Humanities & Social Sciences
DGRT Calls for Institutionalisation of CHUSS-CERTL Staff Induction & Retooling Initiative at Makerere
The Director Centre of Excellence in Research, Teaching and Learning (CERTL) and the Management of the College Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS ) have been asked to engage top Management to institutionalise the initiative of inducting and retooling staff in aspects of Research, Teaching , Learning and research.
The call was made during the opening session of the CHUSS CERTL Colloquium (18th-19th May 2023) held at Hilton Garden Hotel in Kamwokya – a Kampala suburb by the Deputy Director in charge of Administration and Graduate Training Associate Prof. Julius Kikooma.
Excellent performance does not translate into good workers/teachers
Most academic staff employed at Makerere University come on the strength that they performed well in their studies with very good qualifications.
“But those qualifications do not translate into being good workers because the activities they are doing like teaching and research, are aspects that they need to be trained in. Their qualifications and preparations did not train them.” Prof. Kikooma explained adding:
“So it is always a problem because the university does not have a system where there is a period gazetted for induction where you are inducted into the different aspects of your work.
Until this innovation of the Centre CERTL came up, there was no systematic programme the university had in terms of attending to those needs of a new hired person. So we think that this is very important,” the professor added.
Prof. Kikooma appreciated the Director CERTL and CHUSS management for the innovative project saying, it has contributed to the improvement of research, teaching and learning at Makerere University.
“It was also good that CHUSS saw the bigger problem for the university and was not selfish not to focus on the new hires in the college but was generous enough to spread it to the rest of the university for any academic staff who is recruited,”, He appreciated.
CERTL should transit from donor-project-funded to a university program for sustainability
Speaking on the evolution of the CERTL, Prof. Kikooma reported that the centre came up as a donor – funded project that it has a time period and not an open ended project.
“CERTL was designed as a project with funds for about three years. And what will happen after three years with all these programmes the centre has come up with? So we need as a university to enter into a conversation of how to transit from a project -funded programme to a project that is run by resources that the university gets like any other programme for sustainability”, Kikooma noted.
He proposed that the CERTL activities should be part of the university budget to reduce reliance on project funds to run the aspects of teaching and learning in the university for sustainability.
Privatisation and perception affected the quality of higher education, CERTL Director
The Director CERTL Prof. Andrew Ellias State expressed the need for staff to take note and confront the current tendencies that have affected the quality of teaching and learning and how they can be more relevant by asking themselves hard questions, refreshing and upgrading their teaching methods.
In higher education institutions of learning and Makerere inclusive, Prof state said, there is a tendency of perceiving students to be on the receiving end. The university receives students from high school, those who finished certificates, diplomas and bachelor and others on mature scheme above 25 years.
“In terms of teaching and learning, when you report to the university, if you are a teacher and you are using the high school model, you are in a wrong place. The university is a set of knowledge where we interface with brains that bubble because students are eager to learn, transiting form primary, to high school where they undertake a national exam, but unfortunately we don’t have a national exam.
So our teaching and learning kind of switches. When students Reach University, some of them get lost, some get very interested and that’s when the lecturer becomes very relevant and thus the need for CERTL centre”, Prof. State said.
Prof. State decried the nature of students universities are receiving that are quiet different unlike when most lecturers were entering the university in terms of being inquisitive, wanting to explore and visiting the library because they can find everything else on their phones.
“So the tendency has been that the university receives students who are processed but unfortunately not processed in the format the university wants to receive them and start on research.
The second tendency that has bedeviled higher education is the higher education reform and privatisation that changed the nature of classes and people entering university education.”
State explained that when Makerere opened up to allow more Ugandans and other nationals to access higher education, the nature and number of the students received and the nature of the university that has become were affected.
“The classes have became congested, instructors became overwhelmed, tutorials disappeared.. We have been increasing the number of students admitted but at the same time putting a cap on staff recruitment process because the budget does not allow and while professors are retiring, they are not being replaced”, State stated.
The recent tendency that has emerged that staff need to take care of according to Prof. State is the tendency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) coupled by the abundance of google apps that are available-so much that, when students are asked to research, they just google and lately they just say it, and receive responses.
The AI tendency according Prof. State has not only affected students, but staff who also go to google, get notes and put on photocopiers, the same things that students access making no change in terms of teaching and learning.
The establishment of CERTL
CERTL according to Prof. State was conceived following Prof. Muhamood Mamdani’s publication in 2006 titled, “Scholars in the market place” where CHUSS was one of the case studies,
The book looked at neoliberal policies on higher education and subsequent effects including the increased enrolments and declining quality which in 2009 -2010 resulted in national outcry over the quality of graduates from the university.
