Institutional support advances UMSL faculty collaboration with South African colleagues

Institutional support advances UMSL faculty collaboration with South African colleagues

by Burk Krohe | Aug 21, 2026

Alina Slapac, Haitao Li and Lara Zwarun conducted research, engaged in cross-cultural exchange and more with partners at the University of the Western Cape.

Alina Slapac felt honored to represent the University of Missouri-St. Louis at a special 40th anniversary celebration of the University of Missouri South Africa Education Program in Cape Town in March.

Slapac, an associate professor of action research in the College of Education's Department of Educator Preparation and Leadership and a SUNY COIL Ambassador and Community Engagement Leader, was especially moved to stand beside Karen Collett, her friend and colleague from the University of the Western Cape. They presented their work on Collaborative Online International Learning - or COIL - courses to more than 100 current and former UMSAEP participants and institutional leaders, including University of Missouri System President Mun Choi.

"Representing UMSL at the celebration was important because we were not simply describing a completed project; we were also helping envision how a 40-year university partnership can continue to create new opportunities for faculty and students," Slapac said. "At the same time, it was rewarding to reflect on how our own five-year sustained partnership has grown from a single virtual meeting into repeated COIL courses, collaborative research, publications, presentations, faculty development initiatives and long-term plans for future international collaboration."

The ongoing relationship as well as Slapac's most recent three-week trip to South Africa this spring to advance her work with Collet, an associate professor of school leadership and management at UWC, have been possible through financial support from the UMSL Global International Fellowship Program and the College of Education Donor Funded Award. Slapac and Collett have previously received UMSAEP financial support in 2021 and 2022, and Slapac has served as a UMSAEP committee member since 2025.

Since 1986, the UM System has partnered with the University of the Western Cape to advance mutual understanding and foster cooperative teaching, research and service projects between faculty and students. The program has successfully facilitated more than 1,000 faculty exchanges across many fields through grant funding of up to $10,000 and hundreds of student exchanges through the Henry Mitchell Scholarship and other opportunities.

Slapac is not the only UMSL faculty member who has benefitted from the longstanding partnership. Haitao Li - professor, chair of the Department of Supply Chain and Analytics and founding director of the Laboratory of Advanced Supply Chain Analytics - and Lara Zwarun - associate professor and assistant chair of the Department of Communication and Media - received financial support from the UMSAEP to travel to South Africa this year.

The three took advantage of institutional support from UMSL and the UM System to conduct research, engage in cross-cultural exchange, network with international peers and experience the diverse, vibrant culture of South Africa.

Learning through cultural exchange

Slapac had more on her itinerary than the 40th anniversary event during her time in Cape Town from March 21 to April 11. The trip had several interconnected purposes including working with Collett to develop COIL curriculum, analyze their research data, plan future presentations and publications and to facilitate a faculty workshop, "Designing COIL for Impact: Strategies, Tips, and Examples for Pedagogy and Sustainable Partnerships."

"I was moved by the energy during our faculty workshop," Slapac said. "Hearing colleagues imagine how they might implement or adapt COIL for their own students made the future impact of the visit feel immediate and tangible."

The COIL model connects educators in different countries, like Slapac and Collett, who develop collaborative projects as part of shared coursework. The projects utilize online tools to help students enhance their disciplinary knowledge, explore different cultural perspectives and become globally engaged. The virtual exchanges make international learning accessible to students who might not have the ability to participate in study abroad.

Their work this spring also included strategic conversations about the partnership's next phase - how to sustain COIL, internationalize the curriculum more broadly, involve additional faculty and students and create further opportunities for exchanges, joint programming, research and professional learning. That groundwork is vital as Slapac and Collett prepare the fifth and sixth iterations of the UMSL-UWC COIL course for 2026 and 2027.

"Our earliest work focused on creating a supportive space in which UMSL and UWC students could meet, exchange perspectives and examine teaching across two national contexts," Slapac explained. "Over time, we made the learning activities more intentional, strengthened opportunities for reflection and collaboration and connected the virtual exchange more closely to course goals and our research. We also expanded the scale and reach of the partnership."

More than 200 UMSL graduate students and approximately 1,200 UWC students have already participated during four previous cohorts. The duo is aiming to increase the impact of the course by extending enrollment to groups such as South African graduate students, practicing school leaders and in-service teachers.

"This partnership has become one of the most meaningful parts of my professional work," Slapac said. "It has changed how I think about teaching, research and international collaboration. As an educator, I have seen how much students gain when they learn with colleagues whose schools, communities and educational systems differ from their own. As a scholar, working with Karen has generated new questions about teacher learning, action research, virtual exchange and the institutional conditions that help international partnerships last."

