Hmmm, I just had to dig up this thread to post this. I know DK (and this thread) has a bias for those in Science, Medicine & the Engineering fields but I think this woman; Yetunde Antonia Schleicher is simply amazing.

Remember the 5 Yoruba speaking ''Oyinbo'' Americans presently living in Ibadan & studying Yoruba at U.I? Well, she's the coordinator of the language exchange programme that brought them to Nigeria. One of them; the author of this biography (Caraline ''Titilayo'' Harshman) has her videos all over youtube so you may want to check her out. . . . .

It's more of a biography than an academic profile but it'll do. . . . . .Ileke-Idi and all the ''yorubacentric'' Nairalanders go trip

To Give Your Life For Your Language
by Cara Harshman
http://401.journalism.wisc.edu/profiles/antonia-schleicher-a-woman-who-gives-her-life-for-her-language/profile-narrative/

[/b]Before she said her first word or stood up on her own, Antonia Schleicher had a fan club. This was not your typical fan club. The members did not come together out of shared interest or obsession for this infant girl. They did it to save her life.

Born in southwestern Nigeria, Schleicher entered the world so sickly that her parents thought she might die young. To seek a cure, they did what any other family in the town would do. They took her to the traditional diviner, the healer, the babalawo in Yoruba, her first language.

The diviner said Antonia–then known by her Yoruba name, Yetunde–had an affinity to the spiritual world. He said she was a leader in that world and warned her parents that they must establish a club for her and make her the leader or else the spirits would pull her back into their world.

Her parents obeyed the diviner’s prediction and held ceremonies for her every year until she told them she had had enough. At the ripe age of 11, like most children in Nigeria, it was time for Yetunde to start high school.

Since those years, Schleicher’s successes have been abundant. At 56-years-old, five-feet tall and a recent American citizen, she is living out the babalawo’s prophecy, regardless of the fact she does not believe in such divine things.

“Even though I don’t believe in things like that, it’s amazing; all my life, even when I don’t campaign for leadership, I will be selected,” Schleicher says, sitting comfortably on her rolling chair in her 14th floor office looking out on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Since starting out as an assistant professor of African languages and literature here in 1989, she has filled enough leadership roles in the realm of international African language pedagogy for five people.

It was while writing her master’s thesis in linguistics at the University of Ibadan in 1981, that Schleicher seized the opportunity to study in the United States. At 29 years old Schleicher left Nigeria for the first time and arrived at the University of Kansas, planning to study for 10 months on a cultural exchange program. She became so enamored with the U.S. and its education system that she decided to pursue a career here teaching Yoruba. Since then, her life in America has developed into something far beyond what she planned.

Schleicher is the founder and executive director of the National African Language Resource Center, the executive director of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, the executive director of the African Language Teachers Association, on the board of directors at the Joint National Council of Languages and now a tenured professor of African languages and literature.[/b]

Add wife and mother of two to the list.

“She can’t sit still,” Charles, her American husband of 21 years, says. “She’s just not really in control of that. She has to be doing something all the time.”

Above anything else, Schleicher says she is constantly listening.

Before she started at UW-Madison, the language organizations she leads now either did not exist or were floundering, in dire need of revival. Over the years she saw a need for them, created them and made them powerful. As Charles puts it, “she really likes to see weak things become strong.”

“I always tell my staff that I only see myself as a visionary,” Schleicher says in her gentle, eloquent English accent, influenced with hints of British from Britain’s 60-year colonial occupation of Nigeria. Her English is lyrical. Since Yoruba language has three tones–low, mid and high–Yoruba people accentuate English syllables with the same singsong intonation.

“When I go for meetings, I listen to what people are saying, like ‘Oh, we don’t have this; oh, I wish we had this in my program.’ Then I’m thinking, OK how can this be done?” she says.

Complaints she heard from African language teachers about the lack of teaching materials and professional development in the field inspired her to apply for a federal grant through the Department of Education. In 1999, the department awarded her the funds to start the first National African Language Resource Center in the United States.

