In its quest to fulfil its vision of becoming a world-class institution in the production of graduates that would be able to respond to the socio-economic needs of a knowledge-driven economy, KolaDaisi University, Ibadan (KDU-I), has organised a maiden one-day workshop for its pioneering staff.
According to the vice-chancellor, Professor Kolade Luke Ayorinde, the one-day workshop was necessary due to the diverse backgrounds of the staff, their different level of education and exposures and the varying degrees of experiences they had had “especially in a setting such as this and most importantly because of where we want this university to be.”
“We all need to know what a university is and what is required of us as we work in the university, whether as members of academic staff or non-teaching staff,” he said.
He noted that the choice of the theme for the 2019 workshop, which was, “Challenges of Working in a University Environment” was apt and timely, adding that the resource persons had also been carefully chosen based on their wealth of experience, track record and achievement in the university system.
Speaking about the challenges of the budding university, he said one of the major challenges facing the university is attracting and engaging quality staff, saying “a university of this nature that wants to be a world-class institution would like to start on a very good footing, and if we don’t have the assemblage of the quality staff that would be needed, it will be a major challenge.”
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“Being a new brand, the university has also been faced with the challenge of attracting a good number of students that we actually would have wanted, coupled with the challenge of generating power supply to the university.”
He hinted that the university had expended close to N40 million on generating electricity supply on the campus, but haven’t got there yet.
“We still depend solely on our diesel and petrol generators to survive on the campus”, he said.
Delivering the first lecture on the topic, “Developing and Sustaining Academic Culture in a World Standard University,” Professor Musbau Adewumi Akanji, said a university is a unique institution and a multi-directional workplace, where variety of specialists are supposed to work together towards achieving specific objective.
He said: “For KolaDaisi University to fulfill its vision and mission of becoming a world-class university, it must take into cognisance the conduct of cutting-edge researches that are relevant to the community, maintain a dynamic presence on the web, provide adequate and regular bandwidth, have regular exchange of scholars from various other institutions, be open in running the affairs of the university, respect time lines mutually agreed upon, have a periodic engagement of town, as well as track the university’s alumni.”
The second speaker, Mrs Stella O. Soola, while charging the staff on the topic, Building Productive Staff in a University, said building a productive staff in a university system should begin with the end in mind.
She enjoined the authorities of the institution to consistently train and retrain, motivate and reward hard work, respect employment policy, give sanctions for infractions, create healthy working environment and good employees’ relations and help to develop leadership skills in staff to enhance their productivity and efficiency.
and then