Rev. Prof. Adow Obeng advocates return to values

The rising cases of murders, road carnage, craze for quick wealth, and corruption call for a return to the country’s values, the President of the Presbyterian University College, Ghana (PUCG), Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng has said.

He said the inculcation of the values of integrity, honesty, hard work, self-discipline, and love for neighbour and community held the key to pushing the country forward.

Rev. Prof. Obeng said this at this year’s matriculation of the PUCG at its Asante Akyem campus at Agogo last Saturday.

A total of 742 fresh students were matriculated to undertake programmes at the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Development Studies, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology and Faculty of Business Administration.

This year’s matriculation of the university college was organised over three days to enable the institution to properly observe the COVID-19 protocols, especially that of social distancing. On Tuesday, April 13, the first matriculation was held at Akropong Akuapem for students of the Akuapem and Tema campuses. Thursday, April 15 was the turn of students on Okwahu campus and last Saturday was for students on Asante Akyem and Kumasi campuses.

Lead role

Rev. Prof. Obeng said it was important that educational institutions took a lead role efforts to restore values into the social fabric.

“Inculcation of such values in students is a priority of this university,” he said.

He said the university college was inculcating the values of integrity, hard work, selflessness, love of humanity and generally self-discipline in its students to shape them into productive human beings.

“ We are in a generation where knowledge is the primary currency for economic development,” he added.

 He said the values that would be inculcated in students would save the country from greed, tribalism, nepotism, ethnicity, and in the long run would reduce the poverty of our people.

Faith in God

 Rev. Prof. Obeng said the core values of the university were faith in God, integrity, commitment, discipline, and excellence, which were expected to permeate whatever students did on campus.

 He said those were the values that would make students disciplined leaders as well as channels of change in their chosen fields.

‘To show the seriousness we attach to the inculcation of values, the university, this year, has started something new or should I say reviewed an existing practice - giving Bibles to all fresh students. The Bible is the main source that teaches us these values,” he said.

Academic work

 Another priority of this university, he said,  was to impart relevant knowledge and skills to the students adding that “Our wish, as a university, is for you ( students)  to emerge with the type of education, knowledge and skills that will enable you to compete in and succeed in this global economy.” 

The PUCG President said the work of the lecturer was challenging since each lecturer balanced his or her time between teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, supervision of thesis and dissertations, counselling, mentoring, research and extension work.

He, therefore, advised students  to take every opportunity that they were offered to work closely with the lecturers so they could come out successful.

Misconduct

He said the PUCG  did not condone any form of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment.  “Sexual misconduct and sexual harassment include any unwelcomed sexual advances, requests for sexual favours and other verbal or physical conducts of sexual nature, especially when such actions give a student an advantage over others in terms of marks and other privileges,” he said.