My skill will not benefit me; it will benefit the world.
Dr. Steve Shumway and Seth Ayim spent three weeks of their summer of 2025 in Ghana to build University of Cape Coast professors and students’ ability to teach new experimental teaching strategies for K-12 classrooms.
Ayim, a Ghanaian PhD student at the McKay School of Education, says the goal of the training was to increase the educator’s capacity but also to spread the aims of a BYU education. Those aims promote well-rounded growth, including spiritual, intellectual, and that of character.
“We didn't go preaching, but they saw that in the way we do things, the way we approach things, the way we are ready to share our resources with them,” Ayim said. “We were more wearing an invisible badge that shows that we were sharing the gospel in a very serviceable way.”
Shumway, a technology and engineering studies professor, received funds from the Armin Hill Professorship from the BYU College of Engineering in 2024. In the same year, Ayim and the provost of the University of Cape Coast began to work with Shumway to develop a new STEM Education Teaching minor for the university.
After regular online meetings to prepare curriculum with department chairs of the Ghanaian university, Shumway decided to use the professorship funds for a outreach-focused trip to Ghana to train faculty more effectively.
Shumway, his wife, Joyce, and Ayim worked with 50 professors and teachers-in-training to demonstrate activities they could use in Ghanaian classrooms.
“A STEM education is a very important part of a society developing and becoming more self-sufficient and rising up to be a leader and a player in our current economic situation,” Shumway said.
They gathered materials that would be readily available in Ghana. Shumway says he had to draw on his more than 20 years of experience to make it work.
“If I want something here, I can just order it online or I can go down to a hardware store, and I have it,” Shumway said. “But there, I had to tweak many of my activities to be able to be repeatable in a Ghanaian school situation.”
Ayim’s connections with his company—Bountiful STEM Educational Foundation, which teaches kids in public and private schools STEM, robotics, and coding in Ghana—and ability to communicate allowed him to be a liaison for Shumway and organize the trip effectively.
Their efforts were well-received by the faculty that attended. Teachers and students from several places, even outside of Ghana, enjoyed being able to apply what they already know.
Shumway was able to work directly with a PhD student from Benin named Carlos, who speaks French and received an award at the training for his participation and contribution.
“We discovered how practical teaching should be,” Carlos said in a LinkedIn post. “We have so much to gain by adopting this approach in our schools. I personally believe that in an Africa faced with so many challenges, education is key and must become truly transformational.”
Carlos and the other participants in the training expressed deep gratitude for the examples of Shumway and Ayim. After the training, Shumway was able to leave the materials behind to make duplication of the curriculum run smoother.
Ayim says that Shumway empowered the employees he trained, “not only sharing his expertise with them, but also collaborating with them and thinking about how they can impact a generation.”
Shumway and his wife met with Elder Alfred Kyungu, General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and President of the Africa West Area. Kyungu was pleased to hear of their success and service in sharing Christ’s love with Church-affiliated university resources, explaining some of the goals of the Church as they prepare to build a temple in Cape Coast, Shumway said.
Ayim and the BYU Management Society, a global network of professionals that strive for ethical leadership, organized three devotionals with congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near the university in Ghana. Shumway and his wife addressed young single adults—students, their friends, or curious locals—about lifelong learning, building their faith as well as their education.
Shumway was struck by the spiritual power and passion for growth the young adults showed at the devotionals.
“The Spirit just washed over me,” Shumway said. “This is how the church is going to move and be strengthened in Ghana, is these YSAs right here, these young single adults. They have a huge strength and a huge responsibility in their country.”
Shumway and Ayim hope their work will result in both continued growth and development of STEM education through Ghana’s private and public schools and in the spread of serving and uniting values.
“You can change a situation through education better than you can do it through some type of enforcement of a policy or things of that nature,” Shumway said. “Sometimes you just do things because it is the right thing to do, to go and to serve and to teach, because education is transformative.”
Ayim felt privileged to be able to be a part of the teachers’ influence through generations.
“It's just a little seed that we sow that would germinate into bigger things,” Ayim said. “That is dear to my heart to be able to continue to empower—not only in Ghana but in West Africa where the church is growing—teachers’ education.”
Shumway and Ayim continue to confer with the University of Cape Coast to determine whether progress is being made as they plan to execute the curriculum in January 2026 for their winter semester.
Private schools in Ghana applied the activities in the fall of 2025. If the curriculum grows, Shumway says they may continue to have in-person trips in summers of the future.
The BYU representatives met with the Deputy Director for Education of Ghana during their time there to share what they accomplished to support the initiative of experimental learning going forward. Joy News, a national Ghanaian TV news organization, also featured the training in their evening program.
