Community involvement

master’s or doctoral work based on the idea that they can contribute to the students’

research.⁷⁴ If a student’s research concerns a certain organisation, R11 noted,

That company has to allocate somebody to that student and we can recognise that person as a supervisor. … The only thing is that they cannot be the main supervisor of the student; but they can be a second supervisor. The main supervisor must be a member of staff of the university. In addition, if someone in the field has a PhD, we use them in the external examination of our students’ dissertations. (Personal communication, April 5, 2012.)

Apart from their participation in the supervision and assessment of students’ field attachment and research projects, the external communities are also involved in some of the continuing education programmes—intramural and extramural—run by the university.

Thus, although external communities are ordinarily involved in CE as consumers of CE services offered by a university, at MUK, the external communities do not just consume CE service; they sometimes participate actively in the planning, teaching and running of the courses. First, in some instances, the external communities (e.g., employers, local governments, or NGOs) express a need for training in certain areas, and the university develops programmes that meet such needs. In this regard, R14 intimated,

In our unit, courses are developed according to needs that emerge from the community; we normally call them demand-driven programmes. For instance, we are in the middle of our decentralisation policy implementation, and as we continue to decentralise, creating new districts and so on, there is a tendency for some of the new districts to not have people with expected [working and educational]

experiences. So the chairpersons and principal personnel officers of the different districts normally write to me … that they would want us to orientate them [councillors] or draw up a programme that will teach them how council proceedings should be handled. (Personal communication, April 3, 2012.)

In such situations, just like in contract research, the external communities (though not necessarily the actual beneficiaries of the training) play an active role in the development of the training programmes. Besides the active involvement of the external communities in the planning of some of the CE programmes, the data show that some units that run CE programmes do not have adequate academic staff and that they often hire trainers from outside those units and, sometimes, from outside the university.⁷⁵ Lastly, some, though not many, of the centres that offer CE courses sometimes collaborate with external organisations (e.g., East African Consult Networks Uganda and Integrated Efforts in Culture for Development) in the planning, teaching and running of the CE courses. R19,

74 Emphasised by interviewees from the hard-pure and hard-applied colleges.

75 This is partly because most of the CE courses, particularly the extramural courses, are multidisciplinary or practice-oriented, and therefore, the specialised units at the university cannot run such courses without support from other units and/or trainers from outside the university.

for instance, intimated that an external organisation approached them (the centre) and decided to work with them to run their course at MUK.

They decided to partner with us, come and provide their courses where we provide them with the venue and we also add a few components of language. So it is really a symbiotic relationship—they come with certain components, which we cannot provide, and we add some bit of language. (Personal communication, March 29, 2012.)

In terms of leadership, the university involves the external communities in its decision- making processes by having representatives of selected external communities on the University Council⁷⁶—the highest decision-making organ of the university—and the University Senate—the chief academic organ of the university. In addition, the board of directors of the MUPSF consists of representatives from the university, the public sector and the private sector. In fact, in 2006, in a bid to open up to the private sector and to incentivise its participation in the affairs of the university, MUK bestowed honorary professorships on four people from the public and private sectors. The idea was that they (the honorary professors) would promote the MUPSF, mobilise financial and other resources for the university and facilitate the university’s efforts to respond promptly to societal needs. Nonetheless, much remains to be realised from this effort. First, the forum, though still in existence, is apparently not as active as it should be, and its future, at the time of data collection, seemed uncertain. Second, even though the honorary professors were attached to different colleges, some interviewees noted that their colleges had neither utilised nor benefited from the arrangement. R16, for instance noted:

Our spokesperson is supposed to be Mulwana [a Ugandan industrialist], but I don’t know how much he has done for us, and I don’t know how much we have tried to use him. (Personal communication, April 10, 2012.)

Besides the University Council and the MUPSF, the interview data show that the university also engages some members of the external communities, particularly those with the appropriate experiences, in its curriculum development and review processes to ensure that its curricula are of good quality and relevant to society. “I think the only time when the community comes in,” R15 noted, “is when we are reviewing our courses. Normally, when we are reviewing courses, we have stakeholders’ meeting in which we bring the community on board” (personal communication, April 17, 2012). Although the interviewees from all four disciplinary groups confirmed this assertion, no university policies and documentary data could be found to verify the claim. However, the university has, in the past, held

76 Composed of university members and non-university members—two government appointees; represen- tatives of the MoES (1), Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (1), Ministry of Labour, Gender and Social Development (1), the district in which the university is located (1), alumni (1) and persons with disabilities (2)—in accordance with the guidelines of the UOTIA (Republic of Uganda, 2001).

stakeholders’ consultative conferences, for instance, in 2004,⁷⁷ 2009, and 2012, to share with its stakeholders—specifically, its development partners, government, and the private sector—information about its strategy and transformations and to create a platform for involving the external communities in the affairs of the university (MUK, 2013).

Lastly, some of the university colleges organise open days and/or exhibitions—for example, the Bi-annual Science and Technology Exhibition, organised by CAES—that attract members of the public to the university and enable the colleges and external communities (particularly firms) to exhibit their innovations and products/services respectively.⁷⁸

The above discussion shows that, in a way, MUK engages external communities in its academic and administrative activities and processes and, therefore, the issue is not whether and how the university engages the external communities, but rather whether the partnerships are deep, mutual, and sustainable. After all, effective partnerships between universities and external communities should be mutually beneficial, guided by institutional choice and strategy, and valuable and important to both partners (Bringle &

Hatcher, 1996). For MUK, the level of meaningful involvement is minimal. In fact, the interviewees stressed that although it is easy for the university to reach out to the external communities; it is difficult for the communities to come to the university. For instance, a review of the statute on the management of the constituent colleges of MUK shows that none of the college boards and committees (e.g., the academic boards; administrative boards;

establishment and appointments committees; quality assurance, gender, and information communications technology committees; and boards of schools and institutes) comprises representatives from outside the university (MUK, 2012b). In short, the statute does not provide for off-campus representation; board and committee members are supposed to be from within the university—that is, representatives of the academic staff, administrative staff, support staff, and students.

However, the above revelation is not entirely surprising; the literature (e.g., Bringle &

Hatcher, 1996) shows that community representation is often complicated by issues, such as who should be represented, which communities, and how they should be involved. In this regard, all the interviewees concurred that there are limited ways in which the university actively engages the external communities in its activities and processes. According to R17,

77 Under the theme, “Taking Stock of the Past and Reaching Out,” its objectives were to, among others, highlight the role of university education in the national context, provide a forum for the exchange of ideas between the university and its stakeholders and explore the ways and means through which the university could tackle its current and future challenges (MUK, 2004, p. 1).

78 For example, the second annual open day, 2012, “Promoting Youth Innovation to Boost Job Creation and Employment,” organised by CEDAT to share with the public and the rest of the university information about the progress and achievements of the projects financed under the Presidential Initiative for Technology and Innovations and to enable students and firms to exhibit their projects, innovations and products (see http://cedat.mak.ac.ug/).

On all our academic boards there is none [external representative], and we are not sure whether they would be relevant there. That’s something we might have to discuss. … You see the other challenge would be how to select them. (Personal communication, March 20, 2012.)