By Sarah Elmer
To understand th
e impact Dr. Henry Musoma has had on the students at Texas A&M University, take a stroll through the first floor of the Memorial Student Center, where Musoma’s image is featured on one of six long banners, each representing one of the six core values of Texas A&M.
In 2016, Musoma was awarded the honor of being recognized on the banner for the core value of “leadership.” Just a year earlier, Musoma’s dedication to his students and his passion for teaching also inspired a group of his students to pool together their money to buy him an Aggie Ring to replace one he had lost many years prior. These two examples are a small window into the countless awards and accolades Musoma has earned during his tenure at Texas A&M.
From being a featured guest on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” after a video went viral of him holding a student’s baby in class to earning the first-ever Mays Business School Spirit Award, Musoma aims to plant the seeds of humanity and humility in his students through a global educational experience.In 2016, Musoma was awarded the honor of being recognized on the banner for the core value of “leadership.” Just a year earlier, Musoma’s dedication to his students and his passion for teaching also inspired a group of his students to pool together their money to buy him an Aggie Ring to replace one he had lost many years prior. These two examples are a small window into the countless awards and accolades Musoma has earned during his tenure at Texas A&M.
Musoma transitioned from being Assistant Director for the Center for International Business Studies to the Texas A&M Foundation, where he hopes to continue having an impact on the university’s global initiatives. In his new role, Musoma works in the Academic Affairs office of the Foundation. The Academic Affairs office is the development support unit for the Provost.
Life In Africa Musoma was born in 1976 in Zambia, which was known as Northern Rhodesia before receiving independence in 1964. With his mother and father employed by the copper mines, he grew up in a middle-class home.
“The mines were huge,” Musoma says. “When you look at the Zambian flag, there is the color copper on it to symbolize the significance of copper in the economy. That [copper mining] company was huge and was called Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines. It owned all the different copper mines in the country, which was about ten mines.”
The mining company where Musoma’s father worked had its own private school, so Musoma was exposed to a diverse cast of educators. “My teachers were from all over, mostly from Ireland, Scotland, and [other parts of] the UK,” says Musoma. “It was a very interesting upbringing. ... When I think about who I am as a teacher, I like to call myself an ‘intellectual mutt.’ My experiences come from so many different people.”
The importance of the copper mines didn’t just stop in the classroom — it extended into Musoma’s afterschool extracurricular activities. As a tennis player during his youth, the mines played an integral role in providing him with the equipment he needed to play. “It was a pretty charmed life when I think about it,” Musoma says. “When my tennis shoes ran out, I gave [the copper mine’s stores] my father’s number, and I would be given a new tennis racket or a new pair of tennis shoes.” The copper mines were early pioneers in the area of corporate social responsibility.
The schooling system is similar in some ways to the United States schooling system, but vastly different in other ways. Just like children in the U.S., children in Africa complete 12 years of schooling before they are able to pursue post-secondary education. Musoma attended a school in Chingola, Zambia, from first grade through fourth grade. After fourth grade, his father’s job relocated the family to a different part of the country, so he enrolled in a different school from fifth grade through seventh grade.
“Seventh grade was so dramatic,” Musoma says. In 7th grade, students take a huge test to determine the quality of high school education they will receive. Musoma explains that in Zambia, many students hoped to attend Mpelembe Secondary School, which was also owned by the copper mines and was one of the most premiere secondary schools.
“The reason why a lot of people wanted to go there was because they had a major incentive,” Musoma continues. “If you graduated well and had really good marks, you were enrolled into what they call A-levels, which is similar to what we have in America, International Baccalaureate, and you could go to very significant schools across the world [for college].”
Out of all of the seventh grade students in Zambia, only 120 were selected for enrollment into Mpelembe. Musoma was one of them. “It was a huge time in my life,” says Musoma. He attended school at Mpelembe through eleventh grade and then moved again because of his father’s job. This time, the job reassignment took his family out of Zambia and into Mozambique.
“At the end of eleventh grade, I moved to an international school,” Musoma says. “That was quite an experience. The school I went to had around 20 to 30 nationalities from across the world. In my class, I had a Russian classmate, a Danish classmate, a Tanzanian classmate, I had somebody from Peru, somebody from Zambia. There were people from everywhere, and it was pretty cool.”
When Musoma finished high school in Mozambique, he searched for new educational opportunities and chose college in Zimbabwe, where he pursued Cambridge University A-level Certifications. Musoma explains that the difficulty and rigor of A-levels are unlike anything one would find in their first year of an American college. “When you finish A-levels and come to the states, you start as a sophomore in college,” says Musoma. “Imagine a high school kid taking sophomore-level classes straight out of high school. So, after doing a semester of A-levels, I came home and wasn’t sure about going back to Zimbabwe. I was somewhat homesick as well.”
Little did he know, Musoma’s decision to come back home after his first year of college would lead to a chance encounter that would put him on his path to America.
