Okebukola, Babcock VC stress importance of good character for teachers

FORMER executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Peter Okebukola, and the president/vice chancellor, Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State, Professor Tayo Ademola, have emphasised the importance of teachers cultivating virtues of good character to achieve and sustain genuine success in teaching career and other life’s endeavours.

The duo gave this admonition at a virtual lecture organised by the Lagos State University Africa Centre of Excellence for Innovative and Transformative STEM Education (LASU-ACEITSE), Ojo, for doctoral students on Monday.

Okebukola, a moderator of the lecture, is the director of the centre, which is fully funded by the World Bank.

According to him, having a good academic grade without good character would amount to nothing for the holder of such grade and for the society.

Delivering the main lecture, entitled ‘Sincerity, Trustworthiness, Discipline and Accountability as Character Attributes of a Good PhD Holder’, Professor Ademola said the four attributes are interrelated and therefore it is not enough for anybody to exhibit one without the rest.

He said it is expected that a good doctoral degree holder who wants to be relevant now and in the future must abhor dishonestly and indiscipline.

“He or she must not also engage, for example, in academic fraud by plagiarizing another person’s intellectual property; and whenever there is cause to use another person’s work or data, such must be properly acknowledged, as doing otherwise is stealing,” he noted.

He said though there are many academic giants in Africa, some are morally bankrupt.

Professor Ademola, however, said Babcock University for example not only frowns on bad behaviours but has a zero tolerance for the practice among students and even workers.

“That is why any student, irrespective of level, found culpable of such practices is punished according to the extant laws of the university,” he said.

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