Category Archives: UCU School of Education

Ndishakiye on mission to combat Ugandan illiteracy

November 16, 2023News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of Education, UCU School of LawPatty Huston-Holm

Caleb Ndishakiye, a UCU School of Education alum, poses with children during a school outreach.

By Kefa Ssenoga
When you sit down for a conversation with Caleb Ndishakiye, he does not need to mention his love for literature. His diction validates that. And if you sit with him for a longer time, you also will discover that he has a deep passion for communication, the promotion of literacy and sharing knowledge.

Ndishakiye has been fortunate to earn a living from his passion. His first attempt at teaching was in 2011 during his long holidays after writing his end of Senior Six national exams. An unlicensed teacher, he nevertheless taught literature at Seseme Girls Secondary School and Mutorele Boys Secondary School. Both schools are in Ndishakiye’s native area of Kisoro, southwestern Uganda.

Despite the passion of sharing knowledge, Ndishakiye did not envisage a career in teaching. Early in his secondary education, he developed a love for law, which he applied to study at Uganda Christian University (UCU).

“I wanted to pursue a course in law when I joined UCU, but interestingly, I was admitted for education,” he said. “I decided to pursue it and still be excellent at it!”

Ndishakiye and Patricia on their Dec. 7, 2019, wedding day at Thornycroft Chapel Kyaggwe, UCU.

He has never regretted the idea of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in education. He acknowledges that this move has had a significant impact on who he is now. Ndishakiye began his studies at UCU in 2012 and graduated in 2015. While at UCU, He was in the Honors College.

Barely a year after graduation, Ndishakiye was hired as a teaching assistant in the UCU foundations department. He was primarily teaching writing and study skills, and occasionally teaching in the literature department, particularly course units like the Bible as literature and other English language short courses.

His teaching journey at UCU began in 2016 after returning from a one-year mission and a leadership development program at Nairobi Chapel, Kenya, courtesy of the UCU chaplaincy and the community as a whole.

“UCU, particularly the Thornycroft Chapel, had a partnership with Nairobi Chapel in Kenya, where two missionaries were sent for a program. I was one of the two,” Ndishakiye says.

He was attached to the Teens’ church, which also is famously known as Club Expressions, an experience he says exposed them to an international perspective to life.

In 2018, after two years of teaching at UCU, Ndishakiye got a one-year opportunity to teach English language and Literature in English at Seroma Christian High School in Mukono. He needed more time to attend to his newly found passion for literacy programming and children’s literature through Glow-Lit Uganda, an organization he founded earlier that year. With UCU, he continued to serve until 2020 when Uganda closed schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In August 2020, the Reading Association of Uganda invited Ndishakiye to work on a project that was opening up in Uganda.

“I was invited as the Programs Specialist to support the national technical portfolio of the association, and support the development of storybooks in Luganda and Runyankore-Rukiga,” he said.

He noted that in the role, his other tasks were “establishing libraries in Government primary schools and supporting their management and use, training of teachers and developing materials to support the lower primary school teaching of reading Luganda and Runyankore-Rukiga.”

The Room to Read Uganda project at the Reading Association of Uganda is sponsored by Room to Read, an organization that, according to their website, envisions a world in which “all children can pursue a quality education that prepares them to lead fulfilled lives and make positive change — in their families, communities and the world.”

Working closely with the Ministry of Education and Sports, the project has developed 154 storybook titles, two learner books, and two teachers’ guides in Luganda and Runyankore-Rukiga. It also involves training with teachers, government, publishers, and book value-chain players to build writing, illustration, design, and editing capacity, especially for children’s literature.

Ndishakiye argues that the Ugandan book market has not given sufficient focus to children’s literature. He is now an advocate for quality children’s literature production, distribution and use.

Ndishakiye is the third born of eight children of Richard and Lydia Ndishakiye. He completed his primary education at Muganza Primary School in Kisoro district. He studied O’level at Chahi Seed Senior Secondary School and A’level at Trinity College Kabale. Compassion International, an international charity organization, paid part of his school fees in primary and secondary school. At the university, he says, the charity paid all the school fees.