The center operates in a Madison campus building out of six small offices off of a tiny stretch of hallway barely wide enough for two people to pass. It has trained more than 200 African languages instructors and developed teaching materials for more than 40 African languages.

“She builds institutions,” says Dustin Cowell, chair of the African languages and literature department at UW-Madison.

For her small stature, Schleicher has a tenacious presence in a room. She is always well dressed, switching off wearing traditional Yoruba skirts and blouses with bright fabrics, and tailored Western style suits. The black scarf around her head keeps her warm and hides her hair if she does not have time to have it braided. When she laughs in her joyous, full-bodied, hysterical laugh, which is often, students cannot help but laugh with her.

Cowell has acted as chair of the department three separate times over the course of Schleicher’s career at UW-Madison. He has also observed first hand her role as a catalyst of African language learning on campus and worldwide.

While teaching Yoruba language at Yale University for two years before she applied for a job at UW, Schleicher wrote the textbooks that defined the curriculum for introductory level Yoruba language classes. Six Yoruba graduate students from Nigeria currently use these books to teach about 30 UW-Madison undergrads.

Seven of these students are leaving for Nigeria in June to spend a full year studying Yoruba at the University of Ibadan, Schleicher’s alma mater. This program, The Language Flagship, is the first of its kind for Yoruba and Swahili and another program Schleicher has been instrumental in building.

The international scope and richness of the African language teaching network Schleicher has orchestrated from the ground up is a testament to her innate tendency to take on many tasks, the trait she identifies as her biggest weakness.

“Many times I take on too much. I don’t know when to say no,” she says.

Schleicher is known to stay up all night either in her home office or at one of her two campus offices, finishing projects to meet deadlines. The amount of work she undertakes is not only overwhelming for her at some times, but it also keeps her from spending time at home with her daughter Carla, 20, and son Anthony, 17.

“I wish that when they were younger I had more time,” she says. “My husband is the one who goes to their games and everything. I feel jealous of him for that because I really would have loved to be home with the kids.”

When Carla and Anthony were babies, Charles was at home working on his dissertation while Schleicher was in the first years of her assistant professorship at UW-Madison.

“I was young enough that I don’t remember but my dad says that I would ask him if my mom loved me anymore,” Carla, a junior at University of Minnesota says. “I used to think that maybe she wasn’t around because she didn’t like me.”

As Carla got older, she says her mom was home more and completely made up for not being around when she was younger. “When I was ten and eleven she made more effort to spend more time alone with me. She kind of felt like she needed to make up for when she wasn’t there when I was younger,” Carla says.

Working with her mom in the NALRC office last summer, Carla was really able to understand the success her mom has achieved and strides she has made for African language pedagogy.

About 25 million people worldwide speak Yoruba–most of them in southwestern Nigeria. And now thanks to Schleicher, more and more college students from the United States too.

Kevin Barry, a UW sophomore from Neenah, Wis., is one of them.

Barry and his fellow classmates see Schleicher as their Yoruba professor who strives to help them improve their language skills.

“Every time I take a (language) proficiency test with Professor Schleicher, she always stops afterwards and has a conversation… she always says ‘What can I do to help you do better?’” Barry says.

As the first group of students to go through the African language Flagship program, they also see the business side of her that works tirelessly, flying to and from Nigeria multiple times each semester to establish it as an official study abroad program.

Her fervent dedication to providing opportunities and resources for her students won her a 2010 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

“It’s really a big deal to her to develop people,” Charles says. “One of the most deeply satisfying things for her is to find people who are weak and help them overcome those weaknesses and develop their strengths.”

Charles recalls a time they were just newlyweds living in Madison when Antonia befriended a Jamaican woman she met on the bus. This woman opened up to Schleicher and shared her stories of child abuse, her psychotic mother, lack of education and severe emotional and psychological stress. When Schleicher met her, she was living in a women’s homeless shelter.

