The story of the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu has become very interesting of recent.
From the brinks of collapse, the institution which was virtually shut down due to overpopulation, has suddenly bounced back to life with the introduction of a new management which took over the affairs of the institution in October 2011.
Two years after Prof. Mike Iloeje commenced the resuscitation of the institution, a lot has dramatically changed and both staff and students appear to be testifying to the new lease of life in the school. Apart from addressing the immediate problems of reducing the number of students being admitted, the new management has wielded the big stick against all sorts of indiscipline which, hitherto, was the order of the day. Some lecturers have been punished or suspended just as the well-behaved ones are being encouraged and promoted.
The new IMT management has taken a step further to place the institute among the best in the world by ensuring that the capacity of its lecturers is constantly being enhanced through international conferences. Some of the lecturers who recently visited Harvard and Oxford universities told this reporter that what is happening in IMT is unprecedented.
Dr. Ifeanyi Ojobor, a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, recalls that the Harvard conference which held between the 26th and 30th of May 2014, was organized by the International Journal of Arts and Science. Ojobor presented a paper on the sickening nature of news on the television at the conference which took place at Harvard medical school at Longwood.
Who else is sick of news?
“Actually the title was: ‘who else is sick of the news,’ he recalled in a chat with Education Review. “We had a good conference, beautiful multi-disciplinary conference. We had scholars coming from different countries like the United States, Turkey, Egypt, and Ghana and from different parts of Nigeria too as well as Europe and the Caribbeans. If you asked me, it was an eye-opening conference, a lovely, massive environment filled with courteous people and everyone busy with his own business but all working together for the good of the university and the conference.
“For someone that is uninitiated he could look at the conference as a waste of money but we are in academics and growth in academics is based primarily on publications. And where do you publish? Do you write a book or a handout that you can sell to students? No. It is published in journals. And which journal will you publish in? Journals with reputation, recognized journals with impact factor .That’s why you go to conferences to improve yourself, to get to know what is happening in the world around you, especially in your area and other areas. And, then of course, you grow in knowledge and capacity. So, no one in academics would say that conference attendance is wasteful. In fact, that is the way up if you ask me. Most professors today didn’t write any book; they grew from attending conferences and publishing in reputable journals. And the world would know your rating in the internet; your rating will continue to grow as you continue to publish and also knowledge would grow in that form. It is indeed very useful, extremely useful. In fact, you cannot do without it as far as you are at this level in academics.
“If you ask me why people have not been attending conferences I would tell you I do not know. But if you ask why they are attending now, I sure know. It is because there is a new man. He has come here with a new orientation, a fresh zeal, new dreams and he is an academic of repute. So if money was available for people to attend conferences, he releases the money and they go. Before, let me say that not many people knew about it perhaps, that was why we did not access it. But the new rector came and told us openly how much was available for conference attendance and made it public so that if anyone is interested, he knows what to do. He does it and he goes. Many people in this environment had not travelled beyond Enugu but as we talk now there is no time that we do not have at least ten persons from IMT attending conferences in different parts of the world and presenting scholarly papers. So the rector has made this thing open and people are getting to know that they can apply for a conference, get sponsorship, attend it, come back and prepare for another again.”
Changes at IMT
Ojobor who also runs the Public Relations department of the institute noted that a lot has changed in IMT. “First in the working atmosphere,” he recounted. “The place is calmer and the orientation is different; we are dealing more in the academics matters than in politics. What is happening is that first, we had to draw down the student’s population from over 35,000 to 7000 plus or sometimes less than 7000 and in keeping with our current capacity we are dealing with that small number and providing them with the right quality of instructions. A lecturer knows his students and students know their lecturers and there is progress in that area. Having made progress in the area of teaching, the rector in his good judgment, thought that it will be necessary to also improve on the quality of those who teach.
That is why now if anyone wants to get a PhD in IMT today and he gets admission in Oxford University or University of London, anywhere in the world, IMT will pay. In the same vein, anyone who finds the opportunity to travel to any part of the world to present a paper is sponsored .You can see that the tone of IMT is changing because people are going outside, getting impulses from outside and bringing it home. “If anyone is foot-dragging, I will say that that the person is living in the past.
