New VC should focus on pressing issues

Last Friday, Rose Awuor Mwonya became the new vice-chancellor of Egerton University. She took over from James Tuitoek who had been at the helm for 10 years.

The new VC is an accomplished scholar and an all-round leader. Her experience is unmatched.

However, given that she has been at the same institution for so long, she may be tempted to maintain the status-quo.

But there are some positive attributed about her. She was competitively recruited. And during her inauguration to the position, the running theme in the speeches was that she needs to be in charge.

The first challenge Prof Mwonya will face is to do with efficiency in service delivery within the university. For Egerton, student numbers seem to be a curse rather than a blessing. Services in the halls of residence, the administration, and the academic divisions are so slow they impact negatively on students’ completion rates.

Last year alone, more than 1000 students failed to graduate after completing their four-year programmes. The biggest contributor to this career-impacting failure is missing marks. The problem was with secretaries who are unable to compute marks submitted from different departments.

The issue of missing marks is not a problem unique to one university in Kenya. Aside from arrogant and inefficient secretaries, ‘lazy’ lecturers also have a role to play. This issue should be addressed.

As Mwonya takes over, she also needs to remain alive to the fast changing technological advancement and work towards digitalising and modernising virtually every service offered by the university.

Finally, the new VC should not fight tribalism with tribalism. At least she got that counsel during her inauguration. If she practices fair, transparent and professional recruitment of both teaching and non-teaching staff, she will have made a great contribution in the leadership of this country.