University with a difference: MKU initiates unique strategy to support national development
Mount Kenya University (MKU) is taking its engagement with communities a notch higher. The university’s chairman, Prof Simon Gicharu, says MKU is welcoming Kenya’s research community to use its equipment and other facilities at its campuses.
Prof Gicharu says MKU is doing so in support of national development. He believes enabling more researchers to undertake studies using the university’s resources will boost activities that add value to national development efforts. MKU is currently drafting rules and guidelines to govern the use of its research equipment by external researchers.
Meanwhile, community members are already using the university’s Mwai Kibaki Convention Centre to host meetings and conferences, as well as cultural and talent development activities.
Prof Gicharu adds that as one of the universities in the world serving as the UN hub for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), MKU is keen to help society reduce inequalities.
MKU council chairperson, Prof David Serem, reveals, for example, that the university has a disability policy which enables affected staff and students to go about life in the campuses without barriers. The university’s infrastructure is configured to allow easy movement by people with physical disability.
Further, MKU has employed sign language interpreters and a transcriber to ease learning for students with hearing or visual impairments. And when allocating bursaries, the MKU Foundation gives special consideration to students with disability.
Such students get further support from the university’s Association of Student’s Abled-Differently. The association’s key agenda is to promote inclusion and offer necessary physical and emotional support to affected students.
Hesbone Mbithe, one of today’s graduands, has been a beneficiary of the positive policies of the association, which he now refers to as “a family away from home, for the abled-differently students.”
Through the help of the association and the university’s administration, Mbithe, whose disability had arisen from a road accident, received an electric wheelchair in December 2021, to enable him move around with ease. Mbithe is graduating with a Diploma in Information Technology.
