On behalf of Management, I wish you a Happy New Year and a warm welcome back to campus. We thank God for His protection and providence while we were away and for granting us travelling mercies to and from our various homes.
The year has a lot of opportunities and blessings for us as individuals and as a University. With renewed strength, hard work and determination, we can benefit from these as we work hard at turning the fortunes of the University.
In the previous year, the University set an agenda for quality and excellence in all of its activities. I wish to implore colleagues to be reminded of this and even do more in our various work schedules: we must allow quality to permeate in all our activities. I wish to request us to work harmoniously together; knowing that our work schedules are interrelated thus our effectiveness and efficiency will help in enhancing the output of each other.
I wish to also encourage all staff to give off their maximum best to achieve the various thrusts set for the various Units, Sections, Departments and Faculties as stipulated in the University’s Strategic Plan. We can achieve so much for ourselves and the University as we seriously pay attention to regularity and punctuality at work and meetings, proactiveness to tasks, team work, passion to work, effectiveness, dedication and efficiency in our approaches to our duties.
There are areas I would want us to concentrate on in this new year: I would request the various Faculties and Departments to pursue in earnest the following activities:
- Writing of Proposals and Accessing of Donor Grants
Proposal writing is not new to educational institution like ours. It has many benefits such as shoring up the funds for the University, provision of additional funds to Academic Staff who may be directly involved in the research activity and also sharpen the research capabilities of both Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff.
In line with the above, the University is undertaking steps to build the capacity of lecturers in granstmanship and writing of winnable proposals. To this end, the University has set up an Institutional Advancement and Fundraising Office and has appointed a professional in the field (Mr. Kwaku Amoah Kakari) as an Assistant Registrar in charge of that Office to spearhead this course. He will be available to assist staff in the techniques and effective ways of writing proposals to donor agencies/ NGO’s to support research development in the Faculties and Departments.
In addition to the above, workshops would be organised for all Senior Members in the writing of proposals across all campuses from the 22nd -27th of January, 2018. (A detailed information will be circulated in due course).
I wish to call on all faculty and staff to support this initiative and cooperate fully with Management and the Advancement Office towards the attainment of this objective.
- Faculty Online Teaching
This initiative has faced several challenges with its implementation. This year I wish to encourage lecturers to seriously consider implementing this platform to boost teaching and learning in the University.
In view of the fact that mobile phones have been taken off the University WIFI and the issuing of Vodafone modems to all students across all the campuses, the internet has been freed of all the encumbrances. I believe we can therefore effectively roll out this Online Teaching Module.
I am therefore entreating all lecturers to endeavour to organise most of their teaching online especially for the Weekend and Long Vacation Modular Streams. You are also requested to kindly adopt a hybrid way of teaching this semester by combining both the classroom teaching (face to face method) and the Online Teaching as we work expeditiously towards the implementation of the Distance Education Module.
- Introduction of Post-Graduate Programmes
Faculties and Departments are entreated to work assiduously to introduce New Post-Graduate Programmes with emphasis on attractiveness and cost effectiveness in order to augment the undergraduate ones.
As you may be aware, the University has secured approval from the National Accreditation Board to run the following two Post-Graduate Programmes:
- Master of Education [MEd] in Educational Studies
- Master of Arts [MA] in International Development Studies
The number is too low, and we are therefore, encouraging all Deans, Heads of Department and Faculty to begin to develop and mount more market-driven postgraduate programmes starting from this year.
- Commercial Farming Project
The Commercial Farming project initiative which was introduced with the hope of making use of the University viable arable lands to generate additional income to support the activities of the University, has been fraught with a lot of bottlenecks with respect to the full take off of the Project in the previous years.
I therefore wish to encourage the Department of Agribusiness and the Committee working on the project to seriously work at making the project viable.
The Department is also reminded to seriously work on the initiative by the Government of Hungary to establish Agricultural Research Centres in Ghana’s Universities to build the capacity of local researchers and also to develop an innovative agricultural model to transform the country’s agricultural sector. This venture can bring in some revenue to the University.
In conclusion, I wish to entreat all staff to put their hands on deck and assist with the ongoing January Admissions, let us contribute our quota no matter how small towards making the exercise successful. We ought to put in our best as we would to our personal business; let us be efficient in the use of the University’s scarce resources.
For the relatively young men and women among us, I would like to encourage you to work diligently and give off your very best as we work towards building PUCG.
I wish you God’s blessings. May He grant us the grace and strength to carry out the tasks he has entrusted us with enthusiasm.
Happy New Year.
Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng.
PRESIDENT