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Who cuts these flowers and maintains these lawns? Why isn’t there a single trash on the ground? Funny enough, there aren’t many dustbins around. This is what you find at Africa’s first development university, the American University of Nigeria (AUN).

As soon as you walk into AUN, you see clean roads and neat buildings. The serene view of this community would captivate anybody. However, as time goes on, it is possible, many could forget to appreciate the beauty of this remarkable institution. But an environment like this should inspire people every day and every time.

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A research team from SAS has designed a more transactional model of Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) that can be useful for teaching basic literacy and numeracy in societies recovering from violent conflicts.

The research team, made up of the Chair of Communications and Multimedia Design, Dr. Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, and two AUN alumnae Kenechukwu Nwagbo and Zamiyat Abubakar, suggests that the new Transactional Radio Instruction (TRI) model can be used in crisis and post-conflict societies where there are no schools or trained teachers.

Their work, “Where there is no school: Rethinking Interactive Radio Instruction in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies,” was presented recently at the maiden edition of ‘Media Futures’ – a roundtable discussion on contemporary media issues, organized by SAS Research Seminar Series.

Drawing on behavioral and communication models, mainly the works of Albert Bandura and Marshal McLuhan, the team argued that learning takes place in a social context and that the medium of instruction is in itself a symbolic learning environment. It must necessarily aim to replicate the real-life learning environment, including the many social problems, taboos, beliefs, and persons who interact and interfere daily with learning.

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United States Embassy in Abuja and the American University of Nigeria, AUN, has trained 56 Nigerian journalists on Peace Journalism as an alternative to conventional news reportage.

The two-day training workshop, which held between Tuesday, May 31 and Wednesday, June 1 at the AUN’s Robert A. Pastor and E-Learning Center, saw the journalists undergo series of practical training sessions on Principles and Practice of Peace Journalism, Ethics and Coverage of Violence, Sensitive Interview Techniques, Transmedia Storytelling, Coping Mechanisms for Emotional Distress, and Risk Assessment and Situational Awareness.

Declaring the workshop open, AUN President, Dr. Margee Ensign, and US Embassy Public Affairs Officer, Mr. Larry Socha, charged participants to use their stories as building blocks for peace. 

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The Sustainability Centre of the American University of Nigeria, AUN, Yola, Adamawa State, has produced stools and decorative artworks with discarded papers.

Initiated in January, the project has produced over 70 stools and several decorative artworks, and it will still produce more, as the project is ongoing.

In order to study the business viability of the project, the Sustainability Centre partners with some AUN students who are studying entrepreneurship.

Speaking, Sustainability Officer, Mr. Raymond Obindu, said the project was initiated to reduce wastage and provide an alternative to AUN’s previous paper recycling project.