By Alhaji Dauda Bangura
At a University of Sierra Leone press conference held on Tuesday, 22nd June, at Fourah Bay College campus, the Vice Chancellor and Principal, Brig.Prof Foday Sahr, outlined his administration’s transformation agenda aimed at ensuring academic and administrative excellence.
According to the Vice Chancellor, the re-engineering of academic and administrative processes in the USL will ensure the USL produces competent, qualified graduates to meet the country’s national development and regional development needs, promote and consolidate intellectual aspirations through effective university governance and faculty administration in line with academic reforms.
Speaking at the conference, Minister of Higher and Technical Education, Prof Alpha T Wurie, noted that his ministry is responsible for training and supplying the country with a competent workforce. This, he said can only be achieved if universities and other higher education instructions are well equipped, adequately resourced and capable of delivering quality education. The Minister made specific reference to the USL’s academic and administrative re-engineering initiatives in the areas reviewing admissions’ requirements, splitting, the setting up of a community college for extra-mural courses, merging and creating faculties and programmes, restructuring post-graduate programmes, Learning Management Systems’ development and other improvements in the USL’s various administrative functions.
He noted that the faculty of Management Sciences at IPAM is going to be split into three faculties namely:
- Faculty of Business Intelligence and Entrepreneurship
- Faculty of Leadership and Governance,
- Faculty of Accounting and Finance
In the Arts Faculty at FBC, he went on to state that two new faculties will evolve – the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Communication, Media and Information Studies.
For COMAHS, he added that he will have a new Faculty of Public Health and Infectious Diseases and the Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences and Diagnostics. He added that the Faculty of Nursing is renamed Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
He stressed on the need for every university to become a centre of excellence, and called on every higher education institution in Sierra Leone to stop and look inwards to ascertain their quality of products.
In his public endorsement of the USL efforts, the Minister announced that the academic and administrative quality assurance re-engineering process developed by the USL “should be adopted and supervised in other public universities, colleges and technical education institutions”.
In his closing remarks, Prof Wurie said the USL as a premier university, will once more take the lead for dispensing education in West Africa to regain the country’s lost glory as the Athens of West Africa.
Many of the academic and administrative staff of the University, gave credit to the Vice Chancellor, Prof Foday Sahr and his administration for the resounding success in raising the USL’s ranking and profile.
The Director of Strategic Planning and Quality Assurance, David Gbao was singled out for his untiring effort and dedication to developing, promoting and maintaining quality standards across all sectors of the University. Mr. Gbao attributed these successes to the cooperation and support of Prof Sahr, the Heads of campuses at FBC, IPAM and COMAS, the Registrar and their teams.
