Professor Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye, the Chairman of the Sunyani Technical University (STU) Governing Council, has urged members of the Council to be guided by national interest, the vision and mission of STU, and the welfare of all its stakeholders.
They should further maintain respect for each other’s views, uphold the highest standards of integrity, and demonstrate transparency in their decisions.
Addressing the maiden meeting of the reconstituted STU Governing Council in Sunyani, Professor Awuah-Nyamekye said it was his desire to make STU one of the best if not the best of the Centres of Academic Excellence in Ghana and beyond.
“We will do this by making sure we recruit and retain quality academic and administrative staff. To ensure and sustain this, we will empower the academic staff to become more efficient”, the Council Chairman stated.
Touching on some specific deliverables to advance the course of STU, Prof. Awuah-Nyamekye announced that the University’s Directorate of Research and Grant Sourcing (DRGS) will have a unit in each of the Academic Departments while arrangement is underway to bring experts to train academic staff.
In addition to this, there will be an annual in-service training programme to encourage and expose academic staff to vigorous research and to be published in reputable journals.
“We shall try to set some amount aside to support academic staff who apply to attend conferences both locally and internationally to present their research papers. This, however small the amount may be some sort of incentive to academic staff. The cumulative effects of this are that there will more be more Professors, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturers; something that raises the image of a university in terms of visibility and ranking”, he again said.
The Council Chairman also called for a functional International Office for partnerships and collaborations.
“We need a functional Library. By this, I mean a library that is equipped with modern books. This can be supplemented by collaborating with well-resourced libraries across the globe to borrow books, journals, etc that we do not have in our Library.”
“What this means is that there will be the need to have well equipped computer laboratories supported by an efficient or reliable databases system. Star link is cheaper and reliable for institutions such as ours. If all these are backed by an efficient Quality Assurance Unit, we will go places.”
Professor Awuah-Nyamekye reminded the Council and Management that even though the university is a public-funded institution, relying only on central government for funding will not enable it to achieve most of its targets.
He therefore urged them to collectively think outside box by finding innovative ways to increase the existing sources of IGF to supplement what is provided by the government.
The Vice-Chancellor, Ing. Prof. Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah, on his part, warmly welcomed the new Council members on behalf of staff and students of the university and assured the council of maximum support and corporation to help achieve the needed change expected in the institution through the leadership of the council.
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