involved in education to be engaged in various opportunities at NAFSA and to participate at the annual conference and expo. I was also featured in the "International Educator Megazine' with an interview on Ethiopian higher education.

Global Dialogue Fellow

University of Gondar Referal Hospital

The University hospital board has the following duties and responsibilities,
1.	Examine and approve the strategic and annual plans of the hospital
2.	Manage and follow up on the overall activities of the hospital
3.	Review and approve activity reports of hospital 
4.	Devise mechanisms to enhance the resource mobilization of the hospital 
5.	Determine services that are contractually outsourced to third parties
Being a member of the board, we have been working towards the improvement of hospital services and supported the opening of new services..

Board Member

In June 2013, I won a five month Fulbright scholarship granted by the U.S. Department of State and stayed at the Ohio State University (OSU) as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar from August 2013 to January 2014. The objectives of my stay at OSU include the following: 1) Learn U.S higher education administration systems; 2) Liaison between the Ohio State University (OSU) and University of Gondar (UoG) specific academic, research and administrative units to strengthen partnership; 3) Facilitate and enhance One Health Ethiopia partnership between OSU and UoG and 4) Develop specific curriculum for establishing defined PhD programs at UoG. 

My stay at OSU helped me in strengthening existing partnerships between colleges and units between the two Universities. I had the chance to meet with the president, vice presidents, deans, directors, department heads and professors. I was able to initiate new partnerships in various colleges, departments, institutes and departments. I was able to facilitate a high level experience sharing visit for a team led by the board chairman and the president of the University of Gondar who visited the Ohio State University from November 10-15/2013. This was a big milestone in strengthening the institutional partnerships among the two institutions. I was also able to attend various management meetings, seminars and conferences which helped me in enhancing my leadership experience in higher education. I was able to travel to other places like Tulsa,  Philadelphia, and Baltimore to give public lectures and to attend various conferences. We have also applied joint research proposals in the name of the two institutions during my stay.  In general, my stay at OSU as a Fulbright scholar helped me in achieving my personal and instituional goals.

Fulbright Visiting Scholar

An experienced higher education leader and scholar  who has put a huge impact on the expansion and strengthening of undergraduate & graduate programs; research, community service & technology transfer and infrastructure at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia. 

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