Cape Coast, July 29, GNA-Professor Frederick Ato Armah, Director of Research, Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) has called for systems to be put in place to balance administrative responsibilities with researcher productivity at the university.
He noted with concern the practice, where experienced academic staff of the university were constantly given administrative responsibilities only for them to abandon their research work.
According to him, such people were unable to undertake serious research work and that tended to weaken the research activities and capabilities of the university and ultimately derail its progress and development.
Prof. Armah shared these sentiment at the launch of the second UCC Research Report and the UCC Research Output Monitor and Evaluator (UCCROME) on Monday.
The research report, which span from 2017-2019 showcased the rich and diverse research work of leading scholars, researchers and emerging young scientists of the university and their contributions towards addressing societal challenges.
While acknowledging that administrative work was equally important to the progress and survival of the university, he said research must not suffer on the altar of administrative duties because it was critical in providing the necessary knowledge, evidence-based solutions and innovations.
Prof Armah said it was through research that universities could be more responsive to societal needs and become agents of change towards solving global challenges.
In this regard, he proposed that as part of the requirements for any administrative position for experience academic staff, there must be evidence that they have trained or groomed another person to take over from them.
Additionally, he said experienced academic staff in administrative positions must be allowed to offer mentorship to young lecturers to ensure that their research activities were not truncated by administrative roles.
According to him, UCC’s research excellence and impact had improved significantly over the last six years due to the establishment of DRIC which brought the university’s research activities to the limelight noting that UCC had fewer partnership with African universities and called for more collaborative research work with universities on the Sub Saharan Africa.
Such partnership and diversity of research, he said held the premise for advancement on the African continent not only along individual disciplinary line, but for advancing modern trans-disciplinary approaches to complex challenges and opportunities.
Giving the overview and highlights of the research report, Prof Armah said academic publications of the university had seen a steady increase since 2016 and peaked in 2018 with more than 800 publications.
He said UCC had on-going partnerships with institutions across the globe in four broad areas including; capacity building, research, innovation and consultancy services.
The outgoing Vice Chancellor, Professor Joseph Ghartey-Ampiah who launched the report said the UCC research report provided evidence of the contribution and the multiple ways the university was addressing the three-prong objectives of academic excellence, research excellence and societal relevance.
He said the university’s short term cooperate strategic plan was based on commitment to pursue research that addressed complex societal challenges especially challenges facing the developing regions of the World.
He said the launch of the UCCROME to track research endeavors of the university to identify gaps and ways to improve them was innovative and provided a diagnostic tool to guide all faculty on how they were faring in terms of research.
Prof Ghartey-Ampiah noted that research problems were increasingly becoming complex and challenged the university’s researchers to commit to high quality discipline specific and innovative multidisciplinary research to face the 21st century challenges head-on.
GNA