This session will present a case study about a graduate program in Applied Human Nutrition at Hawassa University, Ethiopia, a joint partnership initiative that focuses on capacity-building and collective learning. The Masters in Applied Human Nutrition (MAHN) Program of Hawassa University was established in 2007 to address the need for further health nutrition research and training capabilities in Ethiopia. The proposed session will share best practices and discuss issues emerging from this model of curriculum development in nutrition education. It is also proposed that posters produced by students in the program will be on display. The program is innovative in several senses. It brings together both local and international and interdisciplinary groups of faculty and graduate students. It combines research and experiential learning with classroom activities as a mode of learning, discovery and connection with communities. It incorporates food security concerns and a social determinants of health perspective (including gender and poverty) with the more traditional “scientific” approach to nutrition. It promotes a strength-based approach to nutrition and nutrition education by imparting and using the tools to understand local knowledge, conditions, and practice. It is development-oriented, in that it is integrated into and more broadly concerned with issues of national, rural, and urban development in Ethiopia. Further, as the program has continued, it has progressively become one of the venues for carrying out an interdisciplinary project of research and development that is being jointly guided by professors in the two universities.