With time and tough love, Schleicher worked with her to revive her mind to be healthy and sound. Now working a job and living in her own condo, this woman is one of the many people Schleicher has touched and empowered in her lifetime.

It is almost a guarantee that every higher education African language teacher in the world has heard Schleicher’s name before. She credits herself for uniting the small, scattered African language programs that existed in the U.S. in the mid-1990s and professionalizing them into a nationwide effort to improve African language pedagogies.

Today, her efforts reach far beyond U.S. borders.

ALTA and NCOLTCL are on their 14th and 13th year respectively hosting international language conferences. Schleicher and her staff organize top African language professors from universities in the U.S., South Africa, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand and Canada to gather every year to discuss issues pertinent to language pedagogies.

“Professor Schleicher is a workaholic,” says Akinsola Ogundeji, a lecturer for Yoruba language classes who just finished his thesis evaluating 10 elementary Yoruba language textbooks. “I don’t think I can catch up with her. I don’t know how much she is able to sleep within the 24 hours in a day. I don’t know how much time she has for her family.”

Schleicher does have remorse for not being home and with her children more, but she says it helps that Charles and she share the same belief that parenting is not just a woman’s role.

“He doesn’t see himself as being less of a man for doing his role as a father,” Schleicher says. “I still play my role at home as a woman, as the wife.”

Amid her professional responsibilities, Schleicher still prioritizes and enjoys cleaning her home, doing laundry, buying groceries and cooking.

Dinner is her special time of the day. Depending on the day of the week, Schleicher and Charles might be at church or Anthony at Eagle Scouts and Carla away at University of Minnesota. They might not eat together, but like a traditional Yoruba household, Schleicher will always keep a stew or meal in the fridge.

When they are all home for dinner, the hundreds of e-mails, meeting agendas, phone calls and constant questions from her staff take the back burner. Charles is standing around the kitchen while she cooks, talking about the latest news and occasionally running quick errands around the house to fetch extra ingredients she runs out of. Anthony might also be in the kitchen, adding humor to the conversation or at the kitchen table working in his sketchbook.

After dinner and a cup of her favorite ginger tea with 100 percent pure honey she brings back from every trip to Nigeria, she’s back to work, sorting out the latest task.

“All I know is that before I go to bed every night, I’m always thinking of all the things that I still haven’t done that I wanted to do,” she says as her computer chimes, telling her she has a new e-mail. “And I know I’m involved in a lot of things.”

tarano:

I respect these professionals in the academia for their discipline and dedication to their career. I have met a couple of these individuals personally. Guys it is not easy. Considering all the societal pressure from family and friends in Nigeria. Most Nigerian come to America to make money.

dayokanu: [size=18pt]ILESANMI ADESIDA[/size]

Adesida earned his bachelor’s degree in 1974, his master’s in 1975, and his doctorate in 1979, all in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. After finishing his doctorate, he worked briefly at [b]Cornell Univ[/b]ersity and then as a university administrator in Nigeria, his native country. He joined the Illinois faculty in 1987, and became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Adesida is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Vacuum Society, and the Optical Society of America. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, the Materials Research Society, and the Society for Engineering Education.


http://news.illinois.edu/news/06/0503adesida.html

pazienza: Yea,i remember this thread too. Nchara/igbobuigbo used it to debunk the claim that yorubas are the most educated tribe in nigeria,this thread was a bomb.At the end of it,it was obvious which tribe was the clear leader.

PhysicsQED:

Well there are even more Igbo academics than what he posted. But there are also many more academics abroad from other groups (including from the group Nchara/igbobuigbo was posting against) than what others posted. So there's not some kind of clear cut conclusion to be drawn from the thread since people just left it alone and didn't stretch it out to as many pages as possible. I doubt that anyone can prove the frequently made "most educated in Nigeria" claim anyway.

pazienza:

We can only work with what we have,if you know anymore yoruba/bini academia in diaspora,post them here,let the head count continue,stop making up excuses.