Although Internship emerged as one of the mitigating measure in 2000 , the need to improve the teaching and learning experiences and establishment of a centre for Research, Teaching and Learning was conceived and established following the needs assessment ,online surveys and benchmarking centres of excellence in teaching and learning overseas including Rhodes University, centre in cape new city , University of Connecticut , University of Minnesota and University of Michigan.
Members of staff according to the CERTL Director reported that they had never had any training in terms of teaching and learning and were never exposed to some of the methodologies despite university efforts to involve the school of education which primarily focus on production of primary and secondary school teachers.
The proposal was granted by the Mellon Foundation and the centre focussed on teaching and learning, early career fellowship and research.. Since it was a centre, Prof. State said, it was decided that people should be having research funds but only on learning and teaching and developing innovative ways of teaching a discipline that others should be able to learn when Makerere takes over the centre.
The centre has held a number of workshops to help those duly recruited and evaluation have been good. The centre has helped Heads of Departments and Deans to be oriented on Human Resource and academic issues and lecturers who have been in the system on how to deal with students in terms of research and marks. The centre has experts in curriculum development and review, looks at peer evaluation of colleagues and guide on evaluations of the syllabus among others.
The CERTL Colloquium 2023
CHUSS projects coordinator Dr. Edgar Nabutanyi said the colloquium was an intimate direct form of debate.
“We intend to have a more interactive, not just presenting research findings but having a debate on current issues with regard to teaching and learning”, Dr. Nabutanyi said.
15 CERTL fellows presented research they have been researching on mainly in teaching and learning.
In his opening remarks, the Deputy Principal CHUSS Assoc. Prof. Eric Awich described the colloquium as rich in terms of research, subject matter and issues.
“It should not be a monologue but a dialogue to allow us engage with research, findings and see how to improve our teaching and learning” Prof. Awich said.
As the university strives to become research-led, Prof. Awich reported that a special committee had been instituted by the Vice Chancellor to build evidence-based advocacy and to engage and lobby government to provide more resources to conduct cutting edge research to meet the university’s aspirations and the national development goals.
“With over 1,000 senior academics holding PhDs, Makerere is expected to produce at least 300 PhDs per year from the current 100 PhDs”, Prof. Awich added.
He urged senior academics to play their roles in mentorship, strive to attract financial resources to the university and publish, as these, will be the basis for promotion among others.
On the morning of Friday, February 27, when the academic procession winds its way across Makerere University’s Freedom Square for the last day of the 76th Graduation Ceremony, Whitney Najjuka will walk into history with a number beside her name: 4.46.
At Makerere, that number means First Class Honours. It means the Vice Chancellor’s List. It means she graduates as the only First-Class student in Journalism and Communication this year. But numbers, as Whitney has learned, rarely tell the full story.
Born on March 27, 2002, in Nabbingo, Kyengera Town Council, to Margaret Kusemererwa and Fred Kasirye, dreamt she would do Law, one of the disciplines, prestigious, almost inevitable next steps for a student who had excelled in secondary school. She had done everything correctly. Studied hard. Scored well. Followed the script.
But Makerere University had other plans. She missed the pre-entry mark, but found her name under Journalism and Communication, another prestigious course offered by the Journalism and Communication Department at Makerere University.
Najjuka began her academic journey at Muto Primary School in Buwama, earning 8 aggregates in the Primary Leaving Examination, a performance that positioned her strongly for secondary school.
She would later join St. Lucia Hill School, Namagoma, where she earned 20 aggregates at O-Level and 17 points in History, Luganda, and Divinity at A-Level.
Missing her dream course, Law, felt at first, like a detour. But Whitney was encouraged by Sanyu Christopher, her uncle, and she settled for a government-sponsored slot in the Bachelor of Journalism and Communication at Makerere, which she had applied for before.
She entered uncertain. But she graduates transformed.
The Pivot That Became a Purpose
Whitney speaks of her early university days with candor. She did not arrive at the Department of Journalism and Communication with a burning childhood ambition to be a journalist, but because another door had closed.
Then, Social and Behavior Change Communication happened. Applied Strategic Communication happened. She began to see media not as headlines and microphones, but as architecture, shaping how societies think, argue, and act.
The turning point came in her third year. The Female Journalist Foundation published her story on Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and its emotional toll on survivors. What startled her was not its publication but the reaction. Comments flooded in. Debates ignited, especially about the role of men in combating GBV.
“I realized media doesn’t just report,” she says. “It frames how society views a crisis.”
Her voice, once tentative, had entered a national conversation.
The Discipline Behind 4.46
At Makerere University, a First Class CGPA is not built on brilliance alone but on ritual.
