Vice Chancellor's 2016 Year-end Message

©Tatiana Shirasaki

Vice Chancellor’s 2016 year-end Message

Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Dear USIU-Africa community, As we come to the end of 2016 and the fall semester of the 2016-17 Academic Year, I write to congratulate all of you for a successful year, semester and to wish you Happy Holidays. It has been an exceptional year for all of us. We welcomed thousands of new members to our community, launched major new initiatives and programs and continued on our remarkable journey as Kenya's oldest and most innovative private university, and as the region's only dually accredited institution, whose ambition is to be a premier institution of academic excellence with a global perspective.Â

We are on track to achieve the 10,000 students target by 2020 as envisaged in the Strategic Plan.

Student enrollments and achievements Most gratifying is that thousands of new students joined USIU-Africa for undergraduate and graduate programs. Altogether, an average 1009 new students enrolled per semester this year compared to 944 in 2015. By the 11th week of the Fall semester 2016, we had a total of 6661 students compared to 6163 in Fall 2015, a growth of 8.08 percent. We are on track to achieve the 10,000 students target by 2020 as envisaged in the Strategic Plan.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message For the first time in Fall 2016, private universities were allowed to enroll publicly sponsored students and we enrolled 149. In August, we graduated a record 1325 students, including our first class of 21 Doctor of Business Administration degree recipients.

Our students distinguished themselves in various academic and cocurricular activities. I can only single out a few. As always, elections for the Student Affairs Council (SAC) were held in an exemplary manner followed by a successful student leadership retreat in Naivasha in April. A team of International Relations students won the bid to host the African Model UN (AFROMUN), which took place at the UN headquarters in Nairobi in March. This was the first time the conference was held outside Addis Ababa. It was attended by hundreds of students from Kenya and several African countries. Following a new successful bid USIU-Africa will again host AFROMUN in March 2017.

So impressive was their performance that USIUAfrica has been asked to host next year’s conference which will be held for the first time in the Global South.

Another team participated in the Oxford Consortium on Human Rights organized by Oxford, Yale, and Quinnipiac universities in New York and New Haven, Connecticut in October. So impressive was their performance that USIU-Africa has been asked to host next year's conference, which will be held for the first time in the Global South.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Many other students went to Rwanda, the Netherlands, Addis Ababa, and New York for academic field trips, in addition to numerous local field trips to augment classroom learning, such as to Lake Magadi, national parks, museums and  UNHCR, just to name a few. In turn, we hosted groups of visiting students from universities in Japan, Germany and Norway.

Most publicized in the media were achievements of our various sports teams. Altogether, this year our basketball teams won the University Basketball League tournaments held in Kakamega.

USIU-Africa was ranked 3rd out of 55 universities for its recognition and implementation of sports programs and infrastructure.

Both teams qualified to represent Kenya in the FIBA Zone 5 games in Dar es Salaam in October 2016 where the Ladies team won second position and once again qualified to represent Kenya in the Zone 5 games in Mozambique. In a research carried out by CPC Research International, USIU-Africa was ranked 3rd out of 55 universities for its recognition and implementation of sports programs and infrastructure.

I salute the many other students and staff in Student Affairs involved in organizing various events that make this a truly vibrant campus. I eagerly participated in many of them. They include Black History Month (February), Culture Week (March), Drug and Alcohol Awareness Week (March), Career Fair (July), HeForShe Campaign (August), Technology Week (September), VCT Week (November), Disability Awareness Week (November), and Mr and Miss USIU-Africa (November). I'm delighted SAC is planning to launch a Research Week next year.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Please join me in thanking and congratulating all the students who brought such great honor and pride to the university in their academic and cocurricular activities and achievements.

Staff and faculty recruitment and accomplishments

The commitment of our faculty and staff to the wellbeing and progress of this university is unassailable.

Besides the quality and intellectual and social energies of students, every robust university also thrives from the renewal that comes with hiring of new and continuous rededication of existing faculty and staff. In the course of the year 9 full-time faculty and 19 staff were recruited. On the other hand 22, 66, and 16 adjunct faculty were also hired in spring, summer and fall semesters, respectively. These new members have joined our incredible community.

