Twenty students from Ghana will come to Pittsburgh next summer as part of an exchange program with Duquesne University to foster the kind of partnership President Barack Obama called for when he visited the West African country in July.

The students, from Ghana's Institute of Professional Studies in Accra, will spend a month here examining the interaction of community, government and industry leaders in addressing the environmental and social consequences of extracting natural gas from the Marcellus shale and coal from the mountaintops of West Virginia.

In turn, 20 students from Duquesne's School of Leadership and Professional Advancement will spend a month in Ghana in 2011, studying land management practices related to oil extraction off the coast of Ghana, where oil was discovered two years ago.

The exchange program will be funded by a $350,000 grant over the two-year period from the U.S. State Department, said Dorothy Bassett, dean of Duquesne's School of Leadership.

"This is an opportunity for us to learn from each other about the environmental impacts of mineral extraction," Dr. Bassett said. She said the Ghana students' research projects here will be coordinated through the school's Center for Environmental Research and Education.

"It is not just the governmental policy that students will examine, but the community and nongovernmental organization work in the context of seeing action that benefits the people of the community," said Stanley Kabala, associate director of the research and education center housed in the Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

Marcellus shale, a rock formation deep underground throughout Allegheny County and much of Pennsylvania, reportedly holds one of the biggest natural gas reserves in the country.

Goski Alabi, dean of graduate programs at the Institute of Professional Studies in Ghana, said the discovery of oil there brought excitement about new government revenues and also environmental worries.

"We envision this program as a learning opportunity," Ms. Alabi said. "We have already heard from regional community leaders who are concerned that oil extraction may have some serious environmental consequences."

Ms. Alabi said the American students will spend their time immersed in the villages and communities near the recently discovered oil reserves.

During his visit to Ghana, Mr. Obama cautioned Ghanaians, who have a wealth of other natural resources including gold, timber and bauxite, not to take their oil discovery for granted.

"Oil brings great opportunities, and you have been responsible in preparing for new revenue," Mr. Obama said during a speech in which he called on Africans to shape their own destiny.

"But as so many Ghanaians know, oil cannot simply become the new cocoa," Mr. Obama said in reference to the country's main cash crop and export. Africans ought to not only diversify their exports, but develop their infrastructure through partnerships with the western world instead of relying only on foreign aid, he said.

Students will be selected through an open application process conducted by the two schools, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the American Embassy in Ghana.

Dr. Bassett and Ms. Alabi said the students most likely to be chosen will be a mix of traditional and nontraditional diploma-seeking students.

In Ghana, Ms. Alabi said, the program will seek students who have degrees in public policy development and other fields, but they must also have leadership experience in their fields -- for example, experience working for community development groups or other nongovernmental organizations.

"The whole idea is to bring people together to think about our impact on the environment," Dr. Bassett said.