Vernon Gracen

My major responsibility is serving as an Associate Director of the West African Center for Crop Improvement, a JV between Cornell University and the University of Ghana. I spend 6 months per year in Ghana managing the curriculum and supervising PhD students at WACCI. I have responsibility for developing the curriculum for Cornell's Transnational Learning Program for the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics. This involves the development of workshops, short courses and full MSc/PHD training curricula for training plant breeders in traditional breeding methods and application of new molecular technologies to applied breeding programs. Currently, we have cooperative programs with ACCI, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and the CAB in Thailand in addition to WACCI.