By Nathaniel Weeldreyer, as previously featured on the MSU College of Arts and Letters website at: https://cal.msu.edu/news/trixie-smith-invited-to-international-conference-on-water-in-africa-for-the-second-year/

Trixie Smith, Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) at Michigan State University, recently was awarded a Strategic Partnership Grant from MSU’s Center for Gender in Global Context to attend the Fifth Annual International Conference on Water in Africa (ICWA), scheduled for March 2026, with additional support from MSU’s College of Arts & Letters and WRAC.

This is the second time Smith will participate in the ICWA, a four-day conference annually hosted by the Water and Public Health Research Group at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Earlier this year, Smith attended the Fourth Annual ICWA, held March 19-22, 2025, where she hosted three writing workshops.

The ICWA was established to address the sustainable development challenges in sub-Saharan Africa with the aim of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. As noted in a conference flyer, the ICWA “has, for its first 10 years, the goal of mobilizing, motivating, and moving stakeholders to explore the Prime Place of Water towards the successful delivery of the SDGs in sub-Saharan Africa.” This work demands not just scientific conversations but a collaborative approach involving the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Smith is the Director of the Red Cedar Writing Project, a National Writing Project site devoted to strengthening literacy education across the state of Michigan. Her leadership extends globally as well as Director of the Global Alliances in Literacy and Engagement (GALE) at MSU, for which she helps build partnerships in literacy and teacher development around the world.

Smith was invited by Professor Vincent Chigor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to attend the Fourth Annual IWCA to help fulfill attendees’ needs for further writing support and training, which is part of the goal of GALE.

“Supporting people in the dissemination of their research through publication in a variety of venues was part of the impetus for me attending,” Smith said. “The research they do changes people’s lives, makes people healthier, and helps them to have access to safe and clean water; communicating their research is a part of that process.”

The three workshops Smith hosted during the Fourth Annual ICWA included a workshop on day one where she reviewed writing processes and how processes change across genres. The second workshop, “Publishing in Scopus Journals and Avoiding Predatory Journals,” explored global editing practices and trends and applied it to participants’ work. The final workshop, “Writing to the Call,” examined calls for proposals and journal guidelines and gave attendees time to examine their own manuscripts and engage in group peer review.

Dr. Trixie Smith during day three of the 2025 ICWA writing workshops she hosted where attendees shared their ideas about writing for specific journals and calls for papers. (Photo by Heavenly Media)

“The ICWA was a great opportunity for me to meet a number of scholars doing research focused on water in a lot of different disciplines and contexts,” Smith said. “Having conversations with these colleagues helped me understand where people want support and where I could help them build upon their strengths.”

Smith is vocal in her support for women scholars, and her involvement in the ICWA is no exception. The conference and the partnership between Michigan State University and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) focuses on supporting UNN women scholars while they conduct research in and around the topic of gender disparities in water and health.

Women consistently have less training, support, and opportunities in scholarly areas and the workshops Smith led at the Fourth ICWA — and will lead at the Fifth ICWA — focus on creating spaces for women to succeed and receive support. Attendees receive assistance with their writing, research, and publication processes, with support provided for the researchers as they continue to work within the topics of gender, water, and health, as well as developing new opportunities to further support their research and community engagement to achieve their goals.

Each year the ICWA focuses on a collection of themes related to water and collaboration. The Fourth Annual ICWA promoted a triad of topics: clean water and sanitation, hunger elimination, and climate action. The Fifth Annual ICWA will stay true to these overarching themes by focusing on lessons learned from current efforts as well as calling for partnerships and advances in the conference’s multidisciplinary frontiers.

The ICWA also includes an artistic experience each year that is related to the conference theme. During the Fourth Annual ICWA, an art installation, titled “Mmiri bu Ndu” (Water is Life), was featured, with Smith cutting the ribbon at the grand opening on March 19 during the opening of the conference. This group exhibition of art and poetry ran for one month in commemoration of the Fourth ICWA.

Smith’s participation in the Fourth ICWA was made possible by the support of the College of Arts & Letters, WRAC, MSU’s Alliance for African Partnership, the African Studies Center, and International Scholars Program.

