Nana Aba Appiah Amfo Quotes

Pragmatics specifically looks at language use in context. For you to be able to make meaning out of what we say, you almost always need the context. Sometimes you need the history, the religion, the culture, you need the philosophy and so on.

students must be challenged to focus on critical thinking and analytical skills since rote learning has not been helpful, there is the need to create avenues for students to explore their creative sides, music and dance.

Because I do believe I’m not the only one who works the hardest – yes, I do work hard, but it’s also important to take advantage of opportunities as they come, because they prepare you for positions ahead.

In my induction speech, I clearly stated that my goal as Vice-Chancellor would be to train students who are critical thinkers, technologically adept, humane, culturally sensitive and ready to provide leadership for the nation and continent.

From the beginning it wasn’t something I had my eyes on but as I built my academic career, as I developed my administrative competencies, and with the inputs and support of others I worked with, at some point I convinced myself that when the position is vacant I will give it a shot.

Men have dominated our boardrooms, men have dominated academia. Here in my university, the proportion of women academics, that’s just about 30 per cent. And as you can imagine, the higher you go up the ranks, the fewer women that you find. But, I must say, that it’s a good time at my university, I am the first female vice-chancellor. For the first time too, we have a female chancellor, we also have a female council chair for the first time. It is a source of encouragement to many females out there, but also for males – they dream for themselves, they dream for their wives, their daughters, their sisters.

That is to say they must keep in touch with what was going on across the world but engage it based on the local context of the country’s population, literacy levels, access to technologies and its (country’s) priorities.

Lifelong learning must not be confined to the classroom or to any age in life as life is dynamic; and the day you stop learning, you become intellectually dead and cease to be relevant to your society.

It’s a combination of hard work, identifying opportunities and taking advantage of those opportunities, and some favour from God that makes great.

You can’t do everything by yourself. Be on the lookout for talent; know the wide array of skills and strengths of your team and harness them for your benefit.

Be unfazed by obstacles. Obstacles are going to come on your journey, but be unfazed. Like me, you are bound to have setbacks and rejection, but don’t back down. Without a resilient spirit, you’re bound to give up when you’re ultimately meant for the top.

Give people the opportunity to prove themselves, but assign key roles to trusted people. Stakeholder engagement is really key and you cannot succeed as a leader without it.

We should be less focused on assessing students based on memory, and more on application. For that to happen, we need to focus on teacher training, incentivise our brightest students to go into teaching and keep small class sizes to allow for more interaction.

Coming to this position, I intend to drive the growth of this university through technology and humanism. The past two years has taught us we all need to take technology very seriously and we’ve had experiences of what we can use technology for. In every aspect of the university’s operations – from research management to teaching and learning, to administrative processes, to student management – I intend that technology drives this. But we should not forget that we’re there for the humans … the university exists for the good of the larger society.

I will say I have been blessed in many ways as I started my family life before my career. I started my Master’s when my first child was four months old so while I was studying, I was raising him. And this was out of Ghana so I didn’t have my mother or auntie to support me in raising him, which made it difficult. While I was doing my Master’s I had my second child.