Building resilient, sustainable food supply chains

Li has also developed a durable partnership through the support of the UMSAEP. His ongoing collaboration with Osden Jokonya, a professor of information systems at UWC, has addressed the broad topic of food and agriculture supply chain to achieve efficiency, quality, safety, resilience and sustainability. Their project uses a farm planning model and tool that provides data-driven decision-support on what to grow, how much to grow and when to grow to meet market demands while considering environmental factors.

"The methodologies and tools developed in this project apply not only to countries such as South Africa facing unique challenges of water shortages, and food loss and waste, and transportation infrastructure," Li said, "but also to countries such as the U.S. as we share the issue and challenge of climate change, environmental impact and food security."

The pair accomplished much during Li's three-week trip from July 23 to Aug. 12. They disseminated outcomes of the UMSAEP project to UWC faculty and students, made site visits to farms and food markets, interviewed food experts and discussed new research ideas like integrated nutrition and health concerns into food supply chain optimization.

The partnership began with Jokonya's visit to UMSL in the spring of 2021 when the two connected on mutual research interests. Li made his first visit to UWC the next year. They first identified challenges facing food supply chains in South Africa and then spent a couple years collecting data about farm operations and food markets to develop a case study, which later led to the data-driven optimization models and methods and a cloud-based decision-support tool. Overall, the project has been growing steadily in depth and scope and has produced several research articles, external research grants and one provisional patent.

"The most fulfilling aspect of this partnership, to me, is the opportunity of conducting use-inspired research with connection and collaboration with local businesses in the Cape Town region, including small-medium farms, food markets and other stakeholders," Li said.

Li will be one of the four speakers, each representing a university in the UM System, to share UMSAEP research at a 40th anniversary celebration event on Sept. 16 in Columbia, Missouri.

Tackling science communication challenges

Zwarun's collaboration with Sisandra Nkoala, a former journalist and associate professor in the UWC Department of Linguistics, began this summer. Zwarun had already planned to attend the annual International Communication Association Conference, held in Cape Town from June 4-8, so she decided to make the most of her time in South Africa. With funding from the UMSAEP, she was able to extend her stay in the country to a little over two weeks.

The two recruited community journalists - from freelancers to beat reporters - from Cape Town and Johannesburg who cover science issues to learn how they approach topics, particularly in terms of their respective audiences. Zwarun was interested in exploring a media environment that differs significantly from the U.S. due to greater audience segmentation, owing to the country's 12 official languages, and less corporate media consolidation.

"They have a much more, it seems to me, robust community journalism presence there," Zwarun said. "There are big outlets and people on salary, but there's a very small but hearty mid-tier level of newspaper reporters and freelancers."

Zwarun and Nkoala devised a workshop with a variety of activities to gain more insight into the journalists' processes. In one instance, the participants took a real-time survey utilizing Menti to shed light on how they navigate communication challenges related to cultural and language differences.

Another exercise mapped where different stakeholders are in the process of communicating science stories. The journalists took sticky notes with different groups written on them - editors, scientists, community leaders, etc. - and placed them on a board with a series of concentric circles with the word "community" at the center. The placement of the sticky notes represented how influential each group was to the community as well as the new production process.

During a mock scenario, journalists were paired together and tasked with writing headlines related to a crisis where scientists were saying one thing, but credible community leaders were communicating something contradictory. The framing of the headlines illustrated how they worked to balance empiricism with cultural concerns.

"I think all the reporters were very sensitive to wanting to give both sides their due," Zwarun said, "but then having to create that balance of acknowledging both sides' points of view, but not necessarily making it seem like they were equal."

Zwarun and Nkoala are still analyzing the data, but they plan to publish their findings in the future. The resulting qualitative study should offer an illuminating perspective on science communication from the Global South. Overall, Zwarun was impressed by the passion of the South African journalists.

"Something that's kind of gotten lost in the big corporate media world that we have here is just how valuable local media is," Zwarun said. "It seems to be pretty alive and well there. They respected that need, were committed to fulfilling that need and felt it was a very important need."

It's clear that institutional investment in faculty through initiatives such as the UMSEAP, the UMSL Global International Fellowship Program and the College of Education Donor Funded Award is providing life-changing experiences and producing fruitful scholarship and real-world solutions.

"The benefits extend back to the university through publications, presentations, faculty development, curriculum internationalization and new opportunities for students and colleagues," Slapac said. "Cross-cultural initiatives also help faculty approach global engagement with greater openness, reciprocity and appreciation for different educational and cultural contexts."

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