Honors student to present on goat production in Rwanda

field of goatsSchreyer Honors College senior Kira Hydock will present “Analysis of Traditional and Modern Approaches to Goat Production and Management in Rwanda” on Dec. 3, from noon to 1:00 p.m., in Foster Auditorium, first floor, Paterno Library. Hydock, who is majoring in veterinary and biomedical sciences and African Studies, with a minor in international agriculture, is a recipient of the 2014 M.G. Whiting Student Indigenous Knowledge Research Award and the first undergraduate to be selected. She will be introduced by her advisor, Clemente Abrokwaa, senior lecturer in African Studies. The seminar is free and open to the public and can be viewed live online

Kira Hydock (center) during her visit to RwandaHydock (pictured here, center) says that after visiting Rwanda during the summer of 2012, she left the country with many questions, one being, “Why are there so many goats in a country with a ‘one cow per poor family’ program?” Her interest in traditional goat production and management in Rwanda’s Muhanga district became the impetus for her honors thesis. She compiled a literature review of traditional goat production methods and combined the review with personal accounts and opinions from Rwandan goat herders. Access to this information allowed Hydock to generate several conclusions about goat herding in Rwanda and enabled her to formulate recommendations for the preservation of traditional practices that simultaneously increased the productive capacity of the goat herds. These observations will be presented in her seminar. Hydock will attend the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine in fall 2015.

This presentation is the latest in a series of seminars on indigenous knowledge co-sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries and ICIK, the Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge. For more information, or if you anticipate needing accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, contact Helen Sheehy, 814-863-1347 and hms2@psu.edu in advance of your visit. For more on ICIK, including a link to past seminars, go to http://icik.psu.edu/.