Among them are two new members of the Management Board including the Director of Administration and Director of University Advancement who came on Board in May and October, respectively. I'm delighted to be in this august company.

The commitment of our faculty and staff to the wellbeing and progress of this university is unassailable. It is they who strive every day to keep our campus such a tranquil site of physical beauty, a vigorous space of teaching and learning, and a dynamic place always in pursuit of academic, operational, and service excellence. I wish to congratulate the 4 faculty and 4 staff who received promotions in the course of the year as a tribute to their high performance.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Numerous faculty and staff attended training and leadership development workshops and retreats on and outside campus. Some were organized jointly between the university and our partners such as the Federation of Kenyan Employers, and the African Population and Health Research Center where 60 faculty and staff were trained in grant writing and thesis/ dissertation supervision. Altogether, 130 faculty and 186 staff went through various training programs and seminars within the year. This is an integral part of our institutional commitment to talent development and career advancement.

Several of our faculty and staff received national and international awards, appointments and other forms of recognition.

It is also gratifying to note that several of our faculty and staff received national and international awards, appointments and other forms of recognition. Moreover, during the course of the year several of our faculty won research grants, totaling KES 65,339,340.

In September, three faculty in the Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Technology, and Pharmacy and Health Sciences received the prestigious Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program awards that will bring three African diaspora fellows to the university in the Spring semester. Equally encouraging is the record of scholarly productivity.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Our faculty published 12 books, 72 journal articles and book chapters, and attended and presented 20 papers at conferences. In pursuit of our strategic goal to be a research and teaching university we approved the Intellectual Property Rights policy in August 2016 marking a significant milestone in the history of USIU-Africa.

The most memorable public lectures included the one by the UN Deputy Secretary General, H.E. Jan Eliasson on 26th May, 2016 on the power of diplomacy in a global village.

The university itself hosted many conferences, workshops, seminars, and public lectures attended by a wide range of participants from other academic institutions, government, industry, and civil society. The conferences and workshops included a Breakfast Round Table Forum on higher education on 6th April, a day before the inauguration of the new VC, the week-long workshop by the US Social Sciences Research Council for 40 PhD dissertation fellows from six African countries in early August, in October the Kenya Libraries and Information Services Consortium, and in November the 2nd African Summit on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the 3rd East African Multidisciplinary Research Conference.

The most memorable public lectures included the one by the UN Deputy Secretary-General, H.E. Jan Eliasson on 26th May, 2016 on the power of diplomacy in a global village, and that by Prof. Ilesanmi Adesida, former Provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on Engineering Education for the 21st Century held on 24th March, among others.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message External engagements and partnerships These events underscore the University's commitment to building strong external partnerships with key national, regional, and international stakeholders including academic institutions, the corporate sector, government and intergovernmental agencies, and civil society organizations as part of its drive to raise institutional positioning, promote research and learning opportunities for faculty and students, and benchmark against best practices.

These events underscore the University’s commitment to building strong external partnerships with key national, regional, and international stakeholders.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning a few highlights. Our engagements with the technology sector continue to grow. This year we established relations with Techno Brain, Brand Strategy and Design, Tracopay, Continuity East Africa, expanded our existing portfolio of professional certification courses with IBM, CISCO Academy, Africa's Talking, African Process and Performance Institute (APPI) and began exploring relations with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Silensec. We are proud of our collaboration with Continuity East Africa to start a Center of Excellence in Business Continuity Management (BCM) at the University, the first of its kind in Kenya and the East African region.

As for university partnerships, on the continent we are actively exploring linkages with the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Ashesi University in Ghana.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message These linkages and partnerships are an essential part of our strategic goals to promote the quality of our academic programs, turn USIU-Africa into a more comprehensive research and teaching university and to raise our global visibility and reputation.

In the United States we will soon be signing an MOU with Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles that sent two delegations in May and October; planning to exchange visits with George Washington University in Washington DC; and established a collaboration with Harvard University, which will involve among other things hosting a prestigious annual USIU-Harvard Lecture in Nairobi beginning next year. We are also keen to engage Howard University, the renowned historically black university whose current president is a member of the USIU-Africa Board of Trustees.