The Man On The Street As Musoma was walking on the streets of Mozambique, he noticed a man on the corner whom he presumed to be an American, because of the American car in his driveway. Musoma introduced himself and he learned the man’s name was Albert Cates and that he worked for the United States Agency for International Development. “I asked a question, and my life changed,” says Musoma. The conversation with Cates led to dinner with Musoma’s parents, where Cates encouraged him to consider a community college in America.
He decided to take Cates’s advice and apply to community colleges in the U.S. — two in New Mexico and two in Texas. He was accepted to all four, but ultimately chose to attend Tyler Junior College in Tyler. “I ended up going to Tyler Junior College because of Texas Highway magazine,” Musoma says. “I went to the U.S. embassy and ran into a random fellow, and we became friends. He gave me a copy of the Texas Highway magazine and at that time I was trying to make a decision. At that time, there was an article about the Tyler Rose Festival. I was 20 years old, dreaming of coming to America, holding this magazine in my hand and going ‘wow.’” For the past 22 years, Musoma has held on to that original copy of Texas Highway. For the time being, he keeps it safely stored in his office with the hope of showing it to his grandchildren someday.
“The major lesson from this is that people are not looking for a handout — they are looking for someone to show them a possibility and a way,” says Musoma. “[Mr. Cates] didn’t pay for anything. He just showed me a way and gave me an idea.”
Life In America
Despite the uncertainty that came with moving to an entirely new country for college, Musoma says he adjusted well to life in Tyler. “The advice that Mr. Cates gave to me to go to a community college was brilliant,” says Musoma. “It wasn’t A&M with 50,000 people. Tyler Junior College is a significant size community college. I think it was about 6,000. It was a good enough size that my math class only had 40 people.”
After completing two years at Tyler Junior College, Musoma transferred to Texas A&M, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Leadership and Development with an emphasis in Agricultural Economics in 2000. “When I got to America, I was going to study agricultural engineering,” says Musoma. “But, it would have taken me five years to do agricultural engineering because I needed to do a lot of bridge math to come to be where I needed to be in engineering. So, I decided to not do that because I wanted to finish in a certain amount of time because my parents were paying for school. I like people to know that it is okay to make decisions that are not exactly your passion, because life doesn’t always offer us first choice. Sometimes life offers us our second choice, and our second choice ends up being our first choice when you allow life to take the process of life.”
Two years later, he received his Master of Science in Agricultural Education. “I did not come to America to become a teacher or a professor, that is for sure,” says Musoma. “I came here to America to work in international development. I was going to be one of those United Nations, World Bank, food and agricultural organization kind of guys — rolling through Africa in a land cruiser, helping solve global issues kind of fella. That’s why I studied agriculture.”
However, Musoma’s plans for his future did not work out exactly as he had planned. After obtaining his master’s degree, he worked as a waiter at Pappadeaux for three years before he was offered a teaching position in the Department of Agriculture at Texas A&M as an assistant lecturer in 2005. After working as a lecturer for three years, he decided to pursue a doctorate at Texas Christian University in Educational Leadership and Administration.
“Part of what inspired that was a young man named Harrison Yat,” says Musoma. “[Harrison works] for a consulting firm in Houston. I don’t know whether he remembers this, but I remember it clearly. He came in my office and he said ‘Musoma, you’re always telling us to aim high. How come you are teaching without a Ph.D?’ It was like a challenge. Right after he left, I started applying.”
Planting The Seed After successfully completing his doctorate in 2012, Musoma was hired as a lecturer at Texas A&M. Though his roles and responsibilities have evolved over the years, Musoma still wants to ensure his students have an education beyond the classroom. In 2014, with the help of a very generous corporate donor, Phillips 66, he started the first-generation undergraduate study abroad to Africa for freshman Regents’ Scholars in the business school. To be a Regents’ Scholar at Texas A&M, students must be first-generation college students, meaning neither parent has earned a bachelor’s degree. Additionally, the family’s adjusted gross income must be less than $40,000 per year as verified through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Through this annual field trip to Africa, Musoma has the opportunity to get to know some of his student on a more personal level.
Though Musoma’s life has taken him on a path far from the agricultural career he had envisioned for himself, he still sees himself as a different kind of agricultural professional. “A couple of years ago, a pastor said, ‘You can count the number of seeds in an orange, but you can never count the number of oranges in the seed,’” says Musoma. “This orange has a lot of seeds. You can know exactly the number of seeds in there if we dissect it, but guess what, we don’t know how many oranges come from each seed. If we plant that seed, we don’t know what is going to come from it. That is exciting to me as a professor. So, my classroom is a farm. I’m still doing agriculture, but it’s just a different kind of harvest. You remember how your second choice becomes your first? I’m still an agricultural engineer, just a different kind with different equations, different formulas, same outcomes. People get fed, literally and metaphorically.”
