Rwanda
The National University of Rwanda (NUR) re-opened in 1995 after the genocide when the university was closed and many students and staff were either killed or fled the country. It has made a remarkable recovery, and now proudly counts over 10,000 students as graduates. The largest provider of higher education in Rwanda, the University has 300 academic staff, around 50 of them expatriates, and around 9500 students, but there is still much to be done. Currently, AHED is involved in two projects at NUR—upgrading its registrarial services and setting up a Master’s degree in accounting.
I. The Registrar’s Office
The request from NUR was for a “wholesale” reorganization of the Registrar’s office. The university needs to be able to provide efficient administrative services to students, including recruitment, admission and the management of student records. The pre-ICT processes need to be upgraded with a Management Information System and well-trained registry staff. This is important for NUR and for higher education in Rwanda since the NUR registry system is to serve as a model for quality assurance and student services throughout the country.
“This is a break from the old practice that required students to clear with different university departments before registration. The new system is efficient and time saving.” – Emmanuel Havugimana, Registrar, NUR
Phase I
The first phase of the 3-phase project, an exploratory visit, took place in June 2010. The AHED volunteers—Gudrun Curri, who was the university registrar at Dalhousie—and Carole Dence, who was a registrar at Carleton—spent two weeks on the NUR campus. In their report, submitted to the university’s administration, they identified key issues and made recommendations for improving systems, practices, and processes concerning admission, registration, records management, graduation certification and examination management.
Phase II
In the fall of 2010 the Rector and the Vice Rector Academic (VRAC) of the National University of Rwanda requested that Phase II of the project focus on developing and implementing new registration procedures for undergraduate students returning for the 2011 academic year. In particular NUR had urgent need of a new registration system which would address the university auditor’s concern that the number of students recorded as registered in the Registrar’s records could not be reconciled with the fee payment records or records from the Planning Office.
Carole Dence Gudrun Currie Central Academic Building
Curri and Dence agreed to visit NUR between October 31 and December 14 2010. During that visit they worked with a wide group of stakeholders and a local team of computing system developers to design and implement a new web-based online registration system. The system addresses the auditor’s concerns by dynamically linking the registration, financial and planning office records while also reducing staff workload. Simultaneously the new system provides important benefits to students. For the first time they are able to complete registration without incurring the expense and inconvenience of a trip to Butare to queue first at the bank and then at the Registrar’s Office before delivering receipts to the Finance office and their academic faculty office. Instead they pay fees at any local branch of the Ecobank in East Africa and then complete registration online. As of the beginning of term in January 2011, 97% of eligible students had successfully registered using the new online system.
During this second visit the AHED consultants also undertook a review of admission, enrollment and registration processes for new undergraduate students as well as those for new and continuing post- graduate students. New procedures were developed and proposed for approval and implementation.
Curri and Dence also developed a Registration Handbook for students and a Procedures Manual for the Registrar’s Office.
AHED volunteers
Gudrun Curri, Ph.D. (Bradford), M.S. (Carleton), is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. She was the registrar there from 1987-2000.
Carole Dence, M.A. (McGill), is a consultant in Higher Education Research and Projects. She was the registrar in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Carleton University from 1982-1990.
II. Master’s degree program in Accounting
The Faculty of Economics and Management, the largest of the faculties at NUR with nearly 2,700 students and 68 academic staff members, launched a new master’s degree in accountancy in October 2010. Forty-two students are enrolled in the one-year program delivered on two campuses, one in Butare and the other in Kigali.
Don Cherry, an adjunct professor in the School of Business Administration at Dalhousie University, spent six weeks teaching in the new program in October and November 2010, mentoring junior faculty members and conducting a full-day staff development workshop on teaching methodologies. Cherry returned in the Fall of 2011 to continue his work with the staff and the first cohort during the final months of the program.
“Good management skills are essential to economic and social development and good governance. Professionally-qualified accountants are urgently required in Rwanda, if the country is to succeed in its efforts to develop its private sector and deliver its public services effectively and efficiently.” – Don Cherry
The Dean of the Faculty, Rama B. Rao, the former head of the management department and a champion of the new masters program, guided it through the rigorous approval process in place for new programs at NUR. He also participated in decisions to make adjustments to the program to respond to the needs of the students who are attending classes in the evenings. This has included reducing class time from four hours to 3.5 hours per session, in order to provide more time for reading and studying, and teaching two rather than three modules concurrently.
There are challenges. For example, the availability of appropriate teaching materials is a major problem. The students did not have textbooks. Some resources were sent to them in electronic form, but only a few of the students had personal computers that could be used to access them, and even fewer were able to print copies of them.
