Prof. Clement Kolawole, the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Trinity University, Yaba, Lagos, on Thursday hinted of plans by the institution to collaborate with other universities around the globe.
Kolawole said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos that the collaboration would be specifically to strengthen its staff exchange programmes.
He added that its first choice for collaboration were institutions that shared its values, such as other universities bearing the name, Trinity University.
According to him, the institution has written formally to reveal its intention to these universities, located in 12 countries across the world.
“We have Trinity University in Canada, America, United Kingdom and other countries and we have written to them to say that we have established Trinity university here in Nigeria and we want to collaborate with them.
“We formally have a links committee, saddled with the responsibility of marketing us to other universities, letting them know that we are existing and willing to collaborate with them in certain specific areas; staff exchange, programme development and materials exchange.
“And the idea is to get their attention, so that they can help us strengthen our staff exchange programmes, fine-tune and expand, so that their staff and students can come over here.
“Some have acknowledged and promised to get back to us. We are currently having a
relationship with some South African universities, where some of our colleagues went to, before joining us and they used that relationship to link us up with them.
“For instance, the current Head of Department (HOD) of Computer Science, in the last two years, came from one university in South Africa. Part of the research she went to do there is still ongoing,” he added.
On what the university is doing to build capacity from its products, the don hinted that the institution had started recruiting academic staff from its first-class graduates.
Speaking on issues of vices among youth, Kolawole noted that the institution had zero tolerance to cult-related issues, drugs, hooliganism, examination malpractices and other anti-social activities.
“Right from onset, we let them know what we stand for, we value our Christian ethics and values.
“So far, so good, in our university, we have not had any case of cult-related activity or cult-related problem. From inception, we assemble both students and members of staff, pray and encourage our students to be on the Lord’s side.
“We encourage them to be responsible because our core value includes godliness, integrity, honesty, hardwork and excellence and therefore, we always emphasise and preach these core values to them.
“We also make them know that they have access, especially if they have issues that are bothering them, they can walk up to us, let us know and we intervene.
“However, we can not pretend not to have experienced drug-related problems which is common among youths, each time we find out, we refer to rehabilitation centre.
“But when find out that it is something that is serious and beyond our control, we tell the student to excuse us,” he said.
On challenges being encountered by the university, Kolawole identified finance as a major constraint as this takes a toll on the operations of institution.
According to him, the university management don’t want to push the burden to parents, hence the appeal for TETFUND to come in and cushion the effect.
