Biography: John has coordinated the Center's outreach programming since 1987. In addition to working with K-12 educators, he has developed programming to community colleges, Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the Michigan business community, state and local government as well as to the general public. He earned his PhD in Educational Policy Studies and African Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He has been an adjunct faculty member of the MSU Department of Teacher Education (1987-present) where he has taught courses in African and comparative and international education. Since 1990 he has led over 20 study abroad programs (for MSU teacher education majors) and Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad programs (for K-12 educators, community college and HBCU faculty) to Botswana, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. He directed the development of Exploring Africa, the most comprehensive web-based curriculum on Africa for middle and high school educators and students.

Biography: Jamie Monson is the newly appointed Director of African Studies at Michigan State University, where she is also a Professor of History. Dr. Monson received her MA in African Area Studies and her PhD in African History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her current research focuses on Chinese development assistance to Africa. She is a specialist on the TAZARA railway, a development project built in Tanzania and Zambia with Chinese development cooperation in the 1970s.

Her book, Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania (Indiana, 2009) has been widely acclaimed and has been recently published in Chinese (2015).

Professor Monson's new research projects concern technology transfer and civil diplomacy in China-Africa engagement. She also has a strong background in African agricultural and environmental history, an interest she developed originally as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. She speaks Swahili, German and French and has been studying Chinese since 2009.