By Monica Kobusiinge
Kampala: Makerere University has announced fresh reporting dates for final year students following President Yoweri Museveni’s directive of re-opening schools and higher institutions of learning on Sunday, September 20, 2020.
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Makerere University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Barnabas Nawangwe while addressing the media flanked by the University Council Chairman, Lorna Magara announced that the University had already made plans to receive students as directed by the Government.
At the emergency meeting held yesterday, 21″ September 2020, the University Council approved
resumption of academic programmes to complete semester 2 of the Academic Year 2019/2020 as
detailed below;
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- Final year students on medical programmes will report on 3 October 2020 and end on
28th November 2020. - Final year students on all the other programmes and all graduate students will report
on 17th October 2020 and end on 12th December 2020. - Distance and online teaching for all the continuing students will commence on 5th
October 2020 and end by 31* December 2020. - However, the rest of the final year undergraduate and graduate students would report on October 17 and end on December 12, 2020.
In the statement released by the university’s V/Chancellor Prof. Nawangwe to all members of the staff, they are required to report back to their respective workstation with effect and prepare for reopening of the second semester.
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It adds that Heads of Department, Deans and Principals are required to ensure that the Council resolution is operationalized. “Each College will prepare a schedule for conduct of examinations for approval by the Senate,” reads the statement.
Nawangwe via the statement further said that the University Council has proposed that students who were ordinarily residing on campus will be admitted in halls of residence and non-residents would continue to stay off-campus.
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“This is because as much as we wanted all students to be in our halls of residence, but the halls cannot accommodate the entire number because we have a capacity of only 6,000 students and final year students are more than 10,000,” he said.
He noted that they would allow foreign students who had tested 72 hours before travelling to Uganda to be admitted to the University without being quarantined.
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“After clearance for teaching by the National Council for Higher Education, teaching would commence on October 15, 2020, via the online distance and e-learning platform and arrangements for this are underway,” Nawangwe said.
On how the University planned to handle cases of Covid-19 among students who may get infected, Nawangwe announced that they were discussing with the Ministry of Health to allow the University to manage cases of students who might fall sick at the university hospital.
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“There is a requirement that there must be special facilities and we believe that we can put these facilities in place to be able to manage the cases,” he asserted.
