More than 7,500 miles from University of South Carolina’s campus, graduate students at Makerere University in Uganda finish a day of work and head home. The streets of the capital city, Kampala, are chronically jammed with heavy traffic, so universities offer online classes unusually late in the evening to give students extra time to arrive home, eat dinner and prepare for class. But traffic and late nights aren’t the only challenges graduate students in Uganda face, according to School of Information Science associate professor Dick Kawooya.

“Many graduate students in African institutions face significant challenges in developing the research necessary to complete their degrees,” said Kawooya. “Those hurdles delay graduation, lower research quality, and in some cases, lead students to drop out altogether.”

Kawooya faced some of these challenges in the late 1990’s while completing his undergraduate studies at Makerere University’s East African School of Library and Information Science. In 2001, he moved to the United States to complete his graduate work. When he later joined the faculty at the iSchool, he devoted his research to shedding light on legal and ethical barriers to information access around the world and pledged to encourage his students to explore and embrace the cultural differences of the patrons who they will serve as library professionals.

“Information services, such as those used by our libraries, reach everyone in the world who uses the internet. Plus, librarians serve people from all over the world, so our students should learn how other places run their institutions, the challenges they face and how they overcome those challenges,” said Kawooya.

To give students a global perspective on librarianship and increase research opportunities, Kawooya recently launched a new international partnership between the USC iSchool and Makerere University’s EASLIS.

“This is the start of what we hope is a great mutually beneficial collaboration resulting in shared learning, teaching and research exchanges and collaborations,” said Kawooya.

During the Spring 2026 semester, three USC faculty members — Kawooya, Kim Thompson and Feili Tu-Keefner —  partnered with three EASLIS faculty to create online lectures delivered in a way that students at both universities can join together and learn from each other.

“We decided to start with a low cost, high reward path. Since both universities offer online classes, the students can easily learn from international faculty with various perspectives and research expertise. Our university is trying to give students exposure to international systems and culture, so they can see how things work in other parts of the world.”

A partnership took shape in July 2025 after Kawooya traveled to Uganda for a fellowship funded by the Carnegie Foundation.

“During my fellowship, I worked to increase research capacity and support graduate students and junior faculty at EASLIS. But, we also realized that beginning this partnership would be valuable for students and faculty at both of our institutions,” said Kawooya. “We could learn much from each other to enhance curriculum and increase research opportunities for students and faculty.”

For USC students, the new partnership engages them in global learning and supports international scholarly endeavors — both core aspects of Global Carolina, the university’s initiative to develop international collaboration with institutions around the world and prepare graduates to thrive in an increasingly global workplace.

“Our university invests heavily in international experiences. We hope this partnership with Uganda gives students another opportunity to interact with students aboard, without the cost and time of travel. Eventually, we hope Uganda becomes another site for study abroad.’

Kawooya also says the collaborative work “engages the graduate students in critical thinking to develop research interests and searchable questions that can be translated into research projects for possible publication.”

The mutual benefits for faculty at both institutions include collaboration for research, international grant applications and joint publications.

“Much of the research and work we have done locally, we are now looking out how we can utilize our partners in Uganda to expand our horizon,” said Kawooya. “This partnership is a very small investment of resources right now, but the benefit is proving to be large.”

For Kawooya, launching an academic partnership that lowers barriers to earning a degree he and other Ugandan students once struggled to obtain in their home country is a “full circle” moment.