THE University of Goroka will focus on student welfare and training and staff development in the 2016 academic year, acting Vice Chancellor Dr John Kola said.

Dr. Kola was brought in to the Univer- sity of Goroka to quell a student upris- ing. The strike resulted in the sacking of the former Top Management Team led by Dr. Gairo Onagi.
“We have successfully negotiated and conducted and concluded the academic year. The results were endorsed by the council meeting so the academic year will start as normal,” Dr. Kola said.
“The (2016) academic year we are go- ing to improve student facilities, access to electronic books, access to Internet for study purposes. We will create Wi-Fi through the entire campus.
“We are also looking at improving the conditions of academic staff in terms
of salary, housing and other benefits so that we can be able to attract and retain very good academic staff so to build the quality of teachers to bring development to the nation. He said the council has recently appointed a professor of Mathematics at the University and will look around for more professors, and more senior people for senior lecturer levels at the University.
The hunt for highly reputable academics will provide UOG a good academic leadership and guidance to be able to upgrade all the programmes.
“Within the next two to three years we expect UOG to fully function and be able to have the highest academic standards,” he said.
“We have programmes which needs to be reviewed. We are undergoing a major restructure where we will align resources with programmes, basically monetary and staff resources and merging or deleting of non-core pro- grammes.
“That is going to happen (in 2016) and by 2017 we will have a fully fledged programme for The University of Goroka to not only produce teachers for this nation but also professionals to work in various industries.