By Betsy Rhame, '01

Professor of Biology John Mecham is the recipient of a Fulbright Lecture/Research Scholar award to Kenya for 2006.

Mecham will work at Kenyatta University to review and develop curriculum in human physiology, parasitology and HIV/AIDS education. The curriculum development will benefit the new department of health sciences at Kenyatta. Mecham will also research how CD4 cell counts respond to HIV/AIDS treatment and the relationship of schistosomiasis infections to HIV/AIDS infections. Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that affects up to 80 percent of the populations in some areas of Kenya.

Mecham is looking forward to seeing how science is taught and learned differently in Kenya than in the U.S.

"When you study science globally it makes you more aware of your country, your state, your science," he said. "We have as much to learn from other modes of science as others do from us."

Mecham has been a part of a five-college consortium with Kenyatta University, North Carolina Wesleyan College, Bennett College, the University of South Carolina at Sumter and Meredith College that has focused on the development of new curriculum that investigates the sociological and scientific facets of HIV/AIDS, parasitic diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, and other sub-Saharan bioscience issues such as water and resource competition, nutrition and plant biotechnology.

Mecham's work in Kenya as part of the Fulbright Scholar Program will focus on the needs of Kenyatta University which were identified through participation in the consortium with a visit to the university in 2003.

Mecham received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He has been a Meredith faculty member since 2000.