The Vice Chancellor, Plateau State University, Bokkos, Professor Yohanna Daniel Izam has announced that the university is working tirelessly to ensure that only healthy and fully accredited programmes are available in the institution.

Speaking to newsmen in his office recently, the VC also disclosed that the institution, in line with the vision of the proprietor is working to establish faculty of Health Sciences as well as the faculty of law to increase the number of courses currently being offered in the school.

He hinted that for the whole of last year, the institution was involved in preparations for accreditation of 15 programmes. “I'm very pleased to note with gratitude to God and also with the support of the proprietor of the University by way of funding intervention, we were able to get full accreditation for 13 out of those 15 programmes and the other 2 are on interim which means even the other 2 are having at least a life line between now and the next one year or so, before the next re- accreditation visit comes back.”

When asked about his achievements as the vice chancellor of the Plateau State University, Bokkos for the past one year in office, Prom. Izam mentioned the certification and improvement of the health of the programmes in the institution as his greatest achievement. In his words, “we are deepening quality assurance through the various windows of opportunities that we have created in the improvement of staffing, in the improvement of Laboratories, in the improvement of the Library which is a very important criterion for accreditation”.

“You will notice that the Library was not only completed during the last one year but also the E-Library component was put in place because even if you have a physical Library as we used to have without the E-Library component, there's no way we can scale through the hurdle of accreditation. So the E-Library component was also completed in the last one year and that has helped to bring a new lease of life in teaching and research in the various programmes so that is it for accreditation”.

Izam who is a professor of building engineering listed more of his achievements thus: “we have been able to remodel the Senate Chambers which now provide for increase in capacity and comfort level so that the work of Senate and Council will not suffer because of the inadequacy of what we used to have as a Senate Chamber in PLASU. We have started lighting up the campus through street lights; we have also embarked on some notable programmes of environmental re-engineering such as the tree planting campaigns and sculpture garden”.

“Let me also quickly say that last year, the University was for the first time, in the life of not only the University but in fact any state University for that matter, was able to host a National Universities Theater Arts Festival. The NUTAF which took place on the grounds of PLASU here, had over 27 Institutions from all over the country participating. It was a week-long programme, and it was an opportunity for us to also participate in the peer review with other sister departments of Theater Arts where new talents were discovered and one of our students in fact, won the award in the category of the best actor and so many other consolation prizes were also given. So, I will like to say that the last one year of my coming was full and full of events that were very dramatic in terms of moving the University forward.

“The activities also boosted the visibility of the University because in the past, you'll remember that the University was suspended but people now know that we're not only back, but the University is doing very well in various aspect of educational endeavors” he said.