Whitney’s ritual began with showing up, on time, every time. She treated lectures as appointments with her future self. She refused to confine her learning to the syllabus. While attending workshops at the Aga Khan Graduate School of Media and Communication and obtaining external certifications, she sought and was open to mentorship through the Public Relations Association of Uganda (PRAU).
She wanted theory anchored in practice. And then there was the commute.
From Nabbingo, a hill in Wakiso District, some 18.6 km to Kampala, where the Makerere Main campus is situated, and back, nearly 20 hours a week dissolved into Kampala traffic. Two-hour journeys before 8:00 a.m. lectures. Dust. Noise. Headaches. She learned to manage energy the way others manage time. Fatigue became a tutor in resilience.
“I had to be intentional with every remaining hour,” she says. “Excuses were not an option.”
Learning to Practice Communication
If classrooms taught her analysis, presentations taught her courage. Pitching projects, defending research, and standing before peers quick to critique forced her to think on her feet. She was no longer simply studying communication; she was practicing it.
In 2024, the AGMES Fellowship at the Aga Khan Graduate School of Media and Communication pushed her further. She received funding to produce a capstone project on the mental impact of gender-based violence on survivors. She identified sources, conducted interviews, handled trauma with care, and worked with professional editors.
The Communication, she learned, is logistics and ethics as much as eloquence.
The Future She Sees
Whitney is optimistic about Uganda’s media landscape. The digital shift, she believes, has democratized influence. Young communicators are no longer confined to legacy newsrooms or offices.
Yet she sees a gap in the absence of structured research on sustainable, ethical, profitable independent media ventures in Uganda. Her ambition is not only to practice communication, but to study it. To produce data-backed frameworks that help young Ugandans transition from graduates to media entrepreneurs.
She wants to make the impact scalable.
What Remains
As the only First-Class graduate in her cohort, she is careful not to mythologize herself. “Success isn’t brilliance alone,” she says. “It’s a daily commitment when nobody is watching.”
Even before graduation, Whitney had stepped into the industry through a mentorship internship at Capital One Group (COG EA Ltd), a strategic marketing communications agency operating across East Africa.
At Capital One Group, we spoke to Paul Mwirigi Muriungi, the Managing Director and Head of Strategy, who spoke of Najjuka as a progressive and intentional young professional who approaches her work with curiosity, maturity, and responsibility.
“Her attitude is exemplary. She is teachable, receptive to feedback, and eager to grow. While technical skills can be taught, character, work ethic, and mindset determine long-term success, qualities that Whitney consistently demonstrates. Given her academic excellence and professional application, we believe she has a bright future both at Capital One Group and within the wider communications industry. She represents the kind of talent the profession needs: thoughtful, adaptable, and committed to excellence.
“We look forward to seeing her next chapter unfold,” says Mwirigi.
Najjuka’s gaze extends beyond her own trajectory. She speaks of what the Department could become. Furnished and equipped with industry-standard equipment, newsroom simulations, and deeper investment in data journalism as prayers. Her excellence is not self-congratulatory, but it is forward-looking.
“The University should support the Department to procure industry-standard equipment. Access to high-quality cameras, sound booths, and updated editing software like Adobe Creative Suite is critical to our learning environment,” she says.
Adding that, “We need a newsroom simulation, a physical or digital space where students work under real-time deadlines to produce content for the public. That would prepare us for industry and even strengthen the University’s own media platforms.”
In an era defined by metrics, algorithms, and digital traceability, data journalism is no longer a niche skill but a sine qua non of credible reporting. “There should also be more focus on data journalism and search engine optimization. These are no longer optional skills. Students would benefit immensely from stronger training in these areas.”
Dr. Aisha Nakiwala, the Head, Department of Journalism and Communication, says the faculty are very proud that she is graduating with a First Class—the only one in this year’s cohort.
“This achievement reflects not only exceptional intellectual ability but also discipline, resilience, and sustained dedication to the highest standards over four years. Graduating with first-class honors is no small feat; it requires consistent outstanding performance.
“Her accomplishment sets a powerful example for continuing students and reaffirms our department’s commitment to nurturing excellence. We are confident she will make meaningful contributions to the communication profession and society at large,” says Dr. Nakiwala.
On graduation day, applause will crest and recede. The gowns will fold back into wardrobes. The transcripts will be filed away in cabinets. But something quieter will endure; a young woman from Nabbingo who once missed her Law mark, who spent 20 hours a week on the road, who discovered that storytelling is power, and who now walks into Freedom Square not by accident, but by intention.
Life, as she has come to understand it, lives on.
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