Professor Chinedum Peace Babalola is the Vice-Chancellor of Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Ogun State. The professor of pharmacokinetics/pharmaceutical chemistry, is the first female Pharmacist professor of University of Ibadan. She is the first Vice Chancellor to graduate the first set of Chrisland University as the best leading private university in Nigeria will hold her maiden convocation ceremony to mark history. In this interview, she speaks with CEOAFRICA on the journey so far, her strategic plans for the university among other issues.
How has the journey been so far?
Indeed, it has been a journey of almost two years as the Vice Chancellor of Chrisland University. I still remember when I assumed office on 1st November, 2017. A very young university was barely one year few months old. I met fifty-seven (57) students and they were already in their third year. Of course, I was faced with the challenge of making sure that the population increases significantly and then, we started advertising the university, visiting many media houses, introducing ourselves and carrying out all sorts of activities to increase the enrolment. By March, 2018 when we did the third matriculation, we were about One hundred and three (103) altogether and we were not satisfied. I also met a situation where a lot of the students and workers needed guidance and restructuring. The students had handbooks but I realized that the handbook rules and regulations was not used effectively. I read through the handbook and decided to implements the rules and regulations. The founders and the implementations committee, the people that put the university together did well in producing a beautiful handbook but if it is not implemented, it will be as if a piece of furniture, so we started doing that, which is to restructure to when students are to visit each other’s in the hostel, dress codes, attending lectures and almost every aspect needed to be touched, so we started doing that. It didn’t go down well with the students but some students appreciated it. So, we began to have structure and we continued to encouraged the lecturers, a lot of them were at the lower cadre so they needed mentoring. Then, I began to introduce staff development, ensuring that they were attending workshops, conferences at least within Nigeria either we founded partly or fully but at least for something to expose them to other people in their field and that worked because almost everybody has one form of conference to attend. Later on, we started hosting conferences here, and I can say at least we have hosted 5-6 conferences.
Don’t forget that I have my strategic plans and goals. So, I begin to work with those goals. Part of them also included looking at the curriculum, restructuring the curriculum to meet with our vision and mission which is ‘to become a world class institution’. You need to produce world class brains, so you need to put in world class activities, lecturers, staffs and all that. So, we started looking at the curriculum, the curriculums had gaps. In short, recently, we had a retreat, it’s a three-day retreat on curriculum because when you get to the senate, you will see gaps. So, we did lots to restructure the curriculum for different programmes and then, we went into the results, I looked at it. I envisioned the kind of results whereby students and their parents can view their results, they will be given password, they will go into our portal to see the students course assessments and as well track what the students are doing. Though, it was not easy but we were able to achieved that.
We also began to provide an enabling environment for learning and that we provided, the hostels, classrooms, and using all source of methods and I also realized that the students were not using the library and the lecturers started given the students assignment so that they can be using the library, we just wanted to put academic culture into the place” she stated.
With respect to the standard of learning, I insisted we should have external examiners to moderate our exam questions from year one to final year which is not usual. In most institutions if not all, here at final year, external examiners are brought in because I figured that this is a young university and we need to get it right from the beginning. So, we introduced the methods of having external examiners to examine and moderate our exam questions from 100L – final year and we are happier for that because in-between last year, we faced accreditation for the first time for Nine (9) of our programmes that were matured for accreditation and to the glory of God, we got 100% accreditation for our first time appearance and every of the team that came from NUC was impressed with the environment”.
We want to at this point appreciate the founders, Board of Trustees, the Governing Council for the supports they have given us since I assumed office and during the accreditation and at the end the hard work paid up. Before the accreditation, we had what we called resource verification because we had been operating on Interim (provisional) license and there was resource verification before accreditation and they were also impressed. We were finally given our full license and those are two landmarks for me and we now can say chrisland university has come to be which means ‘No shaking’. Right now, we are expanding our coast, we know that the university will go places and we need to expand to more professional programmes. In the next few days, we will be hosting NUC again to verify new programmes specifically, Basic Medical Sciences that will comprise Nursing, Anatomy, Physiology, medical laboratory science, physiotherapy etcetera and once that begins, it will also form building blocks for full Medical Programmes and Pharmacy and other medical programmes. If you go round the university, you will see that buildings are coming up with respect to this. We are also expanding some of our science programmes, computer science is so diversified, so we have introduced the Software Engineering Cyber-security then, another programme is Biotechnology and Molecular Biology which is very important as the world progresses in research. College of Law is also coming up and we are also improving on our structures. We have a brief that we are following so, where we were two years ago is not where we are today. Today, we have attracted some professors into the system either as contract staff or sabbatical and we have attracted good minds and supports from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta as our supervising university, occasionally they come here.
In terms of the students, we put in more structures into the students and keep making them realise that they are shining as light, they should not joke with morals because discipline is enforced when they offend, they face disciplinary committee to serve as deterrent to others. We also encourage them to involve in ‘Students’ Representative Council’ (SRC) to establish leadership training for them and after the election, we took them on a retreat for leadership training. Now, we don’t have crisis, we are actually relating together immensely because they have to use their leadership tips and we are working together.
What is your view about this session admission?
This session is particularly interesting to me because the enrolment was different. We interviewed every candidate one-on-one and they also came with their parents. We wanted to know the kind of students we are getting in. Apart from their academic qualifications which is prime, we interviewed and shared our mission, vision and values with them to let them agree whether they want to come in and abide by our rules and regulations. And as they have resumed now, I feel happy because we have the same understandings with them and their parents.
We have also started the ‘Parents Platform’ where we engaged with questions and answers, any issues we now discuss it on the platform and the parents are very happy and satisfied. Already, the number we have gotten now, we have not gotten that in previous years because the population has really grown up far better from where we really started.
As the first Vice Chancellor of Chrisland University doing the first convocation in the institution, how do you feel and what should we expect after the celebration?
I first of all give all the glory to God. I tells people that I never set out to be the first of anything so I didn’t set out to be the first vice chancellor of Chrisland University to graduate the first set of graduates because there were some others here before me, they could have done it. I just take it as divine, it has its challenges and it doesn’t mean that the road has been very smooth but God has seen us through. Am excited to be graduating this first set and making sure they went through standards that should produce university graduates in Nigeria and I can stand the test of time anywhere. We made sure that everything expected in the curriculum was fulfilled, they did their projects, we brought external examiners and some of them are having ‘First Class’. We called them ‘The Shining Stars’. I was fortunate to be in the oral exam for some of them and particular interest in the student that graduated with 5.5 in psychology and it was awesome. I was proud that we are not producing fake first class students and people can go and test them while am sure they can defend it anywhere. I thank God for given me the opportunity to graduate the first set of graduates in Chrisland University.
The way forward, I looked at it as if we have gone round one circle so, we are now in the second circle. The session has been termed the session of new beginning. So, we have gone through all the rough ages, rough roads as it is now time for new beginning to build on a more solid foundation. God says in the bible ‘behold, I will do a new thing’, new things are going to happen beginning from now. We are going to set up a better foundation that will make us fly higher than we imagine. We are going to work on ranking, quality staff, get proper team with proper training and work more on institutionalizing an entrepreneurship in our system. It is really our new beginning and I think you people should watch out for it.
What has been your secret?
My secret is God. Am a busy type as well. Am married to a wonderful man of God (Babalola) who has given me the opportunity to fly higher in doing what am doing. I would say both my husband and children have also remained my secret.
