The Lakeside University College is drawing up comprehensive Rules and Regulations to guide the conduct of life of students and staff (academic and non-academic) on its campus. These are meant to protect the integrity of the Institute, property as well as the welfare and rights of members of its community. There will be appropriate sanctions for violation of these Rules and Regulations, graded according to the gravity of the offence. These will range from warning (verbal/written), withdrawal from LUCG hostel (for those who are in the hostel), exclusion from certain activities on campus (this may include examinations), rustication to outright expulsion.
Before any of the above sanctions can be meted out to any member of the LUCG community, due process will be followed to establish the veracity or otherwise of allegations/charges leveled against them. The individual will be given fair hearing by the Disciplinary Committee and will even have the right to appeal against their sanctions.
The reason for this is that LUCG is training future leaders for this country and the African continent. Its graduates are, therefore, expected to be upright citizens with regard for the rule o flaw and order as well as their moral obligations towards the society. They should not be social-misfits whose overriding ambition is to achieve their selfish interest regardless of the consequences of their acts on the society. They should not see the end as justifying the means.
Students will be expected to have respect for one another. In this regard, the LUCG authority will monitor students’ interaction with one another to ensure there is civility amongst them. The use of foul and indecent language will not only be discouraged, but will also attract sanctions. In addition to this, cases of quarreling, fighting stealing, destruction of one another’s property, etc will be referred to the Disciplinary Committee for due process to be followed and the appropriate sanctions slapped on the culprit.
The academic and administrative staff of the Institute will be encouraged to handle students as they would their own children/wards. Students, on the other hand, are to see the academic and administrative staff as parent is in locus. The role of staff in the Institute will be one of guidance to help bring up the students to become responsible citizens who will be ready to play their expected roles in their communities.
Members of staff are, therefore, not expected to enter into unhealthy relations with students as this would undermine their authority and credibility before the entire student body as well as their peers. In the event that such a relationship is discovered to have been established, the culprits will be dealt with according to the Rules and Regulations of LUCG.
Lecturers are to see students as junior members of the LUCG community and treat them with due respect without necessarily compromising their authority. In the same vein students are to regard the staff as senior members of the LUCG community and accord them the necessary respect. There must be mutual respect between members of staff and students. The use of foul, abusive and provocative language by a member of staff on a student or vice versa is strictly prohibited. The breach of this attracts severe sanctions.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
As a human institution, the LUCG community members will have their fair share of uncertain moments-how to act in particular situations. As much as possible, staff members are encouraged to own up and withdraw from participating in deciding cases in which they have interest. When this done, whatever decision/conclusion the committee arrives at will be seen to be fair and no one will see it as being influenced by the member of staff with interest in the case.
All cases of breaches of conduct will be investigated and dealt with by the Disciplinary Committee. Sanctions will, in the main, be geared towards correction and reforming and not destruction. Sanctions will, therefore, be meted out according to the gravity of the offence. For students sanctions will range from warning-verbal/written, written undertaking to be of good conduct countersigned by a parent, removal from hostel, rustication to outright dismissal from LUCG. As stated earlier, students will always be given the opportunity to appeal against the decision of the Disciplinary Committee.
In the case of infractions by member of staff the same process of investigation by the Disciplinary Committee will be followed and culprits given the appropriate sanctions. These range from warning-verbal/written, withholding of salary for a specified period, suspension/interdiction to dismissal. The affected individual has the right to appeal against the ruling of the Disciplinary Committee.
a) Preamble:
The library is the nerve center of all academic institutions, where students gather information for knowledge. It is the place where students thirsty for knowledge turn to. The Lakeside University College Ghana (LUCG) will operate a temporary library for about one year while the block for the permanent one is being constructed.
The temporary library is located in the Faculty of Engineering block. The library is well lit and well ventilated. It has metallic shelves and spacious reading spaces (within the library and immediately outside it).
The library is currently being manned by one professional librarian assisted by one support staff. The staff strength will be beefed up when students start using it.
b). Mission: The library will support and make it possible for LUCG to realize its mission of “providing quality tertiary education through systematic exposure to research activities……” by providing them with recorded information and knowledge in physical, intellectual and electronic modes.
c). Vision: To become a world-class source of information for all its users.
d) Holdings/Book Collection Policy: The LUCG temporary library is currently being stocked with volumes relevant to all the programmes the institute will be offering. In doing this, LUCG is soliciting for donations from institutions abroad while it is procuring those that readily available in Ghana. With its internet connectivity almost complete, the institute will, in a couple of days, establish an e-library which will enable the users of the library access information outside the walls of its campus and even outside the country.
