UCC Engages University of Nottingham for Collaboration
TheUniversity of Cape Coast(UCC) has taken steps to collaborate with the University of Nottingham (UoN) in the areas of staff and student exchanges.
As part of arrangements to kick start the partnership, two officials from UoN have paid a two- day working visit to the UCC to interact with management and faculty in the College ofHealthand Allied Sciences.
The two officials were an Associate Professor in Gene Regulation, Dr. Keith Spriggs from the School of Pharmacy and Mrs. Emma Tayou the West Africa representative of UoN. They were accompanied by Mr. Patrick Ayinde, a staff member of UCC and a PhD candidate, who is spearheading the collaboration between the two institutions.
Interacting with faculty from the College ofHealthand Allied Sciences, the Provost, Prof. Johnson Nyarko Boampong, expressed profound gratitude for the interest of UoN to collaborate with UCC. He said the College was putting in place the necessary preparations to introduce Pharmacyprogrammein the 2018/2019 academic year. He called for the support of the officials, adding “we will need you to make input and also offer us direction since UoN School of Pharmacy is one of the best in the world”.
Prof. Boampong made a presentation of the course component and credit hours for the Doctor of Pharmacy (D. Pharm) programme to the officials and indicated that UCC had already entered into an agreement with some Universities in the USA, namely: the University of Rhode Island (URI), University of Cincinnati and the University of Akron. He said the College would also be grateful if the UoN could help upgrade lecturers with split site PhDprogrammes. That, he noted, would help most of the lecturers to acquire PhD degrees in fulfilment of the standards set by the National Council for TertiaryEducation(NCTE). He also spoke about joint conferences and research between the two institutions.
Responding, Prof. Spriggs assured the Provost that the UoN was willing to establish partnership with UCC and indicated that the visit was to explore the areas the two institutions could collaborate. He said UoN had a lot of programmes in the Sciences which faculty without PhD could pursue throughscholarships.
On her part, Madam Tayou explained funding opportunities which faculty in UCC could apply to help them pursue various programmes at UoN. She said UoN was ever ready to collaborate with UCC in many ways to advance academic work in both institutions.
Mr. Ayinde said there were numerous opportunities if UCC showed commitment in the collaboration,stressing that there were many institutions in the UK that would fund joint research projects with Universities from developing nations. He expressed excitement about UCC’s effort to collaborate with renowned Universities to help young faculty to acquire PhD degrees.
The Provost later led the officials to visit facilities of the College and also interacted with the Director of Pharmacy at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital.
Prof. Spriggs and Emma also delivered a lecture on the prospects of the collaboration between UCC and UoN as well as funding opportunities for lecturers to pursue PhD programmes.
