Biographical Information
Dr. Allyson Alimamy Sesay
Dr.
Allyson Alimamy Sesay is Full Professor of Education and Coordinator of
Academic Advising and Volunteer Service in the Department of Education. He was
trained as a secondary school teacher at Milton Margai Teachers College in
Sierra Leone. He received a BS in Agricultural Economics from Langston
University in Langston, Oklahoma, and a M.Ed. in Foundations of
Education/Comparative and International education from The University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. In 1981 Dr. Sesay earned the PhD degree
in Educational Policy Analysis with a cognate area in Vocational and Technical
Education from The University of Illinois. In addition to his work as a
secondary school science, mathematics, and English literature teacher, Dr.
Sesay has acquired a wealth of teaching, research, administrative, and community
service experiences in the United States and abroad in the area of teacher
education over the past 26 years. He has worked in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and
at a number of universities in the United States, including the University of
Maine at Farmington, the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Howard University in
Washington, DC, and currently at Shaw University. He has designed and taught a variety of
courses including educational policy, educational psychology, foundations of
education, economics of education, test and measurement, educational research,
methods of teaching, multidisciplinary studies, and multicultural education. He
teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Sesay has been
honored on four occasions in Who is Who
Among America’s Teachers. He has served in a number of administrative
capacities including department chair at Shaw and abroad. His research
interests include international comparisons of young children’s worldviews as a
foundation for preparing them for effective future leaders, educational policy
evaluation (impact analysis), and multicultural issues, particularly those
pertaining to gender equity in education. Dr. Sesay has presented the results
of his research studies at professional conferences and published in scholarly
journals in the United States and abroad.
Dr. Sesay’s work is firmly grounded in an eclectic philosophy of
education that is rooted in the internal locus-of-control principle which holds
that “truth and goodness belong to all persons no matter what their station”
(Johnson, et. al, 2005). Central to this
philosophy, therefore, is his unwavering belief that all children have a
capacity to learn and succeed, given the opportunity and a caring and nurturing
environment.