The University of Ghana (UG) has won a new grant of USD650,000 to support PhD training.
The UG Accelerated PhD Training (UG-ATP) is a project which seeks to ensure that the University of Ghana becomes a hub for an African regional doctoral training, drawing on its diaspora partnerships to enhance its PhD programmes, thereby attracting top performing PhD and post-doctoral candidates and enhancing its research outputs.
Funding
Funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the project is for an initial period of two years and will support the establishment of the UG Pan-African Doctoral Academy-(UG-PADA) to enhance PhD output, expansion and institutionalisation of the UG-Diaspora Linkage Programme to support postgraduate programme delivery and development of new PhD programmes.
The PhD Programmes Coordinator, Prof. Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu, who announced this, acknowledged the support and inputs of the PhD Restructuring Working Group for the development of the UG-APT proposal.
In a statement, she said there was sufficient enthusiasm and eagerness of the first cohort of the pilot cohort doctoral schools which she believed would engender the success of the project.
“It is expected that the anticipated improvements in PhD recruitments and outputs will go a long way to enhance the profile and reputation of UG,” it said.
University’s new direction
The statement said the concept of the project derived from the university’s new direction for PhD training, explaining that the restructuring was intended to bring the programmes in line with international best practices and to sharpen the analytical skills of PhD graduates.
“In line with the university’s policy on PhD various departments, institutes and centres of the university continue to work on the restructuring of their PhD programmes.
The new PhD programme is made up of one year of course work, one year of practical research training and two years of independent research and thesis writing,” the statement said.
Source: Graphic Online