UDS Pro-Vice-Chancellor assumes office

The President of the Alumni Association of the University for Development Studies (UDS), Prof. Felix Kofi Abagale, has been elected as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC) of the university.

He assumed office last Monday as the seventh Pro-VC of the UDS. He succeeds Prof. Seidu Al-Hassan, whose tenure of office has ended.
Prof. Abagale was elected to the position after polling 559 votes, representing 81.70 per cent in the election which was across all the campuses of the UDS in October this year.

He will serve a two-year term in assisting the Vice-Chancellor of the UDS, Prof. Gabriel Ayum Teye, to improve the teaching and learning environment in the university, as well as position the university to conduct cutting-edge research.

Vision

Prof. Abagale, who is also an agricultural engineer and a member of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE), in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said with his 20 years’ association with the UDS, ‘I will work to contribute to the growth of the university community and its benefactors with the support of staff and students’.

“I intend to bring my experience and networks to bear on the operations of the university to position it as a citadel of academic knowledge and research,” he added.

Profile

Prof. Abagale, who hails from Navrongo in the Upper East Region, had his secondary education at the Ghana Senior High School (GHANASCO) in Tamale from 1995 to 1997.

He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Technology from the UDS and was offered teaching assistantship in the Department of Agricultural Mechanisation and Irrigation Technology of the Faculty of Agriculture in 2003, and later became a Senior Research Assistant in November 2004.

Prof. Abagale proceeded on further studies to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi to pursue a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Agro-Environmental Engineering in 2005. He resumed work at his Department at the UDS as a Principal Research Assistant and was later promoted to a lecturer in 2009.

In 2011, Prof. Abagale returned to KNUST to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme in Soil and Water Engineering and graduated in 2014. He also undertook some short courses and training programmes in the University of Pretoria, South Africa and Kyoto University, Japan.

Prof. Abagale was promoted to a Senior Lecturer at the UDS in October 2013, and an Associate Professor of Soil and Water Engineering in January 2018.

Service

Prof. Abagale has served as external examiner to many institutions within and outside Ghana, as well as supervised over 70 undergraduate, Master’s and PhD thesis.

In June 2015, the then Vice Chancellor of UDS Tamale, Prof. Haruna Yakubu, appointed Prof. Abagale as Coordinator of the Faculty of Engineering with special duties of coordinating the development of engineering programmes, as well as liaising with national regulatory authorities such as the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the National Accreditation Board (NAB) for the start of engineering education in UDS. He was subsequently appointed as the founding Dean of the School of Engineering from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2017.

During his tenure, the School of Engineering established three academic departments- Departments of Agricultural Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Environment; Water and Waste Engineering and an Energy Technology Centre (ETC).

After serving as Foundation Dean of the School of Engineering, Prof. Abagale was elected as Dean of the school in October 2017, for a three-year term.

He has also chaired many ad hoc committees, including being made the Chairman of the Northern Sector Oversight of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) in 2017.

Prof. Abagale is an editor of the Ghana Journal of Science, Technology and Development (GJSTD), and the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Irrigation and Agricultural Development (IJIRAD).

In July 2019, Prof. Abagale was selected as one of the 100 most influential personalities in Northern Ghana. Currently he is the Director of the West African Centre for Water, Irrigation and Sustainable Agriculture (WACWISA), a centre of excellence for training and research with support from the World Bank and the government.