Five picked for Kyambogo VC job

Prof Eli Katunguka

What you need to know:

Next step. The senate promised to invite the candidates for presentations before selecting the best three for onward submission to the council for VC appointment

Kampala.

Kyambogo University Vice Chancellor Search Committee has forwarded five candidates to the Senate to be considered for appointment of the university’s top leader.

The candidates include Prof Samuel Baker Kucel (deputy vice chancellor at Busitema University), Associate Prof Umar Ahmed Kasule (at Islamic University in Uganda), Prof Aaron Wanyama (former Kyambogo University Dean of Faculty of Science) Prof Eli Katunguka (former Kyambogo University’s acting Vice Chancellor) and Makerere University Business School’s Prof Geoffrey Bakunda.

The university Senate, the university’s highest academic decision making organ, will choose three candidates from the recommend five and forward their names to the university council which is the highest decision making organ, to select a substantive vice chancellor from the trio. The new vice chancellor will lead the 14-year-old university for the next five years.

This is the first time Prof Kucel and Associate Prof Kasule are applying for the VC job since it was first advertised in February last year while Prof Wanyama, Prof Katunguka and Prof Bakunda have given it a second shot after the university council last June nullified the first results from the Prof Patrick Mangheni’s search committee. The university was forced to re-advertise the position.
Initially, six candidates had expressed interest but Prof George Bazirake was dropped at shortlisting stage for lack of the eight-year experience required for the VC job.

Dr Mary Muhenda replaced Prof Mangheni whose team was dissolved after the council rejected their recommendations last year.
Sources close to the search informed Daily Monitor that the Senate received the report on Tuesday and will invite the candidates for interviews thereafter. The candidates will make presentations before the Senate and be awarded marks. Then their names will be forwarded to the university council for selection of the vice chancellor.

The sources further said that unlike in the past where the search committee would recommend candidates to the Senate which would then invite them to prove their competence for the job and award them marks, this time round the Muhenda committee presented their report containing the candidates’ scores.

However, the senate took exceptions and promised to first invite the candidates for presentations before selecting the best three for onward submission to the council for VC appointment. The council is expected to sit on March 17 to review the search committee’s findings.

“Senate received the report from the search committee with scores but didn’t want to conclude using the committee’s submissions without meeting the candidates,” the source said yesterday.
The first search findings were blocked after two petitioners alleged that the Prof Mangheni committee had misinterpreted the terms and conditions of the search which edged out some applicants.

Prof Bazirake yesterday insisted he was unfairly removed from the second race on the basis of experience. According to him, he has four-year experience as a Dean and has chaired several other big committees which add up to more than eight years.

He reasoned that some of the candidates who were retained in the race have never held substantive positions, which he said is questionable. He also contested the age limit as provided for in the Pensions Act. He said he and other lecturers interested in the job would petition the university council challenging the length of experience and age limit for candidates.

Protest
In January Kyambogo lecturers under their association protested the requirement of eight-year experience as Dean or the equivalent to be appointed VC.

At that time, the university council chairman, Prof John Okedi, explained: “The terms are very much the same except that we have clarified on the experience. The candidate must have 10 years in senior position four of which must have been a dean. If you have been a head of a department, you can’t qualify because a vice chancellor supervises a dean.”