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- Category: Campus News
Dr. Tjama Tjivikua graduated from Lincoln in 1983
Dr. Tjama Tjivikua, founder and rector of the Polytechnic of Namibia, a school of higher education in southern Africa, visited Lincoln University's main campus on Tuesday, Feb. 12. He met with University officials to mark the recent signing of an exchange agreement between Lincoln and the Polytechnic.
The Polytechnic is an accredited, baccalaureate degree-granting, four-year institution in Windhoek, Namibia in southern Africa. Dr. Tjivikua established it in January 1995.
The agreement, which took effect in the Fall 2002 semester, allows for an indeterminate number of Lincoln students to study one year in Namibia and for an equal number of Polytechnic students to study one year at Lincoln in southern Chester County, Pa. The exchange is open only to students who are majoring in information technology, business, economics, communications or pre-engineering.
Dr. Tjivikua is well acquainted with Lincoln University. He graduated cum laude from Lincoln in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. His other undergraduate honors include: the American Chemical Award, the Jessie B. Plummer Memorial Medal, the Bradley Gold Medal, the James Birnie Memorial Award, and the Wilbert A. Tatum - Saligrama C. Subbarao Award. He also twice earned Lincoln's Special Service Award as well as citations in German.
He earned his master's of science degree in organic chemistry from the University of Lowell, Mass., where he was a research fellow. He was a teacher and research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh where he earned his doctorate in organic chemistry. After receiving his doctorate, he spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting scientist. In 1990, he returned to his alma mater as an assistant professor of chemistry as well as university marshal. He left Lincoln in 1995 to establish the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia.
Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is a premier, Historically Black University that combines the best elements of a liberal arts and sciences-based undergraduate core curriculum and selected graduate programs to meet the needs of students living in a highly technological and global society.
Lincoln University is ranked first in Pennsylvania and second in the nation in graduating African Americans with baccalaureate degrees in the physical sciences. Lincoln is also the only university in the Commonwealth and one of but 20 universities nationwide where 40 percent or more of its physics graduates are women.