Introduction
The College of Natural and Computational Sciences is one of towering academic units of Haramaya University. Over the years, it has achieved a lot in teaching, research, and community engagement.
Learning-Teaching
Twelve years ago, following the implementation of the Business Process Reengineering (BPR), the Faculty of Education (FOE) was restructured into three Colleges. Consequently, the College of Natural and Computational Sciences (CNCS) emerged as a standalone college comprising five Departments i.e. Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Sport Science. By the year 2016, Sport Science Department was renamed as Sport Academy with the result of that the college has remained with three Departments and one School, constituting five programs (a new undergraduate program was introduced in the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology). Prior to implementation of the BPR in 1996, however, the then Division of Natural and Social Sciences (DNSS) evolved into FOE launching eight programs in the fields of Natural and Social Sciences. Unlike the DNSS whose staff were merely offering supportive courses to students in the College of Agriculture, FOE started to confer B.Sc./B.A. degrees to graduates in those programs. Graduates of the faculty have tremendously contributed to satisfy the growing demands of high school teachers nationwide.
By the year 2008, the CNCS initiated the M.Ed. programs in Science Education (Departments of Chemistry and Biology) beside the undergraduate programs. These initiatives served as a precursor to launching similar programs in the remaining departments and also as springboard to diversify other programs thereof. Currently, there are about 18 postgraduate programs with 32 streams actively catering for the educational needs in Regular and Summer programs. On the average, the College has been graduating students at the rate of 250 graduates per year specializing in various postgraduate programs.
CNCS has also succeeded in realizing the long anticipated PhD programs in Microbiology (launched in 2015/16 academic year), Material Chemistry, and Physics with two streams Environmental Physics and Renewable Energy Physics (launched in 2017/18 academic year). The College also launched a PhD program in Mathematics with five streams Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Optimization, Operations Research, and Mathematical Modeling in the academic year 2021/22. Currently, these PhD programs are being run as scheduled despite some problems that have been cropping up in connection with laboratory facilities. Generally, the College has registered substantial successes in terms of program diversification, both vertically and horizontally and also in producing a considerable number of competitive graduates for the job market as evidenced the four years average since 2015/16 employability tracer study conducted by the University, which was rated as 78.25% . This figure shows the average percentage of graduates employed to the job relevant to the graduate’s profile within six months after graduation.
The College has 22 laboratories mainly contributing to learning and teaching of undergraduate programs. In addition to these laboratories, there are four computer laboratories.
Partial View of College of Natural and Computational Sciences
As the College of basic sciences, our laboratories are expected to render services to students of other Colleges, HIT and other universities in the eastern region of the country. These laboratories are also busy providing services to students coming from high schools located in the vicinity and beyond.
During the last few years, the College has been working to smarten its postgraduate and undergraduate classrooms. It has refurbished 18 (6 postgraduate and 12 undergraduate) classrooms with whiteboards, motorized white screen, LCD projectors and computers. These facilities are not only improving the delivery but also encouraging the teachers to use modern instructional media to support their lectures. A small resource center provides library services mainly to the postgraduate students and staff members of the College. To strengthen the students’ academic records, the College established its own Registrar staffing with the required personnel and equipping with office facilities. These facilities help in smoothly executing the learning - teaching activities of the programs in the College.