‘Universities should serve as agents of social change and development’

MARGEE ENSIGN, president of American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, in Adamawa State, in this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE, highlights the contributions of the institution to training globally-competitive students and the efforts of the university to project community development, using technology. Excerpts:

What are AUN’s ambitions as it enters another decade as a development university? Were these objectives met in the first decade?

The university is beginning to expand rapidly as the security situation improves in the north-eastern part of the country. In terms of academic programmes, I think we are making good progress. We just hired a new Dean for the Faculty of Law, so we will be applying for accreditation before the end of the year. We have the building almost ready. So, I think that is an important addition.

We have a major donor who just pledged some money for the School of Engineering; so we are excited about that. We are still quite a young university. We offer a comprehensive set of academic programme; so I am pleased with that and also with our faculties from 35 countries.

They are doing a really nice job with these Nigerians and students from other nationalities. The fact that we are attracting students from other parts of the continent is something that makes me happy.

As we see the security situation improving, we will see more students from around the world. Our mission is to be a development university.

We are teaching literacy, we are teaching ICT, every AUN student has to take a community development course, they love it and it is changing them fundamentally.

You know that the Boko Haram situation got a little worse and the university was on the frontline of feeding almost 300,000 people for over nine months with Adamawa peace initiative. So, we took on a whole new role in the community and the region and no one asked anymore what it means to be a development university anymore. These young students now know that they can make a difference because they have done it, they fed and have taken care of internally displaced persons (IDPs).

There is one school of thought that says you were born leader, there is another that says leadership comes from academic preparation, but I have always believed that leaders are made through challenges. I see our AUN students, faculty and staff who had to rise to the occasion and take care of very many needy people.

I am convinced that all the AUN students who participated in the entire crisis situation will be the leaders of Nigeria because they saw it; they responded and through their actions, made a huge difference.

The university had to take on a role that very few universities around the world have had to do. Being in a conflict area and rising up to the challenge for this, I am enormously proud. The situation is not over because we still have IDPs with us.

We have a lot to do as a university, we just began our graduate programme and they are growing rapidly, even if not faster than our undergraduate programme, I want to expand that. We are in Business and Computer Science and I see potential of doing other graduate programmes in Foreign Policy, International Politics and Nigeria School of Foreign Service. I believe Nigeria will benefit from these.

I understand your university is about to introduce Law and Engineering programmes. Is there an advantage to students for an American-style university offering the courses?

We already have a track record in things like Software Engineering; I think we are the only university that offers it at the undergraduate level. So, if you measure a university as you should, in terms of where its alumni can go after graduation, the AUN alumni are doing well in the Sciences because they are getting into the best Medical Schools and in terms of Computer Science programme, Petroleum Engineering, Chemistry which we already do. Many of these young people are working in the oil industry in Nigeria.

So in a way, it is not that new for us because we do Petroleum, Chemical Engineering; we will do courses that we already have strength in, and then we will do Mechanical Engineering and some more over time.

We are going to do some of the innovative courses too. We put our reputation out there whenever we graduate a student. We have a good data of our alumni and where they are going and they are right there at the top.

How are the Chibok school girls faring, who are studying in your university under your scholarship? Would you say they have justified the risk and investment in their enrollment at AUN?

I am so inspired by these young women and the progress they have made. They came to AUN as frightened as Chibok girls, but now they are strong women. So in one year, they have made tremendous progress educationally, psychologically and emotionally.  We have 27 now, we had 21 but we now have six new ones. Two of the girls passed JAMB. As you will remember, they were abducted when they were taking their WAEC examination.

Since then, they have been in very intense programmes with five per class and three teachers and this has worked. These girls have tremendous potentials. The new group is just getting used to being in a university environment. They are now on the university campuses even though they are doing the specialised foundation programme. They are reminder to me as I see them every day that if every young person in Nigeria, in Africa could have this kind of quality education, then Africa overnight will change.

How do we advance the course of university education in Nigeria using AUN approach?

We believe that some of the projects we have started in Yola, we can replicate around the country and the US government apparently believes the same because they just gave us a grant to expand 20, 000 young people including IDPs teaching literacy.

The development indicators in the north-east are very poor. The illiteracy rate in Adamawa is 77 percent which means three out of every four people you meet, cannot read. So, we have been using some innovative tools and techniques including tablets and computers. There are apps written in indigenous languages by AUN students, which aid teaching. The data is very promising because people in the community are learning very fast. With this new technology, you can make learning quick. We are replicating and expanding this programme. We have to reach 20,000 by August, 2016 using tablets and radio. We are calling it a year of literacy in Yola. The whole community is involved and the Adamawa Peace Initiative members are also involved.

The point is, there are universities in every corners of this country and we just finished a big conference that we co-sponsored with NUC on how you use technology and innovation to make an impact. I challenged my fellow vice chancellors to try and see how, through the use of technology, they can make a big difference in the various communities in which they operate.

I think we should begin to use universities more as agents of social change and development. If the universities in Nigeria can come together and approach community development using technology and training, it presents a new learning experience for both students and faculty.

What is your take on university implementation of good policies?

I think it is a structural issue. The regulators and those in the ministry of education should come together with the vice chancellors and pilot some technological innovation approach to developmental learning in some select schools. AUN as a private university has some measure of resources these other universities may not have, but we are willing to partner in this drive as long as it is driven by people with vision and are accountable.

Technology is a very effective tool that government and organisations can use to train the younger generation. Nigeria is growing too fast, it does not have time to teach teachers, build schools, build more universities; so I think Nigeria really needs to think outside the box to give people enough learning.