He is married to Patricia and the couple has a son, Jordan, age two.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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Rev. Dr. Kibbedi gets third degree in literature at UCU

November 8, 2023Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

The Rev. Dr. Abel Wankuma Kibbedi was part of the pioneer class of the PhD in literature course at UCU.

By Kefa Senoga
In 2005, when Uganda Christian University wanted to start a master’s program in literature, the institution sent some of its academics to convince alums they thought would take advantage of the course.

Abel Wankuma Kibbedi, who had graduated the previous year with a First Class degree in Bachelor of Education with English and Literature, was one of the alums approached. At the time, Kibbedi was residing with other undergraduate students in one of the hostels in Kauga, a suburb near UCU’s main campus.

When Prof. Timothy Wangusa, who was among the people overseeing the start of the master’s course at UCU, visited Kibbedi, he advised the latter to leave the hostel where he was residing. At the time, Kibbedi had just been offered a position as a teaching assistant at UCU. Wangusa rhetorically asked Kibbedi if he intended to continue sharing the same space with the students he was teaching.

To follow up on his advice, Wangusa offered Kibbedi, who had taken up the opportunity to enroll for the master’s course, the guest wing at the professor’s residence. Two years later, Kibbedi, who was part of the pioneer class of master’s in literature, was a proud recipient of the postgraduate degree, an achievement made possible courtesy of a scholarship through the staff development committee at UCU.

Again, in 2017, Kibbedi — and two other colleagues — was part of the pioneer class of the PhD in literature course at UCU. And at the most recent UCU graduation held at the Main Campus in Mukono on October 13, 2023, Kibbedi was among the graduates who earned a PhD. Kibbedi’s other two pioneer doctoral colleagues in literature were not present at the October 13 graduation. Mary Naula had already graduated in 2021, while the third PhD student lost her life two years into the course.

Between Kibbedi’s master’s degree in literature and the PhD, he earned another degree — Masters of Divinity and Theology — from the Pennsylvania-based Westminster Theological Seminary.

“While attending a conference in the United States in 2007, Church of Uganda Archbishop at the time, Henry Luke Orombi, asked the president of Westminster Theological Seminary if they would offer a scholarship to a Ugandan student,” Kibbedi said during an interview he granted Uganda Partners after his October 13 graduation.

The answer to Orombi’s question was in the affirmative. However, it was not a direct pass for Kibbedi, whom Orombi had in mind as he asked the question. There had to be interviews for the scholarship, which, fortunately, Kibbedi won.

According to Kibbedi, upon his return to Uganda, with a second master’s degree in the bag, the vice chancellor at the time, the Rev. Dr. John Senyonyi, singled him out among the younger staff for departmental leadership as part of professional development. This is how he assumed the role of heading the Honors College, a position he held from 2012 to 2021.

To make his new master’s degree count, Kibbedi was taken in by the Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology to teach Hebrew and Greek, primarily because the program he had pursued in the US at Westminster had an aspect of the ancient languages. Despite this, Kibbedi notes that he has mainly been involved in teaching literature at UCU.

He is grateful to the UCU administration, without whose support, he says, he would have struggled to achieve anything. For instance, Kibbedi cites the example of UCU first Vice Chancellor Prof. Stephen Noll, in whose tenure the former pursued further studies in Pennsylvania. He said Prof. Noll decided that Kibbedi be left on half pay throughout the duration of his four-year course, as opposed to no pay, because the lecturer “had family members and dependants to take care of.” Kibbedi said the PhD now has buttressed his desire to continue sharing knowledge as an academic.

The achievement of the PhD did not come on a silver platter, though. “My wife had to bear my long hours of reading and absence; she has had to step in for many activities with the children,” the Rev. Kibbedi says.

