FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo and no fewer than eight current vice chancellors in Nigeria are among the facilitators teaching pioneer doctoral students of the Lagos State University Africa Centre of Excellence for Innovation and Transformative STEM Education (LASU-ACEITSE), Ojo.
The vice chancellors include Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, University of Lagos; Professor Idowu Olayinka, University of Ibadan; Professor Abdalla Adamu, National Open University of Nigeria; Professor Tayo Ademola, Babcock University, Ilisan Remo; Professor Abayomi Arigbabu, Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Ijagun; and Professor Olanrewaju Fagbohun, Lagos State University, Ojo.
Other high profile scholars include Professor Olusola Adesope from United States of America; Professor Juma Shabani from Burundi; Professor William Kyle from University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA; Professor Mosto Onuoha, President of Nigerian Academy of Science; Professor Asabe Kabir from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto; Professor Alejandro Gallard from Georgia Southern University, USA; Professor Jomo Mutegi from Purdue University, Indianapolis; and Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah from Ghana.
Others are Professor Sarh Gbamanja from Sierra Leone; Professor Kola Raheem from University of Education, Ghana; Professor Nimi Briggs, former vice chancellor, University of Port Harcourt; Professor Michael Faborode, former vice chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; Professor Hakeem Ajonbadi from the United Kingdom; Professor Goski Alabi from LAWEH Open University, Ghana; and Professor Sheu Akintola from LASU, among others.
They all taught different topics at different times via virtual mode in the last three months during the global Coronavirus pandemic.
Explaining the reason for the assemblage of such high profile educators and personalities for a single set of students, the director of the LASU-ACEITSE and facilitator-general of the programme, Professor Peter Okebukola, said it is to make the centre an operational model for other higher educational institutions in Africa and beyond.
According to him, the master’s and doctoral degree students of the centre from across Africa are the first set to be enrolled and therefore must be exposed to best education that would make them stand out in career and other endeavours.
Okebukola, a former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, identified some of the topics handled by the facilitators to include ‘Character and Responsibility of a PhD holder as a Higher Education Teacher’, ‘Setting up and Running a Business in a Recession Post-COVID-19’, ‘Entrepreneurship: Beyond Theory, ‘Worldview and Cultural Factors in STEM Teaching and Learning’, ‘Gender Issues in STEM Education’ ‘Recent Developments in Medical Sciences and Implications for STEM Teacher Education’, ‘Development in STEM Education in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Ghana etc’, ‘Recent Development in Earth Sciences, Computer Science and Technology’, among others.
He said the centre, which is fully-funded by the World Bank, would come up with a compendium from the programme to help other institutions.