The management of the University for Development Studies UDS central administration in Tamale has announced that its two campuses at Wa in the Upper West region and Navrogo in the Upper East region are no longer part of the governing structure of the university.
The two campuses, according to the management, are now autonomous and are no longer part of UDS governing structure.
The Vice Chancellor of UDS, Professor Seidu Al-Hassan who made the announcement during a press soiree with media practitioners and security services at his residents said people outside the university community still ask if Wa and Navrogo campuses are still part of UDS and it was important to clarified the status to the public that they now have their own governing structures.
Professor Seidu stated that UDS thrive on its Motor Knowledge for service and UDS mandate stands tall among all universities in Ghana because UDS practicalized education through its Third Trimester Field Practical Program {TFPP}.
The TFPP offers students first-hand practical experience of development challenges of communities and offers them the chance to proffer solutions to those challenges.
The 30-year-old university professor Seidu said, is committed and working to provide or make access to tertiary education for all qualified persons willing to study in the school.
The Vice Chancellors’ Awards
The VC also announced that the management has instituted an award scheme known as the Vice Chancellors Third Trimester Field Practical Program Excellence award with prize of 5000 Ghana Cedis for best group.
The award professor Seidu explained is meant to motivate students to go the extra mile to identify interventions into the communities. An amount of 2,500 will also be given to a student who initiated the thinking in the group. The first group, the VC said, will receive the award somewhere in April 2024 during the graduation ceremony.
The economic challenges
According to the VC, the social-economic situation is not easy but that didn’t prevent the management from delivering their mandate. The VC said since he took over office on September 1,2022, they have been able to chalk some success.
Among them he mentioned were introduction of a number of schools and faculties including Business School, School of Economics, faculty of social science, faculty of physical sciences and Bio science and School of Dentistry.
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission he revealed is the process of giving accreditation to the Densitry for the training of dentists.
The school, professor Seidu revealed, will commence its law faculty for the training of lawyers in the next academic year. These programs, he explained, were all demand driven and not supply driven to help develop Northern Ghana.
Opportunity for prospective medical students
He announced that the school now has an opportunity for students with ambition to become medical doctors to still pursue their aspirations to achieve their goals through Graduate Entry Medical Programme {GEMP} with a degree minimum of 2nd class upper in the science-based courses.
This, he explained, is to enable students who narrowly missed medicine and went to nursing, midwifery, pharmacy and public health aspirations to become medical doctors to pursue their dreams.
Established in 1993 with only 39 students, the school has a student population of 26,000. This growing number, the VC said, comes with challenges including infrastructure and management tasks now is to expand academic facilities.
Professor Seidu emphasized the need for partnering with the media and security services to help tell the full story, change the mentality of students to concentrate on their mission in the school, talk about challenges and also make appeal to the external community to help management he assured has long listening ears and appealed to stakeholders to share their ideas that would propel the school forward.
Registrar of UDS, Alhaji Nurudeen Issah Abubakar explained that soiree was an annual affair but unfortunately couldn’t happen last year. The university, he said, cannot work alone without other stakeholders like the media and security services.