Leadership Advancement Workshop: September 2016 Uganda

Call for Applications: Participate in Summer Schools on Sustainable Energetics for Africa
October 11, 2016
DATAD 2016 Annual Conference in Zimbabwe
October 12, 2016
Call for Applications: Participate in Summer Schools on Sustainable Energetics for Africa
October 11, 2016
DATAD 2016 Annual Conference in Zimbabwe
October 12, 2016
Show all

Leadership Advancement Workshop: September 2016 Uganda

The role of the Registrar, CFO & CHR in a 21st century university
Held at Afrique Suites Hotel, Mutungo, Kampala, Uganda
27-29 September 2016

The tenth edition of the Leadership Advancement Workshops was held in collaborationuganda-2016-10-04-at-10-21-16 with the University of Stellenbosch under the theme The role of the Registrar, CFO and CHR in a 21st century University”. The three-day workshop was hosted at the Afrique Suites Hotel in Muntungo, Kampala from 27 to 29 September, 2016 and brought together twenty-two (22) participants drawn from eleven (11) Higher Education Institutions in Africa, comprising Academic Registrars, Human Resource Managers and Chief Financial Officers. Universities from Western, Eastern and Southern Africa were represented. The participants discussed their roles and articulated their needs in terms of the value adding services they need to provide for the 21st Century University.

The main objective of the workshop was to deliberate on the many challenges African Universities of the 21st century face. This challenges include relevance, sustainability, student access, student success and staff challenges. There is a need for a new type of Professional and Support Service staff, Senior and Executive staff who fully understand the imperatives of the 21st century and who are able to translate their institutional goals and align these to the Registry, Human Resources and Financial Objectives, policies and procedures and develop actions to support the sustainable success of the particular HEI.

 

The Workshop was facilitated by Professor Tobias De Coning of the Stellenbosch Advancement Academy. This was done through presentations on different topics such as driving forces that will fundamentally affect the 21st century African universities. The forces identified were competitive domestic and international student markets, challenges of government funding, competition for new sources of funding, use of digital technologies in campus based learning, blended learning, global student mobility, integration with industry, the scale and depth of industry-based learning, research partnerships and commercialisation, among others. This was followed by discussions on the practical impact of these driving forces. There was also a presentation on what Vice Chancellors and University presidents expect from their senior managers and how these managers meet those expectations through discussions of the challenges they face.

 

The Workshop equipped the participants with required mindsets and strategic tools to be able to redesign and re-align their functions to the vision and strategic goals of the University. The participants were reminded about the importance of their roles in supporting their Vice Chancellors.

 

Taking into consideration all the emerging perspectives during the course of the workshop, participants recommended that the AAU should:

  1. Put in place mechanisms to monitor the extent to which knowledge generated at such workshops is used by its member institutions;
  2. Encourage universities to return to their primary role of molding students and inculcating moral values to humanize society but without doing away with the current drive towards commercialization of education;
  • Introduce and inculcate core values in education among its membership to promote the development of a total student.
  1. Generate African guidelines on corporate governance for African HEIs, taping from the experience of each member institution and relevant stakeholders in government and civil society
  2. Sensitize governments and university leadership on their respective roles and responsibilities towards HEIs;
  3. Hold annual training workshops targeting new Vice Chancellors, Chairpersons of University Councils and Registrars.
  • Promote platforms on:
    1. How to attract and sustain sufficient resources,
    2. How to attract the best staff and students,
    3. How to become the preferred recipient for external support,
    4. Service delivery that satisfies their clients (staff, students and other stakeholders).
    5. Ensuring optimal functionality of Registrar’s, Financial Officers and Human Resource Officers from different perspectives of the various universities present.
  • Establish communities of practice where they can network at workshops with their colleagues from other African Universities
  1. Facilitate staff exchange between the various Institutions
  2. Facilitate frequent meetings for Senior University Managers so as to ensure ongoing upgrading of required competencies.

At the closing of the workshop, participants were commended for expanding their thinking of the different roles as technical staff in their Universities and especially the African University within the dynamic global higher education setting. There was no doubt that the roles of the Registrar, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Human Resource Officer were the backbone of the University and the pillars upon which a successful Vice Chancellor operates.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *