The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Chapter of the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) has held a 2-day workshop for over 270 Senior Members (Administrators) on 17th and 18th March, 2022 at the Great Hall.
The President of the Association, Mr. Anthony Adjapong in his opening remarks urged members to show maximum commitment on issues regarding to their professional development. He made this statement recognising that administrators are mostly engulfed with work that prevents them from pursuing other relevant engagements that promote professional development. The workshop was therefore intended to equip members of the Association with the technical skills in coming out with relevant memoranda and research publications for professional development, he disclosed.
Mr. Adjapong noted that memo writing has not been a problem for most administrators, however, journal publication has been quite challenging. Also, times are changing, thus, one needs to be abreast with modern trends to remain relevant and useful. To this end, he challenged participants to be professionally ready for any task assigned to them both locally and internationally and advised participants to pay more attention to workshops and seminars that seek to build their professional capacities.
Mr. Richard Bruce Lamptey, Deputy Librarian, KNUST Library System, spoke on the topic “Identifying and Accessing Relevant Resources for Research and Publication”, which centred on information retrieval and systematic literature search. In his presentation, he said successful research depended on knowing available resources and how to find and use those resources. He called for the need to develop a search strategy that would help find materials on research topics and utilise library resources efficiently.
Speaking on areas where information could be accessed, he mentioned: Books that could be accessed via DOAB, ProQuest, Google Books, Books, etc.; Scholarly Journals (current knowledge) which could be accessed from Taylor and Francis, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Emerald Insight, Scholar, DOAJ, etc; Videos/Audios which could also be accessed from HSTalks, Proquest, Google Videos, etc.; Thesis /Dissertations which could be accessed from OATD, KNUSTSpace, Ethos, etc; Patent which could be accessed from Google Scholar, ProQuest; Law Report/Cases which could be accessed from Google Scholar, LexisNexis; and Research Data which he recommended the use of Mendeley.
The Deputy Registrar of the Academic Affairs Division, Mrs. Margaret Dzisi educated participants on memo writing, types of memos, features of a good memo, and the body of the memo. Mrs. Dzisi also walked them through the role of the Peer Review Committee.
In promoting knowledge through conference presentations and general publication processes, Dr. Paul Kwadwo Addo stressed the need to promote knowledge. He discussed the importance of conference presentations, processes involved, types of conference presentations, criteria for selecting abstracts, funding conferences and the stages involved.
Dr. Addo led a group discussion on Peer-Review Publications.
The Registrar, Takoradi Technical University (TTU), Dr. Moses M. Abnory urged members to be creative, innovative, and share knowledge.