Elsewhere we are in conversations with the University of Oxford and the University of the West Indies for linkages that are mutually beneficial for our students, faculty and the university as a whole. This year, USIU-Africa also formally joined the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the International Association of Universities (IAU). These linkages and partnerships are an essential part of our strategic goals to promote the quality of our academic programs, turn USIU-Africa into a more comprehensive research and teaching university and to raise our global visibility and reputation. They offer us opportunities for benchmarking and learning from the very best in African and international higher education based on our context, needs and interests.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Strategic planning and initiatives As you all know, the University's Strategic Plan 2015/16 - 2019/20 was approved by the then Board of Trustees in March 2016, following a yearlong vigorous process that was admirably participatory and inclusive of students, staff, faculty, the Board and alumni. I felt honored that the completion of the Strategic Plan awaited the start of my tenure so that I could make a contribution which I was glad to.

Following the approval of the University Strategic Plan, we undertook several initiatives to advance the goals and priorities articulated in the Strategic Plan. Six stand out.

On 19th July, 2016 we received fast-track approval from our U.S. accreditor the WASC Senior College and University Commission.

First, each division was tasked with developing its own strategic plan based on the University Strategic Plan. This is to ensure ownership at every level, imperative for its successful implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The divisions used the same inclusive and participatory process to develop their plans which were reviewed by the Management Board and whose approval will be completed before the end of this year.

Second, we got approval from our accreditors to introduce new academic programs in pursuit of the first strategic goal to “Provide globally competitive and innovative academic programs incorporating research and co-curricular activities for holistic education.” They include a BA in Film Production & Directing and B.Sc. in Epidemiology & Biostatistics. Other degree programs are currently under preparation.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message In April, we successfully underwent an Institutional Audit Review by the Commission for University Education (CUE). We should all be rightly proud of the fact that on 19th July, 2016 we received fast-track approval by our US accreditor, the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC).

This is only granted to institutions with proven ability to mount high quality academic programs. On 12th October, 2016 we began preparations for the next WSCUC accreditation visit due in 2018.

On 12th October, 2016 we began preparations for the next WSCUC accreditation visit due in 2018.

Third, in April we conducted a sexual harassment survey, following which a committee composed of students, faculty and staff developed a comprehensive plan of action that was announced to the university community in October. This is critical to “Ensure a safe and secure environment for all,” a key objective in the Strategic Plan. As part of this endeavor, the Occupational and Health Safety Committee has been revived and reinvigorated and a comprehensive security plan developed.

Fourth, also in April in we undertook a communications survey, which formed the basis for the development of an ambitious communication strategy to enhance our internal and external communications. This has been incorporated into the strategic plan of the Division of University Advancement. This fits into the third strategic goal to “Increase visibility and enhance quality services to internal and external customers.”

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message Fifth, we conducted the Job Skills, Salary and Organizational Review. This was the first and most comprehensive organizational review in the history of USIU-Africa. The process was overseen by a representative committee of faculty and staff and the Management Board. It began in April and the final report was approved by the University Council in October and implementation began on November 1.

The review sought to accomplish the following objectives:

It began in April and the final report was approved by the University Council in October and implementation began on November 1.

• Provide a clear system of career mobility/progression/pathing for USIU-Africa employees.

• Provide clear schemes of service for every job at USIU-Africa.

• Provide harmonization of positions and remuneration across the University (previously there was lack of equity in grading and payment of salaries).

• Provide competitive salary and benefits for USIU-Africa employees based on benchmarking, ability to pay and sustainability.

• Provide alignment of organizational structure to support the University's current business model and the Strategic Plan.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message The implementation of this landmark review will improve employee welfare, strengthen internal operations and service delivery, and enhance our ability to achieve the University's strategic priorities.

The organizational changes included renaming the Institutional Planning and Advancement division as University Advancement and adding the new department of Partnerships and External Linkages; merging the former Student Affairs division with Academic Affairs to be Academic & Student Affairs division; incorporating the Security Services, Health Services, Human Resources and Operations divisions into a comprehensive Administration division and expanding the Office of Legal Services into the Legal Affairs division incorporating insurance. The Finance and ICT divisions remain.

