The Sub-Saharan Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute (SAFRI) offers a fellowship program that can be completed in 17 months, with an option to continue working with a SAFRI faculty mentor on an individual scholarship project for an additional seven months. The core fellowship program is comprised of three residential sessions with two distance learning sessions between them. The residential sessions are held over a period of 7 consecutive days (per session). The first two are held one year apart. The third (final) residential session occurs approximately four months after the second residential session and includes presentation of their project at the annual conference of the South Africa Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE). In this final session Fellows present a faculty development workshop and prepare the first draft of a research article or short report for publication.
The themes addressed in the SAFRI fellowship programme are leadership, project planning, research and scholarship development and educational methods. Curriculum topics include student assessment, good teaching practices, programme evaluation, distance learning, leadership, change management, project design and management, conflict management, educational research and scholarship, and qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
Over the course of the program, each Fellow designs and implements an education innovation project at his or her home institution. Project summaries and results are shared by Fellows in poster presentations during the second residential session. Each Fellow also prepares an abstract of the project for submission to the SAAHE conference.
SAFRI’s distance learning sessions focus on the mentoring of Fellows, network building, and the exchange of ideas through participation in an accredited, certificate-bearing distance learning programme. Fellows are also required to design and implement a faculty development workshop at their home institution during the second distance learning session as part of their professional portfolio. As a part of the distance learning sessions, Fellows are provided with the opportunity to complete a series of online courses aimed at further development of their skills in research, management and assessment.
All applications are reviewed electronically by three reviewers from the pool of SAFRI alumni. Allocations of reviewers is done by administrative staff to ensure that no application is reviewed by someone from the same institution. Reviews are done online and make use of the FAIMER selection and scoring criteria. Once all the applications are reviewed, a selection panel reviews the scores and comments and make the final selection based on the available budget and any predetermined strategic criteria (e.g. institutions or countries who have never applied).
You can apply here: https://faimer.fluidreview.com/