UCC to increase research grants to GH¢700,000

THE University of Cape Coast (UCC) will allocate GH¢700,000 to research grants next year, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, has announced.

He said that would be GH¢100, 000 more than the GH¢600,000 allocated this year.

Prof. Ampiah made this known at the fourth Research Awards and Grants ceremony organised by the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC) of the university at the UCC last Wednesday.

Thirty research support grant and seven best researcher awards were presented to individuals and teams at the ceremony.

They received grants and prizes ranging from GH¢3000 to GH¢30,000.

Collaboration crucial

Prof. Ampiah said in today’s globalised world, it was important to link knowledge and action for sustainable development and called for collaboration across academy disciplines, geo-political regions and spatial scales to generate robust knowledge responsive to an increasingly complex and dynamic world.

Prof. Ampiah pledged the university’s commitment towards research and collaboration for cutting-edge research activities that would advance the frontiers of knowledge for sustainable development.

He commended the winners for their researches and the grantees for their work, saying he was optimistic their work results would position the university in an excellent light through scholarly research to improve its visibility which was crucial for attracting human and financial resources.

Honest results

The Immediate Past President of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prof. Aba Bentil Andam, in her keynote address, said research results should be handed down in an honest manner and must not be massaged to align with the researchers already held knowledge.

She said research in any field was a powerful tool for discovery and innovation, adding that it was important the results were not manipulated in any form.

“Even when you find that the results appear not to add to what we already know, we as researchers are expected to hand over the results in an honest manner because who knows; these results can lead on to different discoveries altogether,” Prof. Andam stated.

She said modern day science was multifaceted and required collaborations at national and individual levels.

Women in science

Prof. Andam noted that though women could be found in various field of the sciences, the imbalance against women in the sciences could not be overlooked due to many factors including peer pressure, culture and stereotyping.

She called for modern ways of teaching the science, combining them with various fields to produce total graduates.

Applications

The Director of DRIC, Prof. Frederick Ato Armah, said the directorate received the highest number of applications since it began four years ago (90 applications).

He said all the research proposals had topics that aligned with the university’s research agenda and urged the winners to work hard to publish the research outputs.

The Best Evolving Researcher Award went to Dr Ernest Teye, while the Best Evolved Researcher Award went to Dr David Teye Doku.