{"id":24640,"date":"2010-11-15T08:25:41","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T13:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=24640"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:36:02","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:36:02","slug":"a-passion-for-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/11\/a-passion-for-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passion for Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting occasional rides to school from a neighbor wasn\u2019t just a matter of transportation for Eric Donkor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Peace<\/a>
Engineering faculty member Eric Donkor was introduced to electronics and the joy of learning by Peace Corps volunteers. Photo by Jessica Tommaselli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a source of inspiration, as well.<\/p>\n

As a junior high school student in Ghana, Donkor, now an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the School of Engineering<\/a>, faced a four-mile walk to school. As luck would have it, John F. MacKenzie, a volunteer in CUSO<\/a> (Canada\u2019s equivalent to the U.S. Peace Corps<\/a>), was teaching physics at the same school. And he lived only a short distance from Donkor\u2019s house. He took a shine to the young student and, when their schedules matched, would offer him a ride to class.<\/p>\n

During these rides, they talked about a lot of things, including MacKenzie\u2019s passion for short wave radio. A licensed amateur (or ham<\/a>) radio operator, MacKenzie enlisted Donkor\u2019s aid in setting up his antenna and transmitting equipment. The year was 1967, long before the advent of the Internet or cell phones, and Donkor says, \u201cI was amazed that he could talk to his folks back in Canada. I couldn\u2019t believe it! I was really curious and I wanted to learn. Luckily, John really liked me. When he left Ghana, he gave me all his equipment except the transmitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was soon clear that Donkor\u2019s interest in electronics was much more than a passing fancy. \u201cHere I was,\u201d he continues, \u201cdriving my mother crazy at 2 a.m. reading instruction books and teaching myself electronics. She kept telling me to go to bed! By the next year, I had built my own radio. By 1969, I had built my own television set. I didn\u2019t have to buy anything extra because John had left me so much equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

When American Peace Corps volunteer George Hathaway arrived on the scene, Donkor\u2019s luck continued. Hathaway was a high school mathematics teacher who had a way with words. Donkor says, \u201cMy goodness, if George teaches you math, there\u2019s no way you won\u2019t like it. It was like he was telling a story. He made math so real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hathaway\u2019s influence didn\u2019t end in the classroom. According to Donkor, life at Wesley Grammar School (a secondary level boarding school in Accra) meant that students were always waiting for mail from home, or borrowing from each other, when they ran out of \u2018essentials\u2019 such as toothpaste, shampoo, or snacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge first asked me why we didn\u2019t have a science and math club, and when I told him we didn\u2019t have any money to start a club, he said we should borrow money from the school, buy some of the things that other students were always needing, and sell them at a small profit. Then use that money to start a club.\u201d<\/p>\n

Excited about the possibilities of a new enterprise, Donkor and his classmates responded to the challenge. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have anywhere to set up our store,\u201d he says, \u201cso George showed us how to build our own in an unused area in the art block. He got me so excited. He made me the de facto leader \u2026 it was like building Noah\u2019s Ark!<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how I first learned about leadership, and when we started the club, I became its first president,\u201d Donkor adds. \u201cI was extremely lucky \u2026 I actually don\u2019t know if it is providence or luck \u2026 but had he not come along and made me enjoy math and taught me how to work with people and to develop organizational skills, I might have gone in a completely different direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donkor went on to graduate from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana with a bachelor\u2019s degree in physics and a diploma in education, but not before he was further influenced by the Peace Corps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a great physics teacher for one semester in my last year of college,\u201d he says. \u201cHe was a Peace Corps volunteer from Montana. I\u2019d never seen anything quite like it. He made me \u2018feel physics.\u2019 His Peace Corps friends were all so supportive of me, and they were the ones who encouraged me to continue my schooling in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the opportunity to study in England or in Australia, but I thought about my experiences with Peace Corps volunteers and I said to myself \u2026 if this is what the U.S. is all about \u2026that\u2019s where I\u2019m going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donkor arrived in Boston in 1981 and completed his master\u2019s degree in electrical engineering at Boston University. He then came to UConn, where he earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1988. He has taught in the School of Engineering and conducted research in fiber optics and opto-electronic devices ever since. Not a bad outcome for a young African boy who wouldn\u2019t go to bed until he\u2019d \u2018figured it all out.\u2019<\/p>\n

The International Services and Programs Department is holding a panel discussion featuring returned Peace Corps volunteers on Tuesday, November 16 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. in Student Union 304A. <\/em>Featured\u00a0 on the panel will be representatives from the Peace Corps and returned volunteers from Micronesia, Cameroon, Kiribati, and South Korea.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peace Corps volunteers set Eric Donkor on the path to a career as an engineering professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-24640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 20:20:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24640"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36331,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24640\/revisions\/36331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24640"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=24640"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}