University of Buea Tackles Innovative Year

Several academic events are planned to mark the university this academic year.

In this second week of reopening, the amphitheatres of the University of Buea (UB) have gained momentum. The administrative block is constantly solicited by parents and students, some pleading for change of admission choice and others still insisting for late admission. The various Faculty Deans are busy with academic directives. UB looks more like a beehive with students moving in and out of the campus.

Without opening any box of worms, the new dispensation at UB promises to be calm on the part of students, and fomenters of disorder shall be faced with muscled expediency by the administration to avert the 6 - 12 February unrests of last academic year.

Innovations abound and achievements are visible especially in infrastructure. On October 23, 2013, UB celebrated a new building of its Faculty of Health Sciences. Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo, Minister of Higher Education, cut the inaugural ribbon of a FCFA 4.7 billion completed building covering a surface of 10.000 square metres by the roadside between Buea Mile 17 and Muea. A second phase of the project will engulf over FCFA 7 billion.

Education experts generally agree that Universities exist to train, evaluate and certify, employing research as their yardstick. In that light, UB intends to erect a new Faculty Block for their mother Advanced School of Translators and Interpreters (ASTI) to host a revolutionary number of offices and lecture halls. Equally, their contract with a private firm will enable the Chinese to put up a 500-room hostel on the basis of Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT). A shopping mall is also envisaged to contain all on-campus business activities. In the area of sports, UB's Registrar, Professor Samson Abangma talks of renovating the existing infrastructure.

Saturday, November 2, 2013 was Matriculation Day at the University of Buea (UB) which saw the swearing in of some 6.213 freshmen offered admission this year. This number will take UB's total population little above 17.000 this academic year, 2013-2014. According to UB's calendar of activities, this year's Convocation or graduation has been billed for December 14, 2013. For the first time, this year, a separate convocation ceremony is planned for Medical students. And in the words of Professor Ngowe Ngowe Marcellin, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, "to give a particular solemnity to the graduating Medical Doctors"