Dr Adiza Sadik is the Dean of Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology. Before her appointment as the Dean she was the Director of Institutional Collaborations, Tamale Technical University, Ghana. She is a senior lecturer in the HTM department with over 20 years of work experience in higher education, she has a wealth of experience in higher education curriculum development, embedding employability and entrepreneurship skills in HTM and related curricula, and project management.

Her professional and personal attributes enabled her to serve as the Head of Department (HCIM) for two terms from 2004-2006 and 2008-2010. She was in this position until she left for the UK from 2012 to 2017, where she graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Hospitality Management in 2017 at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.

For the PhD, Dr Sadik investigated trends and influences in Ghanaian hospitality industry, education, and employability of (hospitality) graduates. This led to the development of a model named Ghanaian Hospitality Employability Enhancement Framework (The GHEEF), that could be used to improve teaching and learning in ways that profoundly enhance the graduates’ employability. This model could be adapted and applied in any higher education programme in Ghana, other African countries, and developing countries of the Global South, generally.

Earlier in her educational life, Dr Sadik obtained a Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in 2000, and a Master of Technology (MTech) by research in 2003, at Vaal University of Technology. She obtained a professional teacher certificate in Education in 1996 at University College of Education Winneba, Kumasi campus. After which she proceeded to Republic of South Africa from 1999-2003 for her first and second degrees in Vaal University of Technology.

Dr Sadik was a project management team member for Developing Rural Entrepreneurs (DREP), a funded CIDA project in Tamale Technical University, which focused on curriculum development, teaching, and advancing entrepreneurship education in the three Northern regions. It is apposite, therefore, that her PhD in embedding employability skills in higher education includes significant overlaps with entrepreneurship, and applied entrepreneurship ideas, by way of enterprise development, in the HTM sector of an economy.

She has a robust set of positive human skills which mirror the corpus of employability and generic soft skills she researches, publishes and teaches students. These include strong interpersonal and communication skills, team working, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-confidence, coupled with technical subject matter skills in the HTM areas.

Dr Sadik also speaks and works well in three local languages and one international language (English). She has sound entrepreneurial, leadership, and management skills at key levels of university life, for example HOD, Director, and Dean of faculty.