Santos Mahung installed as new U.B. president
He took over the post in August, but it was not until this afternoon that Dr. Santos Mahung was officially inaugurated as President of the University of Belize. To celebrate the installation, today the school hosted a number of activities including a symposium on the Guatemalan claim to Belize, a breakfast meeting with the business community, an art exhibition by Carolyn Carr, and the handing over of the Hunting Caye Marine Research Station. We caught up with Dr. Mahung in Belmopan this morning where he told us about his nine-point plan for the institution. At the top of the list are infrastructural development for the four campuses, the addition of new programmes, faculty improvements, and of course, accreditation.
Dr. Santos Mahung, President, University of Belize
“If we are to make the University of Belize one of the more respected smaller universities, we need to improve the standards of learning, we need to improve scholarship and knowledge development, and that’s part of the programme. I hope I will take this university down the road of accreditation. It’s going to be a tough, difficult, often humiliating process, but unless we do that, unless we gain accreditation from the region, we will not be respected.”
“We also need to develop programme which respond to Belize’s needs: marine research, environmental and natural resource management, we need to improve our teacher education programme, our nursing and allied health, our engineering, we need to look at all these programmes.”
“We can’t do this development on the backs of students. We have the lowest fee and tuition rate and yet a lot of people can’t afford it. We charge less than the junior colleges and yet our people can’t afford it. No we can’t, we can’t do that.”
Kendra Griffith
“So students can rest at ease?”
Dr. Santos Mahung
“Certainly, I have no and I have heard absolutely plans for raising fees, it would not be the way to go. … This thing is going to cost about fifty million dollars, U.S., about twenty-five million just for the basic programmes, the kinds of things I spoke about, the library, the student centre, improvements to the campuses, that sort of thing. We are thankful to the government for its donations, but we cannot rely on that for capital development, not this kind of massive development, so we will seek funding. One of the things we’ve already started, and it’s only one of the many, is the establishment of a foundation for the University of Belize. Universities do it all the time, so why aren’t we.”
Other plans include the establishment of a technology and research park, information and computer networking, and video conferencing as a way of taking programmes across the nation toother campuses. Before taking on the presidency of U.B. Mahung served as the Director for Scholarships and Training at the Organisation of American States in Washington, D.C.
