A two-day capacity workshop has been organised by the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC) for Senior Members of the College of Distance Education (CoDE) to hone their skills in the discharge of their duties. A former Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kobina Yankson, who took participants through the topic " Mentorship at University of Cape Coast”, noted that mentorship forms an essential part of the progression of every higher educational institution. He said since 2008, UCC had advocated mentorship at every sphere of the academic ladder and, therefore, advised Senior Members to mentor newly employed colleagues for them to impact positively on the current crop of students. Unlike the era of Ordinary and Advanced Level systems of education, he noted that, currently academic background of students had changed considerably to the extent that teenagers are now admitted into universities. Consequently, he pointed out that new instructional materials and approaches should be adopted to teach the students. He told the Senior Members that, “We are dealing with students who can't construct sentence well. That is why mentorship is good in our university ". He said mentors should have in-depth knowledge of the system, work ethics, good knowledge of the vision and mission of CoDE in particular and UCC in general. Again, he noted that a mentor should acquire supervisory skills, avoid selfishness and be approachable. He called on heads of department to assign mentors to newly recruited colleagues and periodically evaluate the performance of both the mentor and mentee. He said that mentorship was a quality assurance requirement and urged the Directorate of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance (DAPQA) to assess mentorship in the colleges, faculties and departments. Other facilitators at the workshop included Prof. Samuel Annim, who spoke on "UCC Research Terrain". Prof. Albert Abane, touched on Article Writing, whilst Prof. Dennis Aheto gave a presentation on Research, Grant Proposal Writing. Prof. Frederick Armah also spoke on the topic " Improving UCC Visibility ".
