In addition, Iweala said she was motivated by her experience in Nigeria last summer, where she worked at her father's medical clinic. With a firmer grasp of Igbo, she plans to study abroad in Nigeria next year.
In addition to teaching the Igbo class, Manfredi is a part-time linguistics instructor at Boston University.
He credits much of his interest in African studies to a leader of the African-American studies movement at Harvard during the 1970s.
Manfredi feels he owes "an enormous intellectual and personal debt" to the professor, who he said devoted an enormous amount of time to nurturing other scholars.
"That's why I'm crazy enough to teach this course for free," Manfredi said.
Manfredi notes that this Igbo class is "an experiment and we want it to succeed, so we're looking for that response to come."