Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu, FGA
Vice Chancellor’s Welcome
A warm welcome to you as you visit and explore our website and all the information available about Central University (CU).
Established as an educational initiative of the International Central Gospel Church in 1988, Central University started out as a Pastoral Training Institute. In 1993 it became the Central Christian College. It received Institutional Accreditation to offer tertiary programmes in 1998; at which point it became Central University College with affiliation to the University of Cape Coast. It gained Presidential Charter and became an independent University in 2016 and was renamed Central University.
We are one of the leading Christian Universities in Ghana and firmly believe that our faith in God and the Holy Scriptures positions us to deliver on our mandate to train leaders who will be ethical, transformative, professional and able in their chosen fields of endeavour.
Since our first Congregation of 2002, we have graduated over 25,000 students. These have obtained qualifications in Business, Theology, Social Sciences and the Sciences. We have 32 undergraduate; 9 diploma and 23 postgraduate programmes, with instruction taking place on three campuses: Miotso (main campus), Accra (city campus) and Kumasi. Instruction is delivered through weekend, day and evening modes using a policy of blended learning 60/40 in favour of face-to-face.
Over the years, Central University has been a trail blazer in many areas within the private Higher Education arena in Ghana. We ‘democratized’ HE by setting up the worker-friendly Mataheko programme. With instruction in the evenings and weekends, our approach helped many people obtain degrees and paved the way for several other private operators to enter the market. In 2007 we opened what us perhaps the largest integrated campus of a private University in Ghana when we moved to the Miotso Campus on the Tema-Aflao Road. From 2007 to 2010 we launched a series of science programmes: Nursing, Physician Assistantship and Civil Engineering; and became the only other University in Ghana offering Architecture. With over 180 faculty, we have over the years spent considerable sums of money supporting faculty to obtain much needed PhD qualifications. This has yielded fruit and we now have over 30% of faculty holding terminal degrees. These faculty, supported by 160 administrative staff deliver our programmes through our:
- Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
- Central Business School
- Faculty of Law
- School of Pharmacy
- School of Medicine & Health Sciences
- School of Engineering & Technology and
- School of Architecture & Design
Central University operates in the fecund but challenged Ghanaian and larger African context. Ours is a land and continent of much opportunity and potential but constrained by behavioural, governance and limitations of political and institutional leadership. We believe therefore that our mandate is to operationalize our Christian faith and energise our students to think and engage with the realities of our context.
We believe our mandate is to drive our students to be community conscious, faith driven and become God-inspired game-changers for humanity. We are confident that wherever our graduates find themselves: in government, business, ministry, community, medicine, science, the law, general administration: they will deploy behaviours and solutions that will benefit society.
Through our International Programmes Office, Office of Institutional Advancement, Careers and Counselling Services, we are driving our agendas for international connections and partnerships, industry linkages and guidance services for our students and community. Our School of Graduate Studies and Research coordinates graduate programmes as well as research initiatives. We are keen to engage the current and emerging issues of climate change, SDGs, responsible government, community, diversity and inclusion and values-based faith as fundamental pillars of our role in society.
We welcome to you to peruse these pages. If you are a potential student, go beyond the review of our website and get in touch with our Admissions Office or the Dean of the Faculty/School where the programme you are interested in resides. If you are a potential employee, do take the next step and remember we have a charge to keep and a calling to fulfil – ours is not only about the pecuniary benefits of work but the potential impacts and lives we may transform. If you are a potential partner or collaborator, our doors are open to credible prospects.
We are very much a work in progress, but committed to the highest ideals of faith, integrity and excellence as we engage the business of teaching, research and preparing young minds and hearts for a God-ordained and potentialized future.
Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu, FGA
Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu obtained his PhD (1994) from the University of East London in Organizational Behaviour & International Human Resource Management. He is also a graduate of the Executive Institute of McGill University in Canada (1998) and the DAAD/DIES University of Osnabrueck in Higher Education Management (2012). A product of the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School, Legon, he took his first degree in Psychology from the University of Ghana (1985) and followed with an MSc (CNAA) in Occupational Psychology from the Polytechnic of East London (1990).
He started his teaching career in the UK with a part-time position at the University of East London and later a full time post at the University of Westminster. He later moved in the early 2000s to the University of Ghana. He is a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society with specialization in Occupational and Organisational Psychology.
Prior to appointment as Vice Chancellor in 2017, Professor Puplampu spent more than 16yrs at the University of Ghana (Business School) where he was Head of Department of Organisation & HRM; Chair of the EMBA Programme Committee and Editor of the Business School’s Academic Journal. He was appointed Dean of Central Business School in 2010 and Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs) at Central University in 2015. He has served as external examiner for Rhodes University, University of Pretoria, North West University (all in South Africa) and Makarere University in Uganda. He has been a visiting scholar at the Pan African University in Nigeria and an invited speaker at London Metropolitan University, University of the West Indies and North-West University. He is a member of the Hamburg Global University Leaders’ Council and was elected to fellowship of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
He is passionate about the application of organisational behaviour and psychological concepts to national development, human capital development, corporate governance, and individual dimensions of work life and the leveraging of organisational structures, cultures and processes for institutional growth and efficiency. He has provided advisory services for multinational firms as well as organisational, governance and project assessment assignments in West African countries such as Liberia, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire and served on various Boards and Committees including the National Development Planning Commission, National Insurance Commission and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission. His research has focused on employee motivation, organisational culture, research culture in universities and corporate leadership.
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