The Fifth Annual ICWA will be held both virtually over zoom and in person at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, March 18-22, 2026. The ICWA invites abstracts for presentations, with an abstract-submission deadline of Dec. 26, 2025. To submit abstracts or for more information, please contact waterconference@unn.edu.ng.

ICWA is also calling for applicants to participate in the 2026 writing workshop that will be held in person at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The conference is looking for early career researchers to participate and develop their skills in academic and grant writing. To apply, each applicant must have a Mentor or Supervisor and should provide a tentative title and draft of the manuscript they plan to develop during the workshop. Applications are due by January 30, 2026, with acceptance occurring on a rolling basis until February 15, 2026. For more information please contact Trixie Smith (smit1254@msu.edu) and Vincent Chigor (vincent.chigor@unn.edu.ng).

By Kim Popiolek, as previously featured on the MSU College of Arts and Letters website at: https://cal.msu.edu/news/program-offers-cross-cultural-teaching-and-learning-experience-with-faculty-and-students-in-south-africa/

Trixie Long Smith, Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, is part of the second cohort of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Faculty Fellows Program-Africa and is partnering with a faculty member at the University of Pretoria in South Africa during the 2024-2025 academic year. 

An online cross-cultural teaching and learning method, the COIL program links university courses, faculty, and students in different countries to offer a collaborative intercultural experience. As part of the program, faculty from different countries partner to design a class module. Students who enroll in this shared module work together across cultures to complete the activities created, thus offering a multicultural opportunity to learn, discuss, and collaborate.

The COIL Faculty Fellows Program-Africa is operated by the Global Youth Advancement Network and Office for Education Abroad, through MSU’s new Center for Global Learning and Innovation in International Studies and Programs (ISP), in partnership with the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP). It aims to advance global learning through a combination of strategic partnerships, faculty instructional leadership, internationalization of the curriculum, and student success. The program provides faculty from any discipline the opportunity to explore the theory and practice of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) through global partnerships connecting AAP Consortium institutions to design and implement COILed projects together. 

As part of this fellowship program, Smith is collaborating with Ruth Aluko, a researcher within the Distance Education Unit at the University of Pretoria who oversees the quality of the institution’s open distance learning programs, facilitates training and workshops, and is involved in the evaluation of open distance learning.

“Given my previous partnerships and collaborations with partners across the African continent, I was asked to potentially partner with someone from an AAP institution who was looking for a partner,” Smith said. “I was fortunate to find a good fit with Dr. Ruth Aluko. We are both teaching graduate courses with enough overlap in thought and process to make a group project feasible. We then applied together and were accepted.” 

Smith and Aluko are partnering to offer their students the opportunity to engage in global learning by inviting them to not only consider existing philosophies of education and theoretical frameworks from both teaching and research, but to apply these various philosophies and theories to their own research and teaching practices. 

During the Fall 2024 Semester, Smith and Aluko went through the COIL training and worked on their class materials. Now during the Spring 2025 Semester students in Smith’s Methods of Research in Rhetoric and Writing (WRA 870) graduate seminar and in Aluko’s Philosophy and Sociological Imperatives in Education graduate course will participate in the COIL project.

As part of this project, students in both classes will do some shared readings followed by shared discussions through an online forum and/or online in-time meetings. They also will write philosophy statements, either teaching or research focused, and will engage in a peer review of these documents. 

The shared readings the students will be doing focus on indigenous philosophies that influence and/or guide both teaching and research with one set of readings focusing on southern African philosophies and another on North American indigenous philosophies. 

“The students will benefit from discussing these articles and from the peer review that will provide various perspectives and insights,” Smith said.

Smith hopes the students gain new perspectives; a collegial, global experience; a new network for the future; and interests in global partnerships and collaborations. 

“I also hope this experience will help them expand their understandings of teaching and researching globally,” she said. “I’m very excited about the possibilities for both our students. It has been great to meet and work with Ruth, and I look forward to other collaborations in the future.“ 

More than 40 faculty in total (from Michigan State University and African institutions affiliated with AAP) applied to be part of the second cohort of the COIL Faculty Fellows Program-Africa, with the selection committee choosing Smith as one of 14 faculty fellows (seven from MSU and seven from African institutions). Each fellow receives a $750 stipend to be used for professional and project development. Additionally, fellows receive extensive COIL training. 

