IUCEA is the body that is responsible for coordinating the development of human resources and research in the East African Community (EAC) higher education institutions. IUCEA initiated a process of developing benchmarks of academic programmes as part of East Africa Community harmonized quality assurance system.
The objective of the workshop was to develop expected Learning Outcomes, the content and organization of the programmes, student assessment, the role of internship for undergraduates and post graduate programmes in the areas of Kinesiology Sports and tourism sports management, sports talent detection and development as well as to develop benchmarks for sports education in the East Africa region. This involved 24 sports experts in universities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. In addition, facilitators drawn from the six countries and others from USA and Belgium guided the exercise.
Developing benchmarks in the sports related areas is necessary so that core competencies in sports education are coordinated and students in the region can move from one to university to another without too many hitches. The benchmarks will guide the development of sports education curriculum in five (5) main programmes which were developed in the area of sports education, namely, Physical and Health Education, Sport Sciences, Sports Management, Leisure and Recreation and Sports Tourism.
Speaking to the Directorate of Corporate Communications and Marketing team after the workshop, Dr. Bukhala said that there is a grant open to East African Community universities. This grant of USD 2,500 per month will enable a scholar to visit another university for up to 3 months. All that will be required is a letter from the receiving university who will write to the IUCEA with the consent from the visiting lecturer. The IUCEA will approve the request provided that accommodation will be arranged by the receiving institution. The home institution will continue to pay the salary of the lecturer. Currently the absorption of this grant by universities is slow.
Notably, Dr. Peter Bukhala, who is also the current CoD of Health Promotion and Sports Sciences, has raised the regional and global profile of MMUST as an Institution with expertise in the area of Sports Education. Dr. Bukhala is a widely travelled academic and researcher whose collection of skills should be utilized to develop the University as well as the East African region.
