Background
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.
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.
Mission
“To produce competent graduates in diverse field of studies, undertake knowledge generating, problem solving and cutting-edge research, and provide demand-driven and transformative community engagement that will contribute to local, national, regional and global sustainable development.”
Vision
“Haramaya University strives to be one of the top ten universities in Eastern Africa with international reputation by 2030.”
Core Values
“HrU is committed to the values of excellence, innovation, social responsibility, integrity, embracing diversity and inclusiveness, democratic culture, good governance, teamwork and collaboration, lifelong learning, and respect for nature and environment.”
Research and Development
One of the triple mandates of the University in general and CNCS in particular is research and development. Generally, the research culture of the College is at a rudimentary stage although it has exhibited a certain progress recently. Currently, several research proposals have been initiated and implemented. This was unthinkable ten years ago when the College staff members were merely engaged in learning-teaching duties. However, the research culture of the College is stimulated by the availability of government funds for research on competitive bases. Research proposals clustered in any of the six research thematic areas of the university have been prepared by teachers and financed. Results of some completed research are being published in local and international journals.
Recently, the College has organized national workshops and published proceedings for dissemination to the participating institutions all over the country. It is also planning to launch a standalone journal as a subsidiary to the East African Journal of Sciences, specifically dedicated to publish articles on Basic and Applied Sciences and Mathematics.
Community Services
Nowadays, the College of Natural and Computational Sciences has diversified its community related services from merely rendering course-based teaching to summer in-service programs leading students to various training programs targeting improvement in overall quality of education in science and mathematics.
Our service includes the provision of laboratory training to high school science teachers working in nearby areas and beyond. We endowed potential teacher trainees with knowledge and skills to replicate scientific principles in high schools where they work and coach students. The program was also accompanied by the development of laboratories on site in some high schools. Another facet of our community service has been the provision of laboratory training (Grades 9 – 12) and staging demonstration of experiments (Grades 7 and 8). Apart from these, several high school students from Dire Dawa, Harar, and Haramaya have expressed interests in visiting and learning from our laboratories.
In addition, instructors in the Department of Mathematics have also been actively engaged in resuscitating the interest of school children in mathematics and skill development by inducing competition amongst them. During the last four years, they have been pursuing a campaign under the motto ‘Mathematics Olympiad’ by which they succeeded in offering training to a large number of students. They have continued their efforts to strengthen these activities and reach out to more high school students this year.
Science Day Mathematics Olympiad
Other iconic activity of the College is its service to high schools students during Summer time. This program was started in Summer 2012/13 academic year and has been continued for the last six consecutive years. So far, more than 2500 outstanding high school students from eastern and western Hararghe Zones as well as the Harari region have been given practical training in Science (Biology, Chemistry and Physics, ICT and Mathematics). During the training, the students were brought to our university for about a month, and given accommodation, meals, clinic and other related services. This program has a paramount importance for cultural exchanges in addition to the intended purpose of practical lessons they were being taught. Since the program accepts outstanding students, it has also served as a means to induce competition among students in the schools for better performances. As part of the community related services, the College has also been organizing science exhibitions once every year aiming at invoking interest among students towards science education and also to open up ourselves to the community at large.
Intensifying its activities, CNCS has also launched school tutorial program in five selected high and preparatory schools located in the vicinity of the university. The overall intention of the program is to capacitate students who are going to sit national examinations, by deploying our students and teachers.
Our service includes the provision of laboratory training to high school science teachers working in nearby areas and beyond. We endowed potential teacher trainees with knowledge and skills to replicate scientific principles in high schools where they work and coach students. The program was also accompanied by the development of laboratories on site in some high schools. Another facet of our community service has been the provision of laboratory training (Grades 9 – 12) and staging demonstration of experiments (Grades 7 and 8). Apart from these, several high school students from Dire Dawa, Harar, and Haramaya have expressed interests in visiting and learning from our laboratories.
Challenges
The quality of the students who are joining the programs in CNCS is matter of serious concern. In most instances, only a few students join our programs by their first or second choice. All others are merely hustled into the programs without much interest as the next option particularly when they fail to get programs of their own prior choices in the other colleges of the university. This also indicates that not many good students are interested in joining our College. This means the likelihood of finding good students is becoming negligibly small.
Staff office shortage is one of the glaring challenges that need to get an immediate attention. Delay lack of state of the art laboratory facilities for effective execution of staff and postgraduate students’ research, too belated or lack of procurement of supplies and essential laboratory equipment and chemicals impede the speed of delivery.
The other challenges that the College has faced is its inability to and win external research grants so far and establish workable linkages with national and international partners and maintaining sustainability thereafter. This is happening despite the presence of high caliber faculties in the college. This requires some soul-searching and strategizing in the future.
In connection with the community services, there has not been the same level of understanding amongst the College staff members to embrace it as one of their duties. This should be solved through awareness creation and documentation to value community services as a criterion for academic promotion.
Opportunity
Currently, a good number of College staff members are studying for their terminal degrees in national and overseas universities. Upon the return of these faculty members, the College human resource capacity will be improved to meet the required staff composition.
Due to the fact that the College is based in a small old building, our staff are stationed and working in congested and stuffed offices. Within few years, there is a possibility that the College will own its new building and ease the existing office shortage.
The College developed and implemented a working five years strategic plan to develop new and existing laboratories under its custody. Since the implementation of the plan, one additional laboratory for the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology has been established and the purchase of essential chemicals for the existing laboratories is well underway.
Conclusion
Generally, the attention given for science, technology and mathematics education is timely and it is the way forward in view of the fact that we need to achieve knowledge based economic growth and development. Speedy installment of laboratory facilities (specifically for the postgraduate and staff research) contributes to realizing growth and development. While working to increase enrollment rate of students in Science, Technology and Mathematics education, a huge amount of work remains to be done to enhance the interest and align the aptitude of the students in these fields at lower level of Ethiopian School system. This requires concerted efforts of academics in the field to raise motivations of children from the schools and families. As a whole, the College of Natural and Computational Sciences (CNCS) at Haramaya University and elsewhere in the country must take the lion’s share to reverse the declining trend of the quality of our educational by contributing their fair share in the actions that need to be taken as described above.