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September 27, 2024

Prof. Karyeija talks about Compliance as a tool towards a Research & Science Anchored Institute

UMI, has set itself a mission to be a research led Institute. The mission has a number of arms towards it and central in the journey is compliance. We spoke to Ass. Prof Gerald Kagambirwe Karyeija, the Dean School of Management Science about what makes the Institute stand out from the rest. This is how he answered

Q: How have you maintained a culture of compliance and integrity at UMI?

There are a number of ways in which we are trying to maintain compliance and integrity at UMI. First of all, it’s about our allegiance to academic integrity, so follow all the necessary academic integrity protocols set by National Council of Higher education and the regulations and the protocols set by our institution. We also follow international based practices

Secondly, we are the only education institution that is ISO certified. Which means that we have international standards that we follow. Some of our programmes for example, the masters on Public Administration, are internationally accredited by ICAPA, which is a body between United Nations and the International Institute of Schools of Public Administration that promotes standards both in terms of content processing and research.

The other one is about the caliber of the staff that we recruit. We recruit people who are highly trained, but at the same time we have practice and are from diverse places and we do a lot of due diligence before one becomes part of our faculty.

We also have visiting professors from distinguished universities abroad and we partner with them. For example Universities in South Africa, Germany and the United States of America are part of our faculty in terms of visiting professors.

We have external examiners from reputable institutions who make sure that our products and our student’s meet the standards

Lastly, we also have a very strong Quality Assurance Department which ensures that e do things according to the expected plans. we have student’ assessment for every module taught and for every programme ended and from those assessments we get feedback that helps self-correct where have some gaps.

Initially it was largely a training institution and the focus was on education and training. Then it’s now running the research led agenda. And under the research led agenda, these are some of the highlights that have come out

One is that now all academic staff have to have Doctoral Degrees, which was not there in the first and now all most all the academic staff have doctoral degrees and those who do not are in the PhD truck.

The second one is that UMI was not offering PhDs. We are one of the few institutions that is offering a taught PhD in administration and management in the region

Thirdly, publications by staff. We have a regular journal but also our faculty have published books, book chapters and a number of peer-reviewed articles in different places and now there is emphasis on publications for promotions which never existed may be 20 years ago.

There is also an increase in the number of dissertations that are being converted into other publications.

We have an international conference every two years and the recent was held in October. We always have over 400 guests from over 15 countries where we exchange knowledge.

Every quarter we have a policy dialogue and during this policy Dialogue there is interaction between the practitioners and the academies.

So we conduct scientific research and then we invite the technocrats to share their practical experience and dispute our work eventually this comes with a policy brief.

We have a journal .The Uganda Policy Management Development Journal, which is produced regularly.

In terms of innovation, we have a business incubation center which incubates business ideas. We have a lot of applied research which we do through our consultancy hand, where we do a lot of applied research for a number of agencies and also a number of institutions and we also have a number of collaborations with varies entities like, The Uganda Prisons Authority, Uganda Police , Ministry of Defence and both internally and externally. We are doing some research work in Southern Sudan, In Burundi and in Somalia.

So we have a diversity of initiatives but we believe that a lot is yet to be done, to strengthen our research capacity. The only shortfall is that we are still having minimal funding from the government for research activities.

First of all is the infrastructure. We have ensured that we have sufficient infrastructure for our learners both at the Kampala Campus and also up country branches in Mbarara, Gulu and Mbale.

We have also tried to put sufficient ICT infrastructure in terms of computer and access to the internet so that our student can have the internet.

The stock of our library is also an issue that we can talk about. We have a big collection of, especially electronic books and other electronic resources, and we are the National Documentation Centre and so we have enough resources in terms of what students can access to have a learning environment.

The second one is about staff. We have full time staff but because we are a competence Based training institution, we also have visiting lecturers and Associates who are in the industry. And come and share their experiences on the specific aspects.

 

For example, if we are teaching Human Resource Management, we invite Human Resource Managers to come and take through students on particular aspects from the practice point of view. So we blend theory and practice for the benefit of the student and for each and every module we have guest lecturer.

Then we also, through the nurture of our students, ours largely is a post graduate training institution and in o0rded to be admitted either as a teacher or a student, you must have some working experience. For us teaching staff, we must at least have 5 years of working experience but as a student, at least 1 year of working experience.

The first one is the competence based training where we have  a good blend of theory and practice because we deal with applied discipline, which is Managing and the varies branches of management. So what we teach both includes your scientific value meaning that y6ou can be a good scholar and researcher, but at the same time it also significantly improves your utility value or the ability to translate your knowledge into practice because we do a deliberate blend of the two.

Two, it is a career switch place, people who want to get into managerial positions find UMI more relevant because they have other backgrounds. But when they come here, our programmes orient them to become managers not only knowledgeable about management but also being able to practice management.

The other one is the mode of our teaching. For every module we have to involve a guest speaker, a resident faculty, and also a practitioner. So the exposure our students get is not seen anywhere else.

The other one is the extent which we also have relationships within the industry, For example, we have a close working relationship with the cabinet secretariat when we are teaching policy analysis. We have a good working relationship with the NGO community when we are teaching NGO Management, we also have close working relationship with education so we always try to make sure that we have a linkage with the areas that we teach.

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