While corn grows nine feet tall in central Indiana this year, Malawi, a landlocked nation of 11 million in southeastern Africa, is struggling to recover from the effects of a 2001 drought. Malawi has one of the highest population densities on the continent and most of its residents live in rural villages and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

In an effort to improve the standard of living and quality of life for future generations, educators from Malawi are working with faculty at Indiana State University to enhance their classroom teaching skills and learn more about earth sciences, with particular attention to geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing and cartography. Professors from Mzuzu University are especially interested in the use of GIS to monitor disease in crops, increase agricultural productivity and monitor land and forestry degradation.

In this gallery, the delegation visits ISU's field campus for a field exercise in global positioning systems.

To see other galleries related to the Malawi visit, see lunch with the president, class work.

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