UCC-CCE to be upgraded into a College next academic year

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Cape Coast, Mar. 2, GNA - A proposal is being considered to upgrade the University of Cape Coast Centre for Continuing Education (UCC-CCE) into a College of Distance and Continuing Education from next academic year.

This has been necessitated by the Centre's current student population of about 32,300 which calls for a complete overhauling of the structures and activities of the Centre to allow for effective and efficient management.

Professor Domwini Kuupole, Vice-Chancellor of the UCC, who made this known on Saturday during the school's 45th Congregation in Cape Coast, said other academic programmes of the conventional system would be added on to the programmes presently being run by the Centre, including Graduate programmes.

A total of 3,582 students graduated this year with degrees and diplomas, with 1,880 of the number in Business related programmes and 1,702 in Education at the ceremony, which was held in two sessions and the second of its kind to be held separately for students under the Distance Education programme.

This arrangement is to enable the graduates to have their certificates early enough for them to use unlike hitherto when they had to wait a whole year after completing their programmes and graduate with the regular students on campus.

Present at the ceremony were Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, Minister for Education and the immediate past VC of UCC, Members of the Governing Council of UCC, Members of Parliament, Nananom and Pro-Vice Chancellors from sister Universities.

Prof. Kuupole gave the assurance that the Centre's projects currently under construction in the regions were on course and that when completed, they would act as satellite campuses of the University to run conventional programmes just like that of  the main campus, with the aim of making university education more accessible to the large number of qualified candidates.

He said all the Centres would be fully networked and equipped with facilities that would make it possible to beam live lectures from the Centre in Cape Coast to students in other regions.

'The Directorate of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance constantly monitors the activities and programmes of the Centre to ensure that quality assurance measures are strictly adhered to', he assured.

The VC disclosed that, the Centre, through its own resources, had so far sponsored 38 staff and graduates of the Centre to pursue both the Masters and Doctoral programmes within and outside the country,  to augment the number of course tutors who teach at the various study Centres scattered across the country.

He advised the fresh graduates to eschew any form of vices and rather carry the image of UCC wherever they go and to be agents of change, and ensure that the training they have acquired would enable them to transform challenges into opportunities.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang advised authorities of the Centre to ensure quality is not compromised when it upgrades into a College status since others were looking up to and learning from them.

She also charged the graduates to use the knowledge they had acquired to improve, among others, their working environment, work ethics and social cohesion.

Mr. Stephen Amponsah, overall best graduating student in his appealed to the authorities of the Centre to put up hostels for CCE students to alleviate the accommodation problems some of them faced during their face to face sessions on campus.

Prof. John Nelson Buah, Pro-VC presented awards and special prizes to outstanding and deserving new graduates.

 
 
GNA