By Precious Dennis Freeman
The Adventist University of West Africa (AUWA) which comprises of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea over the weekend inaugurated their first President, Pastor, Doctor Emmanuel G.M. Kollie, at the AUWA Advent Hill with other Presidents from various institutions in attendance in Schiefflin Township on the Robertsfield Highway.
President Kollie, gave thanks to his people for electing him as the very first Liberian President of the institution and told them that attitude is the key to success, because Africans are not basically cursed as people suggest. “We are poor because we lack attitudes and the road to follow and teach these principles of working as it is to enrich in developed societies; we are too compensating ready to destroy those who are educated, as long as they are educated we do everything to make them not to succeed so that we remain on the same level of not progressing,” Dr. Kollie stated.
“We are in this state because we see something wrong but we sit down and say let it be; some people will take pleasure in causing destruction, division, criticizing, falsehood and condemning one another and cherish selfishness and enmity,” he said.
According to him there is hope because when AUWA began in 2011, the demography of the students were between the ages 25 to 50 years old men and women who called themselves students, but today they can boast that the demography of the students had changed from 16 to 20 and 21, and on Camp Johnson Road they are always mocked as a bogus university.
“There is hope of shinning brightest within this new quaternion and our administrators shall focus on building a new university system that promotes research and collaborate locally and internationally; we shall build a system of discipline and respect for scholarships; faultiness staff will receive promotion base on just teaching but some research excellence in the faith of learning and work of standing performance writing acceptable community service and delight,” he disclosed.
He also said that they shall develop faculty and staff who are loyal to the Adventist Philosophy of Education which focuses on the historic and development of the person’s physical, spiritual, social and intellectual courses with the intention of redeeming and restoring the image of God. “We shall work to complete the infrastructure on this campus and develop a value-based learning center of excellence. We shall strengthen and collaborate with other higher education institutions to build a capacity for our country,” he stated further.
“The cannon Philosophy of theory is a basic leadership theory for leaders who want to succeed; at AUWA we are on a cannon ride and have a destination; we have the desire to shine brightest; we all in the cannon have a seat and a paddle;, we are all expected to paddle in the same direction not in the opposite direction and it is possible that there are some people who got on the cannon mistakenly are not ready to paddle, “he mentioned.