June 23, 2021
MOHAMED M. SESAY
The Minister of Technical and Higher Education Professor Alpha Wurie has yesterday the 22nd of June, commended the Administration of the University of Sierra Leone for its academic and administrative re-engineering process.
This was made possible by modifying and establishing more faculties and department at the University, and he further encouraged other public universities to replicate and adopt.
Professor Wurie made the statement in a presser held by the University of Sierra Leone at the Fourah Bay College multi-purpose building on the subject “Re-engineering of the academic and administrative processes in the University of Sierra Leone”.
He confessed that he felt very happy to have heard about the modification of the University of Sierra Leone. He added that the issue of creating public health and infectious diseases at the college of medicine is very laudable, and also the issue of creating the faculty of Communications, and the faculty of Management at the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM), is very good as well.
Professor Wurie furthered that as other Universities including the Kono University of Science and Technology are coming up in 2022, he said it is ideal for the University of Sierra Leone to reduce or stop offering the certificate and diploma courses considering it as part of the reforms of public institutions in order to align with industries and national priorities of which the University has coined its own as “Rep-engineering of academic and administrative processes”.
“My visit here is to make an appeal that the structure you have developed should be supervised and adopted by other tertiary institutions across the country. You have also indicated that you are modifying the faculties and departments and I love the suggestions that are coming” said professor Wurie.
He continued that the second public university created in 2005 was Njala University from 1964-2005 which is about forty-one years adding that, Njala University carries just two Faculties which are the Faculty of Engineering and the faculty of Education.
He added that as the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education, he said they had no option but to look at various courses and various faculties that have been developed by the University over time.
He assured government support towards the re-engineering of the academic and administrative processes of the University of Sierra Leone going forward.
In his statement, the Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sierra Leone Professor Foday Sahr also intimated that over the years, the country has realized that Sierra Leone’s higher education system has been negatively affected by various factors ranging from inadequate financing, poor faculty oversight, limited staff training opportunities, ailing research infrastructure to lack of an effective quality management system.
He added that the above were some of the reasons that have led to lecturers at higher education level to be unable to align the course content with the needs of the job market, and to meet the aspirations of growing numbers of students.
Professor Foday Sahr also informed that the University Administration is currently implementing a number of initiatives which are all geared towards ensuring quality. Among the initiatives include; quality management training in partnership with UNIDO; consolidation of staff database; mandatory pedagogy training (in progress) of all staff of the University; review of curricula for all programmes; harmonization of assessment and examination procedures; and academic staff workload audit.
He added that the University retreat held in Bo on the 18th April to the 1st of May 2021 on the Theme “re-engineering University of Sierra Leone”, concluded with a number of key recommendations which have been considered and approved by the University Senate.
He furthered that under the Harmonization of admission and assessment process which include the exit verification and promotion criteria, he said they have reviewed the University of Sierra Leone’s admission/entry requirements and have also harmonized the students’ promotion criteria and exams verification processes.
Also under the centralized coordination of extramural courses with the setting up of an institute of extramural studies (community college), professor Sahr Foday also disclosed that the University will be establishing an institute of Extramural Studies in order to focus on certificate and diploma programmes for the benefit of candidates who could not get the normal university/departmental entry requirement to train in areas that will provide them the skills for employment and subsequent university admissions.
Professor Foday also disclosed that in terms of the splitting, merging and creation of new faculties/departments, he said the academic workload audit which was recently carried out has revealed significant failings in the administration of academic faculties and departments. He added that during the audit exercise, it was discovered that some faculties and departments are too large whereas, others are comparatively too small with large staff but smaller student population in some cases, and too many lecturers with much fewer students.
He asserted that it has long been established that the lecturer-student ratios and class sizes can significantly impact on the quality of learning which is the more reason, the faculty of management and science at IPAM and the faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Law at Fourah Bay College have been identified.
He further informed that the faculty of Management Sciences at IPAM will be split into three faculties which are; the faculty of ACCOUNTING AND Financial Services, the Faculty of Leadership and Governance and the Faculty of Business and Intelligence and Entrepreneurship. The Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at Fourah Bay College will be split into two which are; the faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economic and Development Studies. The Faculty of Arts at Fourah Bay College will also be split into two which are the Faculty of Communications, Media and Information Studies and the Faculty of Arts itself.
Professor Foday Sahr concluded that because the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences suffers acute shortage of Dentists in the country, he said the University will be creating a faculty of Clinical Sciences for the training of dentist. He also disclosed that the faculty of Nursing will be renamed faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.