These days, the Academic Planning office cannot cope with the number of applications that come for conferences. Initially, not many people were interested because they didn’t know it was possible but we now know it’s possible and as you are finishing with one paper, you are starting with another. So I don’t think there is foot-dragging anymore. Where I think there is an issue is with people who need higher degrees. Not many people are willing to travel outside the country and spend time outside their families; so there is a bit of snag there. But generally, people are adjusting gradually and more people are going abroad to study for higher degrees and I think the whole thing is catching on. Actually, this place is on fire if you ask me because the culture Prof. Iloeje has brought in is just taking over the entire place.”
A worthwhile venture
Also sharing her experience Dr. (Mrs.) Joy Nonyelum Ugwu, Director School of Business Studies, who was in Oxford University in December 2013 for an International conference delivered a paper on: ‘Women in the University, Benefits and Barriers.” Dr. Ugwu who revealed that she has attended conferences in Uganda, New York, and Boston in England in July, confessed that “before now we didn’t even know what is called conference sponsorship. It was at the inception of this administration led by Prof. Mike Iloeje that things changed. That man is God-sent. He opened our eyes. People who hitherto had not crossed River Niger can now fly to different parts of the world because he will encourage everybody.
But some people don’t see it as a worthwhile venture but those of us who know what it means don’t miss going. It’s not easy to sit and write. That is why he encourages us. If you say you are an academic, go and compete with other academics out there. I thank God that the last time I went to New York I was able to chair a session and it’s not easy to chair a session. So it’s something that you go and see your colleagues, people from your profession, people you can compete with, discuss issues and ideas.
I believe that it’s a great part of training and development and, in fact, in New York, I delivered a paper on training and development. This is the kind of training that we need. It is not enough to read and stay here in Nigeria, we need to go out there and know how others are doing things and correct ourselves. Without comparing yourself with others, you can never know the level you are or where you belong.
“The Oxford experience was very fine. Oxford is a city of universities; we saw students, we saw academics and things like that. After the conference, we went on tours; they took us around Oxford city and we saw many colleges and so on; so the experience was worthwhile. And they have taken our papers for publication and nothing is as good as that: that you went for a conference and they accepted your paper for publication. As people from different countries presented papers, it afforded one the opportunity to know what is happening in other countries. Because people come from all over the world and you present your papers based on what is obtainable in your country, you add all these to your own knowledge; it helps to improve one’s fknowledge and helps one to try and fashion out his presentation better next time.
Because you have a lot of professors who will ask you questions and correct you, you voice your ideas and they correct you and you learn from them and they learn from you too. So it’s an exchange of ideas and knowledge…you have a lot of intellectual capabilities and abilities there. You see people; you are encouraged when you see young professors. I was even ashamed of myself that at this level I am not yet a professor.
“I am telling those who have not availed themselves of this opportunity to get up; this is 21st century and very soon they might say, start using power points. Many people don’t even know how to operate their computers; so we need this as academics. There is always a remarkable difference between those attending these conferences and others and I am telling our lecturers to sit up because our rector is always encouraging everybody. But most of us are lazy; nobody wants to write, nobody wants to face the challenges, but that is the only way one can grow in the profession.”
A refreshing experience
Mrs. Lebechukwu Ojobor, Deputy Registrar and Head of Council Affairs Department, was part of the team that went to Oxford in November 2013. She was also in Harvard from May 26th to June 3rd 2014. “The Oxford experience was quite refreshing”, she said. “Actually, the conference I went for happened in the University of London proper. We were there for two days but the conference organizers always fix two days tour as a break. So they took us to Oxford University; we also went to Cambridge. The trip to Oxford was about two hours by bus from Central London. Oxford was amazing; what touched me most was the environment, the old buildings dating over 4000 years but looking very clean and well-polished.
It was then I found out that the Oxford University runs a collegiate system; that different schools make up the university. We saw the old library with ancient books. What touched me most was their ability to preserve things. No matter how long it has been there, it is looking new and nobody tries to destroy it because it is old. The two conferences I attended were organized by the same body: International Journal of Arts and Science, both the one that took place in UK and in America. So it is a multi-disciplinary conference involving people from diverse areas. People from mass communication, people from the sciences, music, social sciences, humanities; people come together in that kind of environment. It is a beautiful kind of combination because while you are in a hall where somebody is talking about science, someone is talking about music, about so many different things. From your own background which is different from what they are talking about you learn so much. It is a well-organized academic conference; people present papers in an orderly manner.
