KINGSTON, R.I. – Sept. 17, 2025 – Being a college professor is a 12-month job. Summers — far from being idle — are instead filled with continuing research, professional conferences, and the occasional well-earned vacation.

As the summer winds down, many professors find themselves immersed in the quiet labor of preparing syllabi and refining lesson plans for the semester ahead.

For Lars Erickson, the director of the French International Engineering Program at the University of Rhode Island, this was a typical summer in some ways. As a professor of French, developing a curriculum and lesson plan isn’t anything new. But this summer, the audience and the institution were anything but typical.

Erickson was part of a select group of French educators who brought their expertise to the République de Côte d’Ivoire whose flag is adorned with three very distinct colors.

“They say the orange stripe represents the savannah, in the north of the country, the green stripe represents the tropical forest, which is more in the south, and the white stripe in the middle represents hospitality,” says Erickson.

The former French colony, Cote d’Ivoire is nestled beside Ghana and is a linguistic patchwork. According to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights some 78 different languages are spoken in Côte d’Ivoire, though French remains the national language.

Through the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) Erickson was one of 14 educators who spent a month in the west African country. The AATF was awarded a Fulbright Hays grant to take educators and partner with the University of San Pedro. Their mission: to study, design, and co-author open access educational materials for students from kindergarten through university.

“The idea was to create open access lesson plans,” said Erickson. “Some people would develop small units, like maybe a 5-day or 10-day class unit. I created a 7-day class unit.”

URI and San Pedro are on different sides of the Atlantic but have some similarities.

“They have a big marine sciences program and, of course, marine sciences is a very big deal at URI,” says Erickson. “They also have aquaculture classes and an engineering school. There are lots of opportunities for URI professors to collaborate with their counterparts at the Université de San Pedro.”

Erickson focused on creating learning materials related to the University of San Pedro and how their university system is structured. He was able to gain valuable insight into the university and its system by interviewing and recording professors and students. The students were able to discuss classes and career opportunities awaiting them after graduation.

“One student also shared his course schedule with me,” said Erickson. “Because I had his course schedule, I was able to use that to build a multi-day lesson plan for a class.”

Other educators focused on different cultural dimensions, like the role dance plays in Ivorian society.

“Dancing is a big part of the culture there. At some events, they would welcome us with dancing, and you could sense they were encouraging us to join in,” says Erickson.

Erickson says all the learning materials are a great way for people to learn about the Côte d’Ivoire. 

The teachers spent a lot of their time working but some of the time the shoe was on the other foot. Erickson and others were often required to take their own language class. Erickson and his colleagues took language classes on Bambara, a language spoken across several West African nations. 

“The few people who didn’t speak French, in general, spoke Bambara,” said Erickson. “So, like at the markets, you could use Bambara which actually came in handy for us.”

Even amid the academic rigor, the group managed to carve out some vacation time, recalls Erickson. “I got to surf one time. One person in the line-up turned out to be the Ivorian national champion.”

Always an academic, Erickson said one of his favorite memories was a journey into the countryside, where the group learned the intricacies of rubber tapping and the transformation of cocoa beans into chocolate.

“We even got a chance to plant a cocoa tree and put our name on it,” says Erickson. “They said that they would contact us about how our tree was growing.”

Among the many universities that URI partners with for its IEP program, none are in Africa. Still, Erickson remains hopeful that one day, a collaboration might blossom in a nation where French is not just spoken—but lived.

Ivorian hospitality was a key lesson that Erickson was able to take away.

“If you’re a traveler there, one interesting thing is that in the Ivory Coast, they don’t like to use the word foreigner. They prefer to talk about people who came from far away,” said Erickson.