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On Thursday, March 10, 2022, the Industrial Liaison Directorate of the Tamale Technical University in collaboration with the Public Affairs Directorate (PAD), held an Industrial Policy Dialogue Seminar for key stakeholders of the University in the ICT Auditorium.
The seminar had in attendance Faculty Deans, Head of Departments, and Departmental Industrial Attachment Coordinators. The program witnessed an insightful presentation by the Accra Technical University’s (ATU) Director of Industrial Liaison, Mr. Prosper Agumey who shared and elaborated some of their practices, policies and modus operandi with TaTU.
In his welcome address, the Pro Vice-Chancellor of TaTU, Prof. Bashiru Ibn Imoro Saeed noted the significance of industrial attachment to the whole Technical University concept. He indicated the idea is built on spiraling from Germany and that knowledge and skills rests on what is known as competence based institution. The Pro VC encouraged the Industrial Liaison Directorate to come up with innovative ways of industrial attachment practices.
On his part, the Director of Industrial Liaison at TaTU, Mr. Shani Mahama took the participants through the activities. He highlighted outreach to industry players as key to establishing long term partnership between the University and industry. He explained the need to rethink the method of supervision and the significant role of the Directorate building an innovative attachment practice. In addition, he mentioned that a blend of different industrial attachment practices from different Technical Universities and traditional Universities would impetus to TaTU’s industrial attachment policy.
As part of his presentation, Mr Agumey highlighted that, ATU practices traditional and Virtual internship program (VIP). The VIP model is where industry players are invited to set up virtual work places on campus to give training to students at a cost. He added that the ATU undertakes site scouting to industries to sign MoUs. He stated that ATU provides Insurance Cover for their students supervisors throughout the semester.
During the plenum, some of the participants got actively involved and had lively dialogue regarding ways to increase learning out industrial learning outcomes. They asked critical questions and made recommendations for action.
To collect key action points, the TaTU’s Director of Industrial Liaison asked participants to agree on five takeaways. Some key takeaways incluided:
1. Implementing a blend of traditional and virtual model of industrial attachment,
2. The need to resourcing the Industrial Liaison Directorate to facilitate and coordinate pragmatic industrial attachment practices,
3. A pool system of supervision to be build on a rotational basis which will give room for all staff to undertake
4. Create a database for industrial attachment, and
5. Industrial attachment to be done on a regular basis with a duration of eight (8) weeks.
Concluding the program, the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology, Dr. Adisa Sadik, thanked the organizers for the program and reiterated the significance of industrial attachment practices and urged the coordinators to remind students not to act as if they knew everything when they go on internships, but to open their eyes and ears and make reports that will benefit the companies.