“It was very useful because you learn so much; you know knowledge is not something you can quantify but the knowledge one got there was quite awesome. You are meeting people from all parts of the world; people from Israel, people from the Philippines talking about what is happening in their own countries. You get to know so much. For instance, somebody presented a paper talking about Nigeria, a Yoruba man. He was talking about how you walk into an office in Nigeria and speak your dialect and the man at the table there is ready to bend the rules because you have identified with him. And a woman from America stood and said, yes, that in America it is possible for you to fraternize with somebody who is from your place but that does not mean that you bend any rule for the person. That things must be done the way it should be done, that it doesn’t matter who is involved. So all of us found it quite funny and we noted the differences in the behaviour of our people.
“This new thing that is happening here is as a result of our new rector, Prof. M.U Iloeje. Before he came in, we did not know anything about this; we had never heard of it. So all thanks go to the rector because we had remained in dark ages for a long time but he has opened our eyes and it is a refreshing experience. When you go abroad and come back, your life is never the same. The first thing that hits you when you go abroad is the environment. The place is so beautiful and when you come back, you come with ideas on how to improve on what you are doing.”
Attending academic conference outside Nigeria
Patience Nwabunkeonye Ugwuegede a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, School of General Studies, also disclosed that within the past two years she has attended three international conferences: in Africa, Ghana, Sri-Lanka, Asia and Boston respectively.
“I was in Harvard Medical School Boston. I delivered a paper on: ‘Violence Against the Girl Child-health and Psychological Implications in Nigeria,’ she said. “In summary, you know we have violence against the girl-child as a gender and it’s mostly perpetrated by parents, you and I, in fact, everybody and it is institutionalized in discriminatory laws in Nigeria including our culture. For instance, we have early child marriage and, at times, some of the girl children are being married off without their consent; some when they were very young and, some, even at birth. And this early marriage has health and psychological implications.
There are so many violence against the girl child like child labour, the widowhood practices and, at times, you see them saying that a girl child shouldn’t go to school, mostly, where we have son preference in our culture. Where some parents cannot afford to train all the children, what they do is to select the male children for continuity of the family lineage.”
In her 21 years of teaching at IMT, Ugwuegede said she has never attended a conference outside the country before now. “All the conferences I attended were personally sponsored and they were all locally organized. But today, IMT through the TETFUND, has exposed us to international conferences and it is quite impressive because it is part of capacity-building, staff development which we are now enjoying. I am even planning to go for another one.
“Before now, we were not aware of such opportunities until Prof. Iloeje came on board. In fact, he has done noble in IMT; he has sponsored many of us He says that he doesn’t even want local conferences, that we should go out and interact with the international communities. And I want to use this opportunity to tell you that I went to Sri-Lanka and I won an award: ‘best session’ award. I was given a medal and I was given a certificate which I presented to the rector and he was impressed and advised that I shouldn’t go and rest, that I should do more. Afterward, I got that of America and I am still awaiting others.”
Staff capacity-building programmes
Throwing more light on the issue of sponsorship to international conferences, Iloeje explained that the staff capacity building programmes in IMT has always existed because the funding comes from TETFUND – (Tertiary Education Trust Fund), which is owned by the federal government. He disclosed that every year TETFUND gives allocation to every tertiary institution in Nigeria from the federal account. And that allocation will stipulate what you can use it for.
“You get this every year,” he said. “If the IMT previous administration was not getting and utilizing this fund I do not know why or whether they got it and did not disburse it to staff. But since I came here I decided that I must, as part of my responsibility, access those funds that belong to IMT and I use it exactly and exclusively for what it is meant for. There are allocations for the normal intervention projects, the ones you can use for capacity-building. For example, conference attendance; it is labeled ‘conference attendance funds’; there is another labeled ‘Academic staff training and development funds’; there is also ‘library development funds’, ‘research funds’, equipment, fabrication and so on.