The implementation of this landmark review will improve employee welfare, strengthen internal operations and service delivery, and enhance our ability to achieve the University's strategic priorities. More specifically, this is part of our efforts to “Improve human resource management using best practices,” the third goal in the Strategic Plan.

Finally, in June we launched an external forensic audit as part of our continuous efforts to ensure the efficient and effective use of our limited resources. This is integral to achieving the second goal of the Strategic Plan to “Expand and efficiently manage the university's financial and human resources to meet its capital and operating requirements.” The audit will be completed before the end of the year.

Also critical to this goal is strengthening our University Advancement division, one of whose core functions is fundraising.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message In early November several members of the division and others in the University participated in a conference in Nairobi organized by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), a leading global agency in the field. A few days later a facilitator from CASE also led deliberations on advancement at the annual retreat of the Board of Trustees, University Council and Management Board.

New governance structures and institutional facilities

The new building adds to the stunning beauty of our campus and will immeasurably improve the delivery of student services.

There are a couple of other landmark developments worth noting. One is the change in the University's Governance structure. In compliance with the Universities Act, 2012, in March, the university adopted a two-tier governance structure with the Board of Trustees at the apex. The Board proceeded to appoint the Chancellor and members of the University Council. The former Management Council was renamed Management Board, and a new University Senate was formed. The Senate chaired by the VC, and comprised of academic leaders including the DVC for Academic and Student Affairs, School Deans, and senior faculty, will be responsible for making decisions on academic matters. It will first convene in January 2017.

The other was the opening of the KES 735 million state-of-the-art Freida Brown Student Center in November. The opening ceremony attended

by Professor Brown herself, members of the Board of Trustees and University Council, as well as faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of the University was truly spectacular.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message The new building adds to the stunning beauty of our campus and will immeasurably improve the delivery of student services. This is part of our efforts to implement the fourth goal of the Strategic Plan, to “Expand, maintain, and optimize use of physical facilities and technology.�

In this context it is worth mentioning that we will complete the Anatomy Lab by 20th December, 2016. Our capital expenditure budget for the 2016-17 Academic Year is KES 300 million which includes the construction of a new building for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Many more initiatives, activities and events took place in 2016 than are listed in this message. But I believe this serves to remind all of us of some of the highlights of what we have been able to accomplish this year.

It brought the best in us, demonstrating our extraordinary institutional values and unity of purpose.

We of course also faced some challenges. The most egregious was the invasion of our land in Muthaiga North in July. Moments of crisis can bring both the best and worst in institutions or individuals. It brought the best in us, demonstrating our extraordinary institutional values and unity of purpose.

We responded with a disciplined march on Thika Superhighway to the Muthaiga Police Station to present a petition to the Inspector General of Police that attracted positive media attention. Further, we embarked on a multi-pronged communication strategy, undertook lobbying activities and vigorously pursued legal redress through the courts.

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Vice Chancellor's 2016 year-end Message The matter is currently pending in court. I cannot thank the USIU-Africa community enough for the exemplary fortitude demonstrated during this unwelcome saga.

As the year rolled into weeks, then months, from the time I joined USIUAfrica on 1st January, 2016, as Vice Chancellor, I became more convinced than ever of my great fortune and the honor bestowed upon me to lead this fine University.

Thanks to all of you for making my first year at USIU-Africa so memorable, so fulfilling and so enriching.

Sincerely yours,

As evident in the “90 Days of Listening” report that I shared with the USIU community in May, the more I learned about the history, accomplishments, challenges and opportunities facing USIU-Africa in the changing contexts and fiercely competitive landscapes of Kenyan, African and global higher education, the more I became convinced that our future is bright. The brilliant past bequeathed to us by those who built USIU-Africa welcomes each successive wave of newcomers to honorably and humbly play our part.

Thanks to all of you for making my first year at USIU-Africa so memorable, so fulfilling and so enriching.

I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year.

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

VICE CHANCELLOR Page 16