The library will subscribe for periodicals and academic journals. Plans are underway to link the LUCG library to the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH). CARLIGH was established to develop and undertake resource sharing, to control and reduce information costs, to develop a network of information environment and to share licensing issues with one another. Electronic books and journals will also be made available in the library. The overall objective will be to provide relevant information to its users at the right time. In doing this, the input of lecturers and academic staff will be prime source and faculties will be encouraged to make their students information literates.
e). Arrangements of the LUCG Library:
This will be based on the Library of Congress Classification System. The volumes in the library will regularly updated through direct purchases from bookshops in Ghana, possible donations from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the University of Tanta in Egypt, etc.
f). Opening Hours:
DAYS PERIOD
Weekdays 8.00 am-900 pm
Saturdays 9.00 am-3.00 pm
Conclusion:
LUCG will not spare any effort to make the library a veritable source of information of all sorts. It will ensure that the users of the library will go out better informed than they were before they entered it. It will run induction programmes for the students of LUCG to ensure that they are in tune with the intricacies of library use, and this will include information retrieval through the internet and other electronic modes.
RESEARCH POLICY
As a tertiary educational institution, the LUCG’s core mandate is to search for knowledge and disseminate same to its communities and even beyond. The issue of integrity is held very high in this regard. Originality, creativity, initiative and independence in research will, therefore, be encouraged and nurtured. In this regard the use of other people’s research findings by students without due acknowledgement will not only be unacceptable, but will attract very severe sanctions, which may even involve the grading down of the offending student in that particular work or cancellation of the work altogether, depending on the seriousness of the crime of plagiarism committed In this information technology age, the tendency for some students to copy material from the internet and present them as their own cannot be over ruled. Lecturers and supervisors of assignments and Project Works/ Long Essays will, therefore, be very vigilant and look out for tell-tale signs of this type of intellectual dishonesty.
Intellectual advancement in every sphere of knowledge demands unalloyed honesty. It is possible for a student to contribute to knowledge by building on the foundation already established by another, but the contribution of the earlier researcher must be acknowledged in the clearest and unambiguous terms. Plagiarism is an affront to academic life and will be dealt without mercy. This fact will be drummed repeatedly into the heads of all students who accept admission into the LUCG.
POLICY ON INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL MODERATION OF EXTERNAL EXAMINATIONS
Examinations, for a very long time to come, will remain one of the most credible modes of assessing the level of students’ understanding of lessons taught. At the Lakeside University College, Ghana (LUCG) the process of examining students will be given serious attention. A second and independent opinion at all stages of the process will, therefore, be sought and followed to the letter. Moderation is important in assuring that examiners apply marking criteria consistently, and that there is a shared understanding of the academic standards students are expected to achieve. It is essential that marked coursework and examination scripts are properly scrutinized in order to ensure that staff, students, external reviewers external partners and stakeholders (and the wider public) can have faith and confidence in the marks awarded and the awards conferred on students.
The aims of moderation of examination are to:
Provide a reliable check that assessment has been marked in accordance with the aims and learning outcomes of the assignment and according to marking criteria.
a) Ensure that teaching and marking criteria have been applied consistently within programmes and faculties and across the whole institute and,
b) Ensure equality and thus fairness of treatment for students
The process starts with the setting of examination questions through the actual writing of the papers to the marking of the scripts and publishing/release of the results.
i. Setting of questions:
This will be done by the course lecturer according to the course structure and topics covered within the period under consideration and according to departmental directives.
The questions will, thereafter, be submitted to the Head of Department, who will together with the Dean of the Faculty, moderate them and forward them to the External Moderator with the course structure, course details and marking schemes.
The suggestions/comments of the External Moderator will be taken on board in coming out with the final questions for the examination.
ii. Conduct of examination:
The actual writing of the examination is equally important in the process and as such LUCG will ensure that this process will equally be monitored/moderated. The examination time-table will be made available to the External Moderator to enable him/her visit the examination center to see if the right seating arrangements and conducive examination atmosphere have been provided for the process.
iii. Marking of scripts:
Lecturers will mark the examination scripts of their courses and submit the marked scripts to the Head of Department who will review them with the Dean and forward them to the External Moderator. The results of the External Assessors review of the work will be incorporated in the award of marks to the students in the course.
INTERNAL COURSE ASSESSMENT POLICY
Assessment methods help the instructor to know if the required learning has taken place or not. Information gathered in this step is critical in course development and can be in two forms: direct measures of student learning and indirect measures. Direct measures provide observable evidence of students’ level of learning. On the course level this may include homework, quizzes, prelims and exams, reports and term papers student research projects, case study analysis, rubrics for oral and other performances Indirect measures do not directly measure student learning but are intended to provide additional necessary information to the determine to the relative quality of the learning experience. Example of indirect measures include course evaluations, student surveys, course enrollment information, focus groups, alumni surveys, graduate school placement rates.