“Now, you cannot use the money meant for conference attendance for any other thing except conference attendance. So when I get money for conference attendance I utilize it exclusively to fund our staff to conferences. And I am so happy to tell you that, initially, members of the academic staff who have not been aware of this opportunity were very sceptical and were slow in applying for these funds. But I opened it up to them and with full integrity told them the guidelines for spending the funds: 30% for non-academic staff and 70% for academic staff and I have been convincing them a lot. Initially, I got about two or three applications but now I am happy to tell you that since the onset of this administration in October 2011, we’ve had a total of 69 people that we have funded to various overseas conferences. Some of them have gone two times, some three times, some four times; in fact there are about three people who have gone five times since then and I used that money exclusively to fund them.
“The one meant for academic staff training and development has always been there and during my tenure I have been able to access all the money and it is meant for sponsoring the academic staff, those who want to get their masters, and those who want to go for their PhD. I fund it from there and we pay their fees completely. But I also insist that I don’t want to recycle mediocrity by sponsoring them to Nigerian universities. I like to insist that they go abroad where the state-of-the-art in their various disciplines will be taught them. I am happy to tell you that in the past 30 months that I have been here we have sponsored four of such people. One of them is taking a PhD at Sheffield and we have paid about N21.5m for him; another one is gone to UK to do a Masters degree at the University of South London; another one to Malaysia to do a PhD in Mechanical and Materials Engineering and we gave him about N10.7m for three years.
“Another one has gone to Aberdeen Scotland to do an LLM; it’s going to take one year and we have paid N6.3m for him. I still have a balance of over N60m waiting in that account; so I will like to use this medium to beg our academic staff to please get an offer of admission to any university in the world; IMT will sponsor them. The only condition is that they will sign a bond that after training they won’t run away, they will still come back to serve the government of Enugu State for number of years equivalent to what we spent on them.
Going for research grant and international conferences
“We also have research grant. In the past 15 years or so, nobody in IMT has been given a research grant. Few weeks ago, I disbursed almost N27.5m to 13 different research groups in IMT; again it is from the TETFUND. We don’t use it for any other thing except research. So I founded a research committee here, told our academic staff to submit research proposals to that committee. The committee will vet it, vet their budget and make recommendations to the rector.
We also have been able to get money for equipment fabrication: again, it is federal government fund. So since I came here I have been doing everything possible to make sure that we get the IMT share of TETFUND grants and deploy them to good use, following the guidelines. Like I said, initially, people were very slow in applying for these funds. Recently, I approved for two people, one of them is going to the University of London for a conference in November this year. I also make sure that that opening we give to our staff is utilized so they can compete favourably in the global international academic market place. I make sure they go to universities that are notable not backyard ones.
“When we started, some of them were going to India, Dubai, but now they are studying in some of the best universities in the world. Take Harvard, for instance. I have sent a team of IMT staff to go there; that’s the best university in the world according to ranking. Some have also gone to Oxford and other world-acclaimed universities. These efforts have helped in improving our webometrics rankings. If you now go to Google and Google IMT conference attendance you will see the list of what I am telling you. The name, IMT, is now appearing in most international professional academic literature and I am so happy that when our staff members travel abroad and come back and reproduce the experience they gained there for their colleagues and students too.
Monitoring staff participation in conferences
“When I came in newly, I was giving them funds to participate in conferences in Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Lagos, Kaduna, etc. I later found out that, unfortunately, some didn’t go. In fact, one of them had to refund the money when I found out that he didn’t go. Not only that, I placed a two-year moratorium on him, that is, that he won’t be a beneficiary for two years. But today I always insist that the conferences must be overseas. To that end, I have provided a means of monitoring, to ensure that they actually do attend. For instance, if you are travelling overseas, you must obtain a visa and when you are leaving Nigeria, they must stamp the visa and I will see the date you left Nigeria and the date you entered London, for instance.
“Now, there could be some people who could go to London and, instead of going for the conference, may choose to go for shopping. I also monitor that because some of these international conferences are on the internet and they are so done that if you don’t deliver your lecture at the scheduled time it will be written ‘no show’; that you didn’t attend. I will monitor it. Some of them are also on the internet and as the conference is going on you go to their website and see those who have presented papers that day. Again, it is in multimedia and I have listened to one of my staff make a presentation in Florida. Immediately she ended the presentation I gave her a call; she was surprised. I am happy that 69 of them that had gone for these conferences actually attended.”
