It’s no-longer business as usual in UniCal, says VC

Prof. Florence Obi, Vice Chancellor, University of Calabar (UniCal) says  the institution is now a more serious academic environment and will no longer condone business as usual.

Obi made the disclosure on Friday in Calabar in  an interview with our reporter while commemorating her third year in office as a VC.

Recall that the vice chancellor who became the first female to man that position in UniCal since its inception in 1975, was installed on Dec. 1, 2020.

Speaking about some of her challenges and achievements as the school’s administrative head in the last three years, she said she had to work extra hard as a woman to prove to the world that women could also lead such prestigious institution.

According to her, although some people are still finding it difficult to accept the fact that a woman is the vice chancellor of the institution, it has not stopped her from moving forward with innovations that has created a better learning environment.

She said when she came on board as the vice chancellor, she noticed that some lecturers taught and organised examinations but took up to two years to mark their scripts and produce results.

She said today, the lecturers sent  their results to the portal in one month, because she had to enforce it despite the initial resistance.

She noted that in the past, many students believed paying lecturers to rewrite their examination, “sorting” was the way to go, in fact the school was nicknamed “unisort” but we have gone past that today, you now have to work for your grades.

“I noticed that our past answer booklets were in the hands of so many  people who were doing business with them, setting up examinations after normal examinations and we swung into action.

“We customised the answer booklets every semester and none has been repeated in the last six examinations in my administration, we also digitised the result system, making it easy for all students to access their results from anywhere in real time.

“We improved the quality of our facilities by reviving the Equipment Maintenance Centre that had been dormant for years and made it a directorate to move from department to department and ensure that our facilities are properly maintained,” she said.

Speaking further, Obi said the institution now have more classrooms  with the construction of new buildings like the pavilion one, two and three; that had made teaching easier and organising examinations faster.

She asserted that she ensured that all the roads within the institution were worked on, streetlights installed to illuminate the school at night and decentralisation of the central library to faculties with the introduction of a state of the art e-library.

On student development, the vice chancellor said  they beefed up the Entrepreneurial Centre to ensure that students acquired skills before leaving school while they bided and won the right to host the Nigeria Universities Games Association, (NUGA) 2026.

She commend the Federal Government through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for its support in upgrading many of the facilities in the institution.