Legon Restructures Undergraduate Programmes

The University of Ghana, Legon, has restructured its undergraduate programmes in the Humanities and Sciences, with many new courses and programmes introduced and existing ones revised.

The Vice-chancellor of the university, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, announced this at its congregation held at Legon on Saturday.

He said the university had inaugurated a steering committee to oversee the process of creating a multi-disciplinary institute of applied scientific research to facilitate industrial transformation in Ghana and other parts of Africa.

Prof. Aryeetey said the work of the institute was expected to be in areas including food processing and the development of materials for various production process, including packaging and environmental conservation.

In all, 4,408 students graduated, including 846 postgraduates, 21 doctoral candidates, 2,976 undergraduates and 565 diploma and certificate holders.

Fifty students, three lecturers and a member of staff of the university, were rewarded for their outstanding performance.

The vice-chancellor said in a bid to improve upon the overall university experience of students, a programme to upgrade facilities in the traditional halls of residence was ongoing.

Commenting on the leaking of mature students examination questions last year, he said the university had put in place extra precautionary measures to ensure the integrity of all examinations to prevent the recurrence of the situation.

Prof. Aryeetey challenged the graduates to put the values and training they had received at the university into practice wherever they found themselves and advised them to “let dignity, integrity and honesty be your hallmark so that all you come into contact with will see the distinctiveness of graduates of the University of Ghana”.

President John Evans Atta Mills, in an address read on his behalf by the Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu, said the government remained committed to providing adequate infrastructure and other facilities for all public universities to promote quality education.

He challenged the university authorities to provide education that broadened the outlook of the youth to equip them with the necessary skills, so that they could contribute to employment generation.

That, he stated, called for the periodic review of the university’s curricula, research and teaching programmes to meet world-class standards.

President Mills said the government would make good, without delay, the promise by the Kufuor administration to pay GH¢60 million to the university over a 10-year period to support its development efforts.

He expressed concern about the situation that the culture of respect and concern for one another was fast eroding in the country, saying that it was time Ghanaians allowed patriotic instincts to dominate what they did, instead of allowing self-interest to take over.

He urged the graduates to see their graduation as the beginning of another phase in their lives and continue to expand their horizon in order to become more relevant and marketable.

The Vice-chancellor announced that the university had received $1.640 million from the Open Society Institute (OSI) of the United States of America for the implementation of the first phase of a project on climate change adaptation.

The award is the result of a proposal submitted by the university in response to an international competitive call for proposals announced by the institute.

Known as the ‘Building Capacity to meet the Climate Change (BC4)-Ghana”, the project is a partnership between the university and the OSI and is aimed at developing the University of Ghana as a centre of excellence in global environmental change.