From the brinks of collapse, the institution which was virtually shut down due to overpopulation, has suddenly bounced back to life with the introduction of a new management which took over the affairs of the institution in October 2011.
Two years after Prof. Mike Iloeje commenced the resuscitation of the institution, a lot has dramatically changed and both staff and students appear to be testifying to the new lease of life in the school. Apart from addressing the immediate problems of reducing the number of students being admitted, the new management has wielded the big stick against all sorts of indiscipline which, hitherto, was the order of the day. Some lecturers have been punished or suspended just as the well-behaved ones are being encouraged and promoted.
The new IMT management has taken a step further to place the institute among the best in the world by ensuring that the capacity of its lecturers is constantly being enhanced through international conferences. Some of the lecturers who recently visited Harvard and Oxford universities told this reporter that what is happening in IMT is unprecedented.
Dr. Ifeanyi Ojobor, a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, recalls that the Harvard conference which held between the 26th and 30th of May 2014, was organized by the International Journal of Arts and Science. Ojobor presented a paper on the sickening nature of news on the television at the conference which took place at Harvard medical school at Longwood.
Who else is sick of news?
“Actually the title was: ‘who else is sick of the news,’ he recalled in a chat with Education Review. “We had a good conference, beautiful multi-disciplinary conference. We had scholars coming from different countries like the United States, Turkey, Egypt, and Ghana and from different parts of Nigeria too as well as Europe and the Caribbeans. If you asked me, it was an eye-opening conference, a lovely, massive environment filled with courteous people and everyone busy with his own business but all working together for the good of the university and the conference.
“For someone that is uninitiated he could look at the conference as a waste of money but we are in academics and growth in academics is based primarily on publications. And where do you publish? Do you write a book or a handout that you can sell to students? No. It is published in journals. And which journal will you publish in? Journals with reputation, recognized journals with impact factor .That’s why you go to conferences to improve yourself, to get to know what is happening in the world around you, especially in your area and other areas. And, then of course, you grow in knowledge and capacity. So, no one in academics would say that conference attendance is wasteful. In fact, that is the way up if you ask me. Most professors today didn’t write any book; they grew from attending conferences and publishing in reputable journals. And the world would know your rating in the internet; your rating will continue to grow as you continue to publish and also knowledge would grow in that form. It is indeed very useful, extremely useful. In fact, you cannot do without it as far as you are at this level in academics.
“If you ask me why people have not been attending conferences I would tell you I do not know. But if you ask why they are attending now, I sure know. It is because there is a new man. He has come here with a new orientation, a fresh zeal, new dreams and he is an academic of repute. So if money was available for people to attend conferences, he releases the money and they go. Before, let me say that not many people knew about it perhaps, that was why we did not access it. But the new rector came and told us openly how much was available for conference attendance and made it public so that if anyone is interested, he knows what to do. He does it and he goes. Many people in this environment had not travelled beyond Enugu but as we talk now there is no time that we do not have at least ten persons from IMT attending conferences in different parts of the world and presenting scholarly papers. So the rector has made this thing open and people are getting to know that they can apply for a conference, get sponsorship, attend it, come back and prepare for another again.”
Changes at IMT
Ojobor who also runs the Public Relations department of the institute noted that a lot has changed in IMT. “First in the working atmosphere,” he recounted. “The place is calmer and the orientation is different; we are dealing more in the academics matters than in politics. What is happening is that first, we had to draw down the student’s population from over 35,000 to 7000 plus or sometimes less than 7000 and in keeping with our current capacity we are dealing with that small number and providing them with the right quality of instructions. A lecturer knows his students and students know their lecturers and there is progress in that area. Having made progress in the area of teaching, the rector in his good judgment, thought that it will be necessary to also improve on the quality of those who teach.
That is why now if anyone wants to get a PhD in IMT today and he gets admission in Oxford University or University of London, anywhere in the world, IMT will pay. In the same vein, anyone who finds the opportunity to travel to any part of the world to present a paper is sponsored .You can see that the tone of IMT is changing because people are going outside, getting impulses from outside and bringing it home. “If anyone is foot-dragging, I will say that that the person is living in the past.
