VC, Prof. Afoakwa, Holds Stakeholder Briefing
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, held a stakeholder meeting with various stakeholder groups within the university.
The agenda for the meeting which took place on Tuesday, 27th September 2022 was to brief the stakeholders on the state of affairs of the university since the year began and also to present some laptops, Phones and pointers to the Three Faculties namely: Faculties of IT Business, FOCIS and Engineering.
Present at the meeting was Both Academic Deans and the Dean of Students’ Affairs, the leadership of SRC and Senior Management. The Vice-Chancellor briefed the stakeholders on a wide range of issues and developments that have taken place since the beginning of the year. He also gave a sneak peek of some of the projects and programmes in the offing he envisages for the coming year (s).
Below is an overview of some of the important discussions that went on at the meeting.
Retooling of the Lecture Rooms
The VC stated that the classrooms are poised to have a facelift in order to enhance the teaching and learning process. He made reference to recent donations of laptops and other equipment which will be used for that purpose saying, “the Pro VC kindly donated five laptops and the alumni group also donated five laptops together with 25 HDMI cables which will be used to replace all the VGA cables in all the 25 lecture rooms”.
He said the 10 laptops will be divided among the three faculties with the largest faculty (FOCIS) getting four while the other two get three each. For safety and monitoring of the laptops, Prof. Afoakwa suggested that the faculty officers should take custody of the laptops and put in place a log system to enable them track the movements of the laptops.
He assured the meeting that he is putting in a lot of effort to ensure that by next year, every lecture room is fitted with a 64-inch TV set and teaching podiums. He assured the meeting that work has already begun in that regard and that it is possible some might even be fixed before the end of this year. He further broached the idea of having cameras fixed in the lecture rooms which can be used to televise lecture sessions to remote locations such as the regional campuses.
Washrooms
The university’s washrooms will not be left out in the quest to uplift the total image of the university. The VC has promised that by next year the washrooms on campus and the hostels will see a major facelift of their own comparable with those at the Kotoka International Airport.
Temporary Structures
The VC further hinted at a lot of temporary structures coming up next year. One of such important structures will be a much bigger bookshop than the one currently in use. This he said will be done in collaboration with a private firm akin to what pertains at the University of Ghana where the bookshop is being run by Kingdom Books and Stationary Ltd. “Another which will be built with four forty-footer containers will be divided into archives and stores”, Prof. said adding, “this will change the face of the university. The objective is to make this place a much better place than we met it’’.
He called on all and sundry to take a cue from his vision and drive along with the management team of the university and work assiduously to find solutions to the challenges of the university. He acknowledged the challenges but encouraged everyone to look beyond those challenges as there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Handing over of Laptops
The 10 laptops were officially handed over to the Head of Stores for them to be embossed with identification codes and recorded as the university’s assets. The faculty officers would then take charge of them afterwards. The 25 HDMI cables were handed over to ITSS for installation in the various lecture rooms immediately. Three of the six mobile phones which were donated by the Pro. VC in addition to the five laptops were shared among the faculties; one to go to SRC, and the remaining two to go to the University Relations Directorate.
Donation
Dr. Michael Nana Owusu Akomeah and a few friends had earlier donated 30 laser remote control pens to the VC. The items were shared 10 each to the three faculties as teaching aid.
Buoyed by the recent donations, the VC threw a further challenge to the stakeholders to capitalize on any opportunity that presents itself, be it an institution or individual, to get support in any form for the university since help was no longer going to come from Government.
Alumni Dinner
The VC hinted there will be an Alumni Dinner to coincide with the university’s graduation ceremony at the end of November. In his words, he anticipates a much bigger and better-organized event than the GCTU/Coventry Alumni dinner event which was organized in honour of the VC of Coventry who was in the country on a working visit to GCTU.
A lot has already been said about the success of the Alumni Dinner event but the VC hopes to leverage that experience to have a very successful one come November. He hinted that the VC and other officers of Coventry and representatives from some of GCTU’s partner institutions would be present at the dinner.
The overriding objective for the dinner would be to raise funds, at least half a million cedis for development projects in the university. Prof. Afoakwa suggested that a participation fee of 2,000ghs would be charged adding that excelling alumni in industry would be awarded.
