Jean-Pierre Kabuyenge, a biology professor at the National University of Rwanda (NUR), arrived on October 5 at AUNE, where he will spend a month as a visiting scholar.
Kabuyenge came at the invitation of the Department of Environmental Studies and faculty member Beth Kaplin, with whom he has been working for six years on a conservation education project in Rwanda.
At AUNE, he will observe classes and faculty meetings, and work on research in conservation science.
Kabuyenge teaches, does research, supervises student projects, and leads the Zoology and Conservation option in NUR’s Department of Biology.
Born in Rwanda, Jean-Pierre fled at a young age to Burundi with his family in 1962. In Burundi, he earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, taught science, and worked in education administration on the national level. He earned a master’s degree in biology in Belgium, studying applied ecology, population ecology, and freshwater biology. He taught in a teachers’ college for two years after returning to Burundi.
In 1994, he left a politically unstable Burundi to return to Rwanda with his family. He went to work in Extension for NUR before he joined the biology department. He lives in Butare, Rwanda, with his wife and four children.
Part of his visit is funded by the MacArthur Foundation grant that funds the conservation education work of Kaplin and others in the Albertine Rift region of Africa, through a memorandum of understanding between AUNE and NUR.