As of January 2011, English is the sole language of instruction at the university. Some of the teaching staff in the Faculty of Economics and Management spent the latter part of 2010 in Kenya upgrading their English. Others are upgrading their skills and qualifications while pursuing graduate degrees outside the country.
NUR is developing rapidly and undergoing big changes. The Rwandan government has recently reduced subsidies for students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and is focusing on four areas: medicine, engineering, agriculture and business. The Master’s in Accountancy program is in line with government priorities. It will prepare its graduates for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) exams, which are used widely in Asia and Africa as the professional standard. Until now, very few Rwandans have taken these exams successfully. The graduates of the new NUR MSc program, which include young teaching staff at the university, government employees, and accountants from the private sector, have the potential to make a significant impact in the field of accountancy in Rwanda.
In the Fall of 2011 Don Cherry returned to NUR to continue his work with the Faculty of Economics and Management. During this two-month period he worked with Rwandan colleagues to upgrade teaching in the new MSc Accountancy programme, taught specialized topics for the Department of Management, in the Accounting and Business Administration streams, conducted workshops on teaching methodologies for junior staff members within the Faculty of Economics and Management, and assisted the Department of Management with curriculum review and program development. This project will, along with AHED’s other initiatives with NUR, to help achieve a “critical mass” of activities at that institution, and thereby enhance the overall AHED-NUR relationship.
AHED volunteer
Don Cherry, MBA (McMaster), BComm (Dalhousie), CMA, is an adjunct professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S. He has worked on management education and economic development projects in the Caribbean, Czech Republic, Gambia, Kenya, Jordan, New Zealand, Oman, Poland, Romania, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
III. Administrative Staff Training
AHED’s third project at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) involved mentoring and on the job training for staff in administrative units. As a result of the Genocide of 1994, when most of the professional classes where either killed or fled the country.NUR struggles with a lack of administrative capacity and skill, both at the mid-management and subordinate levels. While there have been improvements in many areas there are departments that lack trained staff members.
Volunteer, Corrie Young worked with three administrative units: Human Resources and Administration Department, the Directorate of Planning and Development and the Public Relations and External Links Office. These units were identified by NUR as vital to the efficient running of the institution as well as the image that the institution projects to the public, both inside and outside of Rwanda. . The objective of the project was to ensure that younger members of the administrative staff become more confident, active and willing to take on new and challenging tasks.
In the short term NUR envisages that members of the staff will gain confidence and the ability to organize their calendars, work days and priorities. Having several staff members trained in organizational skills and being able to provide both verbal and written feedback to supervisors will lead to greater inter and intra office efficiency as well as ensure that their newly acquired skills will be passed on to other staff using the train the trainer model and through the development of efficient continuous process and systems to create a more harmonious, productive working environment.
In the long term it is NUR’s hope that the acquired skills of the staff will allow them to become better role models and mentors for their colleagues and thus ensure that efficiency and organizational ability becomegeneral attributes of NUR administrative staff.
AHED Volunteer
Corrie Young, M.A. (Royal Roads), B.A. (UofAlberta) is currently a consultant to AHED-UPESED. From 2007-2010 she was the Executive Assistant to the Rector and an Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Media and Social Sciences at the National University of Rwanda.
Phase I
Staff, students and visitors in academic institutions in developed nations take for granted efficient administrative systems—and are not happy when things do not go smoothly. In developing nations the rapid growth of institutions often outpaces the capacity and training of administrative staff, leading to inefficiencies. The first phase of this project addressed various problems in the Human Resources and Administration Department (HRA), the Directorate of Planning (DPD) and Development and the Public Relations and External Links Office (PRO). Here are a few of the projects that Corrie worked on in the Fall of 2011.
1. In the PRO the website and current brochures are being updated, and a draft communication strategy has been circulated to Deans, Directors and Head of Departments and Units for comments.
2. In conjunction with the new Management Information System (MIS) scheduled to launch in the spring of 2012, a comprehensive single database of all staff needed to be developed, which involved the amalgamation and verification of three separate databases as well as personnel files.
3. A weekly reporting template to ensure effective communication between staff and supervisors for administrative staff has been developed and was piloted in three units, HRM, Student Services, and the Faculty of Arts, Media and Social Sciences.
4. A Visitor Information book was published, and an Internal A-Z Guide is being developed to ensure that all logistical imperatives for visitors to NUR are carried out, and to reduce problems with accommodation, transportation, provision of office space and other logistical matters.
Corrie Young returned to Rwanda in February 2012 to continue her work with the administrative staff at NUR.