The COIL pedagogy was initially developed by faculty at the University of New York (SUNY) with support from SUNY System Administration’s Office of International Programs and the SUNY Learning Network. 

“As I’m working with grad students who also teach, or who will teach, I hope they see COIL as a model they may want to use in their own classes down the road because it’s a great way to meet strategic goals related to global learning and global impact,” Smith said. “It’s also just a fun learning experience for all.”

March 24, 2022

Previously featured on the MSU College of Arts and Letters website at: https://cal.msu.edu/news/msu-writing-center-expands-upon-partnerships-with-african-nations/

While marking its 30^th anniversary in 2021, the Writing Center at Michigan State University continued to meet the changing needs of a diverse constituency by expanding ongoing collaborations worldwide.

In Fall 2021, Director Trixie Smith and Associate Director Grace Pregent traveled to Botswana with the purpose of developing a multi-faceted program featuring study abroad opportunities, student exchanges, workshops, and a plan to establish a writing center at Botswana Open University (BOU).

The program builds on a collaborative partnership with African nations that launched in 2018 and involved MSU, BOU, Canada’s Carleton University, and South Africa’s Mangosuthu University of Technology. Programs have been supported by a grant from MSU’s Alliance for African Partnerships and also have involved the expertise of MSU Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities, MSU African Studies Center, and the Canadian Studies Center to help further comprehensive writing support and programs across Africa.

 “A lot of students are interested in learning about Africa, African culture, and the schools there,” Pregent said. “This program will focus on a part of the world where writing centers aren’t very common, with an eye toward supporting writing and research.”

The Writing Center’s ongoing collaborations with African nations have consisted of the exchange of African scholars, literacy, and pedagogies, and have helped open the door to the new program with BOU. The new five-year partnership with BOU began in 2021. In addition to establishing a writing center and mentoring program, specific activities include a civic writing and community literacy engagement program, particularly for at-risk populations. The partnership also looks to foster collaborative research between MSU and BOU.

“Many African countries have their own national goals to help them move beyond being considered a developing nation,” Smith said. “Part of that involves increasing education and expanding the scope of technical colleges to increase post-graduate work.”

Pregent remarked that any increase in education translates into the need for writing and language support.

“No matter your discipline, writing is the common thread,” she said. 

On their two-week trip to Botswana, Smith and Pregent met with BOU faculty, staff, and graduate students to assess needs and learn about challenges. They listened to common struggles similar to those they’ve heard from faculty and students at MSU, including fear of rejection and time management. The two also facilitated workshops at BOU’s five campuses, leveraging in-person and virtual presentations depending on the location.

Godson Gatsha, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Student Services at BOU, concurred that the science of communicating with different academic audiences is critical for success in any academic pursuit. He remarked that collaborating with the MSU Writing Center on academic and professional writing matters will enhance the ability of BOU staff and students to effectively communicate and disseminate their scholarly works. He said the partnership will promote virtual and in-person interaction since BOU students and staff use English as a second or third language.

“Such an exchange of ideas on writing will improve writing with special attention to different audiences, depending on the discipline,” Gatsha said. “It will afford both institutions to appreciate the cultural dimension of the influence of our indigenous languages on English, and help our students and staff write with clarity of purpose.”

Since returning from Botswana, Smith and Pregent have outlined elements and executed plans for the program that will run through 2026. The two also are working with MSU University Advancement and the Alliance for African Partnerships to seek additional funding to support the project.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time at the Writing Center to look back on our history, to see what we’ve accomplished, and to think about where we want to be,” Pregent said.

Smith agreed, reflecting on the additional excitement of partnerships and programs that extend beyond the MSU campus and community to meet national and worldwide needs. She said, too, upcoming programs echo the Writing Center’s charge as a member of the International Writing Centers Association.

“Global partnerships are part of how we define community,” Smith said. “They reflect MSU’s position as a land grant institution and top global research university, as well as our commitment to supporting writing centers worldwide. It’s a way we can help students and employees understand the idea of what it means to be part of a global system and to be a global citizen.”