By Dorothy Frances Ward, GNA
Kumasi July 31 GNA – The University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (USTED) is committed to strengthening research capacity building and culture as well as collaborative partnerships that will enhance quality and relevance of post graduate education.
The University is also working hard to encourage research that is responsive to national development priorities and advancing knowledge for societal transformation.
Professor Ebenezer Bonyah, Director, Directorate of Research, International Programmes and Institutional Advancement (DRIPIA) of the university, stated these at the third Post Graduate Research Conference 2026, held at USTED in Kumasi.
The conference was on the theme: “Interdisciplinary Research for a Resilient Future: The Contribution of Post Graduate Studies.”
It offered the platform for dialogue, discovery and exchange of ideas across disciplines, while providing opportunity to showcase research works, receive constructive feedback, and engage with the broader academic community.
Prof. Bonyah noted that the university recognized that the future it aspired to build depended significantly on quality, relevance and impact of the research works produced.
He said issues of today such as climate change, food insecurity, technological disruptions, and educational inequalities among others, could be addressed properly through isolated disciplinary approaches.
They require innovation, collaborative work, and diverse practical approaches to solve.
Therefore, interdisciplinary research was not only relevant but essential.
He said the core mandate of the university was to bring about excellence, integrity with rigorous and ethical research practices.
“Education for work and development calls for research that translates knowledge into practical solutions for industry and society,” he noted.
He said the post graduate students were emerging scholars, innovators and knowledge producers, adding that their research contributed significantly to generation of new ideas, testing of theories and applications of knowledge to real world problems.
Prof. Ellis Owusu-Dabo, Chairman of the university governing council stressed the need for the university to produce researchers who could work across boundaries.
The university must, therefore, treat communication of findings as an integral part of research and align institution and quality systems into training.
He mentioned some of the bottlenecks in post graduate education were weak industry supervision, limited knowledge translations and called for the cultivation of hybrid post graduate profiles industry, co-supervision and expanded outputs.
Prof. Humphrey Danso, Dean of School of Graduate Studies, said the conference was a celebration of knowledge, innovation and collaboration.
He said the problems of this generation demanded interdisciplinary approaches, creative partnerships and intellectual rigor that post graduate research uniquely provides.
He said the conference would enable them to explore how post graduate studies served as an engine of resilience, empowering communities, shaping policy and driving sustainable development.
GNA
Edited by Kwabia Owusu-Mensah/Linda Asante Agyei
Reporter: Dorothy Frances Ward
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