African adventure awaits Fraziers

MT. PLEASANT — Africa calls two Mt. Pleasant residents on journeys halfway across the world beginning after graduation.

“Zachary Frazier, my son, is one of the few in America to be recipient of the Norman Borlaug Internship for the World Food Prize of Iowa,” former Provost of Iowa Wesleyan University DeWayne Frazier said.

According to DeWayne Frazier, his son will work in Nairobi, Kenya at the International Livestock Research Institute following his graduation from Mt. Pleasant High School later this month.

Zac spent his time at MPHS as class president and will graduate with high honors before pursuing this opportunity.

Following his time at the International Livestock Research Institute, Zac will study as a Presidential Scholar at Bellarmine University in environmental and food science in Kentucky.

According to Zac, his journey to achieving this internship came from an opportunity to take Accelerated Human Geography at MPHS.

“So for most sophomores, it's just a required class of regular human geography,” Zac said. “A teacher [Jennifer Roederer] sort of pushed me to take the accelerated version.”

During this course, Zac worked on a research paper about malnutrition in the Democratic Public of the Congo.

This region holds a personal connection to the Frazier family as three of the six Frazier children came from that area.

Zac researched the topic of intercropping cassava root with peanut plants in a similar way as Iowan farmers grow corn and soybeans.

“The other part was to raise tilapia in small scale, like pond farms so that different communities would be able to have this food that they could produce for themselves,” he explained. “Another benefit of those two things working together was that 20% of the diet of the tilapia could just come from leaves that you cut off of peanut plant.”

“So, the idea was that you're sort of trying to make a system where there's almost no waste, and you're trying to have as little cost as possible for getting as much nutritious food as you can get,” Zac said.

“I submitted that paper to the World Food Prize Iowa Youth Institute,” Zac said.

After submitting his research, Zac participated in interviews and found himself one of the few that received the Borlaug Ruin Internship, also known as the World Food Prize.

Once accepted, he then created a resume which he submitted to many different organizations and interviewed for various internship opportunities.

Thanks to the World Food Prize, Zac will pursue the opportunity with the International Livestock Research Institute at zero cost to himself.

“It's kind of like the Nobel Peace Prize or Nobel Prize for food security because Mr. Norman Borlaug helped save India with his food security work in the industry of wheat and mass production,” DeWayne Frazier explained. “Norman Borlaug is accredited for saving over a billion lives with what he did with his research and producing lower cost food that was more effective and had less failure from different diseases or just natural causes.”

As Zac excitedly runs toward his future as a fresh high school graduate, his father, DeWayne Frazier looks to Africa to further his already established career in higher education.

DeWayne Frazier will begin as the sixth President of the American University of Nigeria (AUN) this next school year.

Despite the timing of the news, Frazier states that he pursued this opportunity well before knowing of Iowa Wesleyan’s closure at the end May.

He applied to many various opportunities, but said that AUN “really went after me very diligently.”

According to Frazier, part of this pursuit came from an already formed connection with AUN, Mt. Pleasant, and Iowa Wesleyan.

“I helped write a chapter in a book about a famous student of Iowa Wesleyan about seven years ago, and the Nigerian government used it,” Frazier said. “His name was Clement Isong. And so Dr. Clement Isong was the first governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and he's on the currency in the country. He's kind of the equivalent of Alexander Hamilton.”

Frazier worked with Joy Conwell, to sort through archives and put together information about the statesman.

“The first chapter in their book about the statesman talks about his time in Mt. Pleasant,” Frazier said.

“So, an executive search firm in America kept contacting me about applying, and the process started in October,” he said.

When he visited the institution in March, Frazier said he was treated like a celebrity.

He saw his photos throughout the city and experienced natives asking for photos of him.

“I'm excited about what I get to do because not only does it take my international experience, which I have two decades plus of, and then it takes my academic and international or academic and higher ed experience, and it marries it together for the perfect combination,” Frazier said. “ … this will give me the opportunity to do the things that I've always dreamt of being able to do in terms of touching lives and really, truly helping those in education.”

As both Fraziers move forward on their African adventures, DeWayne Frazier holds a quote from Nelson Mandela close to his heart, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com