At the Moka Wildlife Station (right), Drexel delegates met with Bioko program staff and local grade school students.
The Drexel delegation hiked to the Bioko program’s research site on a beach where marine turtles’ nesting grounds are being monitored.
In February, President John Fry and a group of Drexel leaders visited the Republic of Equatorial Guinea in support of the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Pro- gram (BBPP), a long-standing academic and research partnership between Drexel and the Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (UNGE) that promotes conservation efforts and environmental research on the country’s Bioko Island.
Drexel’s partnership with UNGE represents the world’s only international study-abroad program in Equatorial Guinea.
The Drexel delegation participated in several events and toured research sites operated by the Bioko program. In the capital of Malabo, Fry also met with the president of Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, to discuss biodiversity conservation.
The Bioko program officially started in 1998 and has been operated by Drexel since 2007. Drexel undergraduate and graduate students, as well as volunteers, are involved in all of the research activities at BBPP sites. “I was blown away by what the Bioko program has done, because not only are they doing world-class scholarship, but at the same time they’re engaging with the local community and bringing our cultures together,” says Executive Vice Provost for Research & Innovation Aleister Saunders, who was a member of the delegation. “This isn’t just about collecting knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but to improve the world.”