Radar | Feb 16,2019
The University of Gonder spent 900 million Br to complete the construction of eight buildings dedicated to engineering and technology studies. The buildings are part of the University’s effort to bring itself in line with the natural sciences-focused education policy.
Each of the buildings, which lie on a total area of 10,500Sqm, have four storeys. They include 78 offices, 74 laboratories, 24 workshops, 12 storage houses and 12 drawing rooms. They are also equipped with elevators, air conditioning insulation and busbar electric installation system.
The buildings have turbo machinery, biomedical equipment, civil and hydraulic machinery and computer labs that will be used by the civil, electrical & computer, mechanical, hydraulic & water resource, industrial, chemical and biomedical engineering departments, as well as the architecture, construction technology & management department.
The buildings, which took five years to construct, are located in Aste Fasil Campus, one of the University's three campuses along with Maraki and Atse Tewodros. The University of Gonder, one of the 50 public universities in the country, officially inaugurated the faculty of technology in July 2010.
The contractor for the building was Yirgalem Construction, an over two-decade-old company with 35 active projects across the country. BED Building Construction Design was hired to design and consult on the buildings.
‘‘The need for constructing the buildings is to facilitate the learning process for engineering and technology students,” said Tesfahun Tegegn, academic vice director at Aste Fasil Campus. “The workshop centre aims to enhance the teaching-learning process with a good and comfortable research and laboratory environment.”
Currently, the University has over 21,000 students enrolled in various programs and has produced over 25,000 graduates. The University, which has around a 1.6 billion Br budget for the 2019 fiscal year, offers 56 undergraduate and 64 postgraduate courses.
During the last academic year, 873,000 students were studying for their first degrees at public universities around the country, a number that is expected to grow to 1.1 million in the current academic year.
The University of Gonder is not the only one that inaugurated a project dedicated solely to science and technology studies. The almost two-decade old Meqelle University finalised construction of Meles Zenawi Institute of Science & Technology Campus for a cost of 1.6 billion Br earlier this month.
The country’s education policy of the past two decades puts an emphasis on natural science subjects in an effort to support the government’s long held objective of industrialisation. As a result, undergraduate enrollment at public universities have a 70-30 quota in favour of natural science studies.
Nonetheless, social sciences and humanities studies have the highest post-graduate enrollment rate at 30.8pc. Business and economics studies have the next highest enrollments.
Tirusew Teferra (Prof), an educational expert, believes that the buildings will take the quality of education a step ahead.
“It helps students gain knowledge through practice, and they will be more qualified when they join the workforce,” he said.
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