Thomas Adewumi University (TAU), Oko-Irese, has announced the ‘full schedule’ for its first convocation ceremony which will hold between Friday, November 22, and Tuesday, November 26, 2024.
Oko is in Irepodun local government, Kwara State, and TAU is a private university.
The convocation ceremony will mark the graduation of its first batch of 26 students with 6 among them graduating with First-Class honours.
The institution’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Francisca O. Oladipo, who disclosed this during the press conference she presided over in Oko on Friday, which was attended by journalists including Team@orientactualmags.com, noted that Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, who has been invited as Convocation Lecturer, will speak on ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Future of Work: Implications for Nigerian Graduates’’. He will also inaugurate the new 240-capacity Student Hall of Residence after delivering the convocation lecture.
Humphrey Geiseb, who is the High Commissioner of the Republic of Namibia to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and ECOWAS, will give the Commencement speech while Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State will be the Special Guest of Honour and also lay the foundation stone of the Faculty of Medical and Health building project.
Activities and programmes for the institution’s maiden convocation ceremony include Community Outreach, Thanksgiving Service, Chancellor’s Night Dinner, Convocation Lecture and Award of Degrees.
Professor Francisca O. Oladipo, who noted that safety, security and wellbeing of students, staff and visitors to the university, has been prioritized, asserted that TAU is Nigeria’s ‘leading light in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Innovation ecosystem’.
She also said 26 students from 2 Faculties and 9 academic programmes would be graduating from the university.
‘6 would be graduating with First-Class honours , 14 will graduate with Second Class Honours (Upper Division), 4 with Second Class Honours (Lower Division) and 1 with a Third Class’ the VC submitted while adding that ‘Given the quality of the training that these graduands have received from our university, we are proud to be contributing this token of innovators to the Nigerian and global workforce and we have no doubts that they will deliver’.
Professor Francisca O. Oladipo also noted that the first convocation ceremony ‘is a monumental event, marking a significant milestone in our history’ adding that ‘It is a culmination of the efforts of our founding fathers, dedicated faculty, industrious students, and supportive stakeholders’.
The Vice-Chancellor also asserted that the institution has secured its position as the first among the 20 universities licensed by the Federal Government in 2021, not ‘by sheer luck, but through Strategic Planning and deliberate commitment to excellence’.
Professor Francisca O. Oladipo, who is the Secretary General of The KU8 Initiative’, noted that TAU which was officially licensed by the Federal Government of Nigeria on April 8, 2021, and became operative on May 16, 2021, with 13 academic programmes across three faculties, had since grown in leaps and bounds.
Recall that TAU and seven other universities in Kwara State formed ‘The KU8 Initiative’ to collaboratively facilitate the delivery of learning opportunities.
‘Since then, we have expanded to the tune of offering 27 academic programmes in 24 departments under seven faculties, with a solid record of achievements, including 100% full accreditation by the National Universities Commission, (NUC).
Between 2021 and now, we have doubled our academic programmes from the original 13 approved by the National Universities Commission for take-off to 27, established four (4) new faculties (Arts and Humanities, Engineering, Law, and Nursing Sciences), giving a total of seven faculties from the original three as approved for take-off. We have achieved 100% full NUC accreditation in all our academic programmes.
Additionally, our LLB Law Programme has been approved by the Council of Legal Education, while our Bachelor of Nursing Science Programme is fully accredited by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria. Earlier this month, we presented our first set of Nursing Students for the Council’s qualifying examinations, and we achieved a 100% pass’ she submitted.
Professor Francisca O. Oladipo expressed the commitment of the university to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) submitting that ‘at the heart of our university lies a diverse community of passionate researchers, scholars, and experts from various disciplines, all united by a common purpose: to address the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges’.
‘Recognizing the importance of building a sustainable future, we are deeply committed to making a meaningful contribution to all the 17 SDGs. We are undoubtedly one of Nigeria’s most-sustainable university campuses: with a 214KW solar farm, we rely majorly on renewable energy to power our campuses, and with our over 10 kilometres of fibre optics infrastructure, we make fast broadband internet connectivity available to our faculty, staff and students, as well as some part of Oko Community. We are sited on over 300 hectares of fertile land supported by the abundance of rainfall and generally good weather, so we grow up to 75% of what we consume on our campus, from food and water to energy. 99% of our infrastructure like furniture, buildings, etc., are locally engineered using materials from our grounds’ she said.
While noting that TAU is an ICT-driven university, she also added that ‘over 70% of our operations, including statutory and ad-hoc meetings, leave applications, results processing, exeat requests, etc are paperless, and now done online via our robust portal thereby reducing our carbon footprints and promoting a sustainable campus’.
‘We promote good health and well-being: while we own the only Medical Center serving our immediate community and over 62 others, we have just constructed a new Physiotherapy Clinic, adjudged by the accreditation panel from the Medical Rehabilitation Therapists (Reg.) Board of Nigeria as one of the best in the country in terms of engineering and equipment.
In January 2023, we began the phased transition from a teaching university to a research and Innovations Hub. We established the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Product Development and developed the Thomas Adewumi University Research Agenda in line with our Strategic Goals and the 17 United Nations SDGs. We also developed university policies and framework that ensured that all research/creative outputs align with this agenda.
We established the Office of Research Ethics and Compliance to oversee the responsible conduct of research, and academic integrity matters. To further deepen innovations in our academic delivery, we established 2 International Innovations Hubs in partnership with colleagues from the Diaspora (The FSI Innovation Hub for students and the AI Research Lab for Faculty) and instituted the TAU innovation award to be given to individuals or research groups from TAU who develops software, techniques, procedures and or machines that improves quality of life in homes, offices, and society in general. We also have monetary rewards for researchers who publish their outputs in high impact journals. We have continued to build capacity across the teaching and non-teaching staff by instituting the monthly TAU KnowledgeX initiative -a sociodemic research meet up for all categories of staff of the university where contemporary research ideas across a wide range of topics (from AI to Nutrition) are explored’ she said.
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As part of the university’s Human Capital Development efforts, the Vice-Chancellor noted that provisions have been made for need- based unrestricted scholarships and fee subsidies for students who are from Oko- Irese while also extending this gesture of goodwill to others from Kwara State and its neighbours.
‘ We conduct periodic medical outreach through our Faculties of Medical and Health Sciences, Nursing Sciences as well as our cottage hospital, the Oko Medical Centre. As we speak, a free eye medical outreach is currently ongoing and 200 people will be seen with no less than 20 surgeries to be performed by a term of 7 international experts brought into town by us.
Recognizing the agrarian nature of Kwara State and the consequent physiotherapy illnesses that accompany traditional farming, we have built a Physiotherapy clinic in Oko to provide medical attention within reach of the over 60 communities being served by our cottage hospital’ she said.
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The Vice-Chancellor also disclosed that the university has started the process of establishing a Medical School while looking forward to admitting the first set of students for the MBBS programme in September 2025.
She disclosed that Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has approved the upgrading of the General Hospital Omu-Aran to a Teaching Hospital while adding that preparations are at advanced stages for ‘the establishment of the School of Postgraduate Studies and the Centre for Distance and eLearning that will leverage technology to overcome geographical barriers and modernize the curriculum, incorporating digital and emerging skills crucial in today’s job market’.
The Vice-Chancellor also promised that the university will continue to ‘invest in more sustainable infrastructure to improve campus life for all the members of our community’- Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com. Thank you.