These days, the Academic Planning office cannot cope with the number of applications that come for conferences. Initially, not many people were interested because they didn’t know it was possible but we now know it’s possible and as you are finishing with one paper, you are starting with another. So I don’t think there is foot-dragging anymore. Where I think there is an issue is with people who need higher degrees. Not many people are willing to travel outside the country and spend time outside their families; so there is a bit of snag there. But generally, people are adjusting gradually and more people are going abroad to study for higher degrees and I think the whole thing is catching on. Actually, this place is on fire if you ask me because the culture Prof. Iloeje has brought in is just taking over the entire place.”
A worthwhile venture
Also sharing her experience Dr. (Mrs.) Joy Nonyelum Ugwu, Director School of Business Studies, who was in Oxford University in December 2013 for an International conference delivered a paper on: ‘Women in the University, Benefits and Barriers.” Dr. Ugwu who revealed that she has attended conferences in Uganda, New York, and Boston in England in July, confessed that “before now we didn’t even know what is called conference sponsorship. It was at the inception of this administration led by Prof. Mike Iloeje that things changed. That man is God-sent. He opened our eyes. People who hitherto had not crossed River Niger can now fly to different parts of the world because he will encourage everybody.
But some people don’t see it as a worthwhile venture but those of us who know what it means don’t miss going. It’s not easy to sit and write. That is why he encourages us. If you say you are an academic, go and compete with other academics out there. I thank God that the last time I went to New York I was able to chair a session and it’s not easy to chair a session. So it’s something that you go and see your colleagues, people from your profession, people you can compete with, discuss issues and ideas.
I believe that it’s a great part of training and development and, in fact, in New York, I delivered a paper on training and development. This is the kind of training that we need. It is not enough to read and stay here in Nigeria, we need to go out there and know how others are doing things and correct ourselves. Without comparing yourself with others, you can never know the level you are or where you belong.
“The Oxford experience was very fine. Oxford is a city of universities; we saw students, we saw academics and things like that. After the conference, we went on tours; they took us around Oxford city and we saw many colleges and so on; so the experience was worthwhile. And they have taken our papers for publication and nothing is as good as that: that you went for a conference and they accepted your paper for publication. As people from different countries presented papers, it afforded one the opportunity to know what is happening in other countries. Because people come from all over the world and you present your papers based on what is obtainable in your country, you add all these to your own knowledge; it helps to improve one’s fknowledge and helps one to try and fashion out his presentation better next time.
Because you have a lot of professors who will ask you questions and correct you, you voice your ideas and they correct you and you learn from them and they learn from you too. So it’s an exchange of ideas and knowledge…you have a lot of intellectual capabilities and abilities there. You see people; you are encouraged when you see young professors. I was even ashamed of myself that at this level I am not yet a professor.
“I am telling those who have not availed themselves of this opportunity to get up; this is 21st century and very soon they might say, start using power points. Many people don’t even know how to operate their computers; so we need this as academics. There is always a remarkable difference between those attending these conferences and others and I am telling our lecturers to sit up because our rector is always encouraging everybody. But most of us are lazy; nobody wants to write, nobody wants to face the challenges, but that is the only way one can grow in the profession.”
A refreshing experience
Mrs. Lebechukwu Ojobor, Deputy Registrar and Head of Council Affairs Department, was part of the team that went to Oxford in November 2013. She was also in Harvard from May 26th to June 3rd 2014. “The Oxford experience was quite refreshing”, she said. “Actually, the conference I went for happened in the University of London proper. We were there for two days but the conference organizers always fix two days tour as a break. So they took us to Oxford University; we also went to Cambridge. The trip to Oxford was about two hours by bus from Central London. Oxford was amazing; what touched me most was the environment, the old buildings dating over 4000 years but looking very clean and well-polished.
It was then I found out that the Oxford University runs a collegiate system; that different schools make up the university. We saw the old library with ancient books. What touched me most was their ability to preserve things. No matter how long it has been there, it is looking new and nobody tries to destroy it because it is old. The two conferences I attended were organized by the same body: International Journal of Arts and Science, both the one that took place in UK and in America. So it is a multi-disciplinary conference involving people from diverse areas. People from mass communication, people from the sciences, music, social sciences, humanities; people come together in that kind of environment. It is a beautiful kind of combination because while you are in a hall where somebody is talking about science, someone is talking about music, about so many different things. From your own background which is different from what they are talking about you learn so much. It is a well-organized academic conference; people present papers in an orderly manner.
“It was very useful because you learn so much; you know knowledge is not something you can quantify but the knowledge one got there was quite awesome. You are meeting people from all parts of the world; people from Israel, people from the Philippines talking about what is happening in their own countries. You get to know so much. For instance, somebody presented a paper talking about Nigeria, a Yoruba man. He was talking about how you walk into an office in Nigeria and speak your dialect and the man at the table there is ready to bend the rules because you have identified with him. And a woman from America stood and said, yes, that in America it is possible for you to fraternize with somebody who is from your place but that does not mean that you bend any rule for the person. That things must be done the way it should be done, that it doesn’t matter who is involved. So all of us found it quite funny and we noted the differences in the behaviour of our people.
“This new thing that is happening here is as a result of our new rector, Prof. M.U Iloeje. Before he came in, we did not know anything about this; we had never heard of it. So all thanks go to the rector because we had remained in dark ages for a long time but he has opened our eyes and it is a refreshing experience. When you go abroad and come back, your life is never the same. The first thing that hits you when you go abroad is the environment. The place is so beautiful and when you come back, you come with ideas on how to improve on what you are doing.”
Attending academic conference outside Nigeria
Patience Nwabunkeonye Ugwuegede a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, School of General Studies, also disclosed that within the past two years she has attended three international conferences: in Africa, Ghana, Sri-Lanka, Asia and Boston respectively.
“I was in Harvard Medical School Boston. I delivered a paper on: ‘Violence Against the Girl Child-health and Psychological Implications in Nigeria,’ she said. “In summary, you know we have violence against the girl-child as a gender and it’s mostly perpetrated by parents, you and I, in fact, everybody and it is institutionalized in discriminatory laws in Nigeria including our culture. For instance, we have early child marriage and, at times, some of the girl children are being married off without their consent; some when they were very young and, some, even at birth. And this early marriage has health and psychological implications.
There are so many violence against the girl child like child labour, the widowhood practices and, at times, you see them saying that a girl child shouldn’t go to school, mostly, where we have son preference in our culture. Where some parents cannot afford to train all the children, what they do is to select the male children for continuity of the family lineage.”
In her 21 years of teaching at IMT, Ugwuegede said she has never attended a conference outside the country before now. “All the conferences I attended were personally sponsored and they were all locally organized. But today, IMT through the TETFUND, has exposed us to international conferences and it is quite impressive because it is part of capacity-building, staff development which we are now enjoying. I am even planning to go for another one.
“Before now, we were not aware of such opportunities until Prof. Iloeje came on board. In fact, he has done noble in IMT; he has sponsored many of us He says that he doesn’t even want local conferences, that we should go out and interact with the international communities. And I want to use this opportunity to tell you that I went to Sri-Lanka and I won an award: ‘best session’ award. I was given a medal and I was given a certificate which I presented to the rector and he was impressed and advised that I shouldn’t go and rest, that I should do more. Afterward, I got that of America and I am still awaiting others.”
Staff capacity-building programmes
Throwing more light on the issue of sponsorship to international conferences, Iloeje explained that the staff capacity building programmes in IMT has always existed because the funding comes from TETFUND – (Tertiary Education Trust Fund), which is owned by the federal government. He disclosed that every year TETFUND gives allocation to every tertiary institution in Nigeria from the federal account. And that allocation will stipulate what you can use it for.
“You get this every year,” he said. “If the IMT previous administration was not getting and utilizing this fund I do not know why or whether they got it and did not disburse it to staff. But since I came here I decided that I must, as part of my responsibility, access those funds that belong to IMT and I use it exactly and exclusively for what it is meant for. There are allocations for the normal intervention projects, the ones you can use for capacity-building. For example, conference attendance; it is labeled ‘conference attendance funds’; there is another labeled ‘Academic staff training and development funds’; there is also ‘library development funds’, ‘research funds’, equipment, fabrication and so on.
“Now, you cannot use the money meant for conference attendance for any other thing except conference attendance. So when I get money for conference attendance I utilize it exclusively to fund our staff to conferences. And I am so happy to tell you that, initially, members of the academic staff who have not been aware of this opportunity were very sceptical and were slow in applying for these funds. But I opened it up to them and with full integrity told them the guidelines for spending the funds: 30% for non-academic staff and 70% for academic staff and I have been convincing them a lot. Initially, I got about two or three applications but now I am happy to tell you that since the onset of this administration in October 2011, we’ve had a total of 69 people that we have funded to various overseas conferences. Some of them have gone two times, some three times, some four times; in fact there are about three people who have gone five times since then and I used that money exclusively to fund them.
“The one meant for academic staff training and development has always been there and during my tenure I have been able to access all the money and it is meant for sponsoring the academic staff, those who want to get their masters, and those who want to go for their PhD. I fund it from there and we pay their fees completely. But I also insist that I don’t want to recycle mediocrity by sponsoring them to Nigerian universities. I like to insist that they go abroad where the state-of-the-art in their various disciplines will be taught them. I am happy to tell you that in the past 30 months that I have been here we have sponsored four of such people. One of them is taking a PhD at Sheffield and we have paid about N21.5m for him; another one is gone to UK to do a Masters degree at the University of South London; another one to Malaysia to do a PhD in Mechanical and Materials Engineering and we gave him about N10.7m for three years.
“Another one has gone to Aberdeen Scotland to do an LLM; it’s going to take one year and we have paid N6.3m for him. I still have a balance of over N60m waiting in that account; so I will like to use this medium to beg our academic staff to please get an offer of admission to any university in the world; IMT will sponsor them. The only condition is that they will sign a bond that after training they won’t run away, they will still come back to serve the government of Enugu State for number of years equivalent to what we spent on them.
Going for research grant and international conferences
“We also have research grant. In the past 15 years or so, nobody in IMT has been given a research grant. Few weeks ago, I disbursed almost N27.5m to 13 different research groups in IMT; again it is from the TETFUND. We don’t use it for any other thing except research. So I founded a research committee here, told our academic staff to submit research proposals to that committee. The committee will vet it, vet their budget and make recommendations to the rector.
We also have been able to get money for equipment fabrication: again, it is federal government fund. So since I came here I have been doing everything possible to make sure that we get the IMT share of TETFUND grants and deploy them to good use, following the guidelines. Like I said, initially, people were very slow in applying for these funds. Recently, I approved for two people, one of them is going to the University of London for a conference in November this year. I also make sure that that opening we give to our staff is utilized so they can compete favourably in the global international academic market place. I make sure they go to universities that are notable not backyard ones.
“When we started, some of them were going to India, Dubai, but now they are studying in some of the best universities in the world. Take Harvard, for instance. I have sent a team of IMT staff to go there; that’s the best university in the world according to ranking. Some have also gone to Oxford and other world-acclaimed universities. These efforts have helped in improving our webometrics rankings. If you now go to Google and Google IMT conference attendance you will see the list of what I am telling you. The name, IMT, is now appearing in most international professional academic literature and I am so happy that when our staff members travel abroad and come back and reproduce the experience they gained there for their colleagues and students too.
Monitoring staff participation in conferences
“When I came in newly, I was giving them funds to participate in conferences in Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Lagos, Kaduna, etc. I later found out that, unfortunately, some didn’t go. In fact, one of them had to refund the money when I found out that he didn’t go. Not only that, I placed a two-year moratorium on him, that is, that he won’t be a beneficiary for two years. But today I always insist that the conferences must be overseas. To that end, I have provided a means of monitoring, to ensure that they actually do attend. For instance, if you are travelling overseas, you must obtain a visa and when you are leaving Nigeria, they must stamp the visa and I will see the date you left Nigeria and the date you entered London, for instance.
“Now, there could be some people who could go to London and, instead of going for the conference, may choose to go for shopping. I also monitor that because some of these international conferences are on the internet and they are so done that if you don’t deliver your lecture at the scheduled time it will be written ‘no show’; that you didn’t attend. I will monitor it. Some of them are also on the internet and as the conference is going on you go to their website and see those who have presented papers that day. Again, it is in multimedia and I have listened to one of my staff make a presentation in Florida. Immediately she ended the presentation I gave her a call; she was surprised. I am happy that 69 of them that had gone for these conferences actually attended.”
 |
IMT goes to Harvard, Oxford |
No comments:
Post a Comment