He is married to Lydia Wankuma Kibbedi who works as an administrator of the Uganda Studies Program at UCU. They have a daughter, Atungonza Wankuma, age 15, and a son, Anunula Wankuma, age 14. Atugonza is in Senior Three at Wanyange Girls School while Anunula is also in the same class, at Busoga College Mwiri, his father’s alma mater. Both schools are found in eastern Uganda.

Kibbedi completed his primary education at Namalemba Primary School in eastern Uganda, before joining Busoga College Mwiri. From Mwiri, he pursued a diploma in education at the National Teachers College Kaliro, before eventually joining UCU.

Kibbedi is number six of a family of 12 children. His father, the Rev. JFJ. Kibbedi Nswemu, a politician and educator, passed away in 1999. He credits his interest in literature to his father. Kibbedi’s mother, Robina Christina Kibbedi, now retired, had a career as a social worker.

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Dr. Ayot researches on fighting domestic violence to empower women

November 6, 2023News, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Dr. Gladys Ayot Oyat celebrates with her husband, Dr. Michael Oyat, after attaining her doctorate during graduation at Uganda Christian University, Mukono campus, on Oct. 13, 2023.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
Dr. Gladys Ayot Oyat’s inspiration to pursue a PhD in Education Administration and Management at Uganda Christian University (UCU) is rooted in her passion for addressing real-world challenges. Her commitment to women’s issues served as a driving force in choosing a research topic focused on the domestic violence impact on female teachers in Uganda.

Ayot’s research explores how domestic violence affects the teaching and administrative roles of female teachers working in secondary schools in Kitgum, northern Uganda.

Dr. Gladys Ayot Oyat, a former member of the governing council of Uganda Christian University, graduated with a PhD in Education Administration and Management on October 13.

Her study found that domestic violence adversely affects teaching roles, leading to poor service delivery, absenteeism, missed lessons, poor preparation, low self-esteem and mental health issues. This likewise negatively impacts women in administrative roles, resulting in reduced work, interpersonal relationships, learning outputs and mentorship. Female teachers employ various coping mechanisms, both informal and formal, but some strategies prove counterproductive. Support for victims is insufficient, hindering their ability to manage these challenges effectively.

Ayot found that the patriarchal nature of Ugandan society determines relationships between men and women irrespective of educational status.

“A lot needs to be done to address this challenge,” she said. “It undermines the laws we have in Uganda entrenched in our Constitution. My disappointment is that even women who are enlightened and educated, conceal what they go through in the name of protecting their marriage, adhering to culture and wanting to remain as role models to the students they teach when they are exposed to domestic violence. Worse still, taking the pain in silence and blaming themselves for the dysfunctional families.”

One moving story she encountered in her research involved a husband forcing his wife to have an abortion.

“This caused post-traumatic symptoms and depression,” Ayot said. “She would (imagine) the crying baby sitting on her lap and crying for help while she was in class teaching.”

With the dissemination of her findings, Ayot aims to encourage female teachers to be open to talking about the problems they go through and seeks for school administrators to support and create favorable conditions for women suffering from domestic violence.

Ayot, who was a member of the governing council of UCU, did her PhD on a modular course, which allowed her to study during the holidays.

She lauded UCU’s academic environment for its unique and supportive characteristics. The university’s modular approach, small class sizes, and strong faculty-student relationships fostered an atmosphere of shared learning and collaboration.

“I thank God that I chose UCU. My supervisor was very supportive; for example, during the Covid-19 pandemic time, he always called to follow up and give me support,” she said. “At the time when public places such as universities were closed as a way of curbing the spread of disease, I utilized the online university library.”

Ayot acknowledged the hectic and difficult journey to a PhD — long hours, rejection of proposals, and balancing social and work responsibilities.

“I was a wife and head teacher of Kitgum YY Okot Memorial College (2002-2022),” she said. “I had social responsibilities that I couldn’t ignore. At some point, I wanted to give up; for example, when I was working on chapter three of my research and my supervisor kept on asking me to redo it.”

However, her unwavering determination and support from her family, particularly her husband, who purchased grammar editing software for her, became pillars of strength.

Ayot said that being 61 years old also motivated her, knowing that she didn’t have as much time as the younger students.

“I told myself that I am not the type who should spend 10 years doing research. I wanted to do it and finish,” she said.

She is married to Dr. Michael Oyat with whom they have four children. She has served in the church as chairperson mothers union and is currently a lay Canon at Kitgum diocese. She studied a Bachelor and Masters in Education at Makerere University. She has served as Vice President, Mothers Union for the Province of Church of Uganda.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities, and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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UCU aspiring leaders get help from F.U.E.L.

August 23, 2023Faculty of Engineering, Design & Technology, Students, UCU School of Business, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Some of the 25 pioneer members of the First Undergraduate Experience in Leadership (F.U.E.L.) Program

By Irene Best Nyapendi
The Uganda Christian University (UCU) guild government has started a leadership program, seeking to train students in management skills. The program, dubbed “First Undergraduate Experience in Leadership (F.U.E.L.) Program,” has been implemented at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), Fordham University (New York) and Ohio State University, among other higher education institutions. .

“This program has given me confidence in the future of UCU,” said Timothy Ddumba, Mukono Campus Guild President. He believes F.U.E.L. will birth top-notch leaders while closing the gap of mentorship from one guild government to another.

“It is possible [for other guild governments to adopt the program] because the students trained might be part of the next leadership,” he said of the eight Saturday sessions with 25 student participants in June and July 2023. “The impact it creates could inspire the need to sustain it.”

UCU Guild president Timothy Ddumba addressing students during one of the F.U.E.L. sessions

The free mentorship and training program is meant for students who are interested in student leadership, especially those who are already leaders in the guild government.

Melissa Kamikazi Nsaba, the guild vice president, and Christy Asiimwe, the minister for presidency, are program leaders.

Asiimwe, a student in the School of Education, said the vision of the program is to be a foundation of transformational leaders who champion and spread the core values of UCU.

“One of the reasons why we started this program is to nurture transformational leaders who are ready to transform the university and the world in a Christian way,” she said.

Unlike F.U.E.L. implemented at secular universities, the UCU program looks at nurturing and equipping students with leadership skills grounded in Christian values. It is hoped that the classes will ignite leadership potential and empowerment among the students.

“I believe this program is good for the students because it helps them improve their managerial skills and abilities as future leaders, achieve better project leadership and improve risk management,” Asiimwe said.

She explained that by equipping and training those who wish to lead, those who vote them into power or are under their command are less likely to suffer the consequences of unsatisfactory and inadequate leadership.

Emmanuel Golyo, one of the beneficiaries of the program and a student of a Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Technology, said he was taught what it takes to be a good leader. “I learned to understand and embrace the dynamics of the university and discovered how I can best serve to my fullest potential,” he said. He said the program helped him clarify his leadership and vision of self holistically.

During the course of the training, different speakers were invited to coach and mentor the trainees, speaking from real-life experiences.

Golyo said the program gave him a platform to understand the importance of team building and group motivation. “During each session we had a number of physical and interactive activities that nurtured in me the spirit of working with others on a project,” he said.

Mary Mangadalene Namwanje, a second-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration, explained that the sessions enlightened her on how to be a problem solver as a leader. She learned the characteristics of a good team and how to build it.

Namwanje is now knowledgeable about governing authorities, hierarchy and bureaucracy.

“Through the sessions I attended, I learned how to deal with different authorities, conflict resolution and decision making,” she said.

The students trained in effective communication, branding and documentation as well as public speaking.

“While attending one of the sessions, we heard testimonies from former guild officials. One of the things they shared was how to balance life, responsibilities, relationships and work,” Namwanje said.

The students also were taken through lessons on discovering themselves in leadership.

The F.U.E.L. Program is one of the pledges the guild president wrote in his manifesto on creating an environment to nurture future leaders. The seminars were sponsored by the guild budget.

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Vice Chancellor’s wife mentors students toward meaningful lives

August 21, 2023Students, UCU School of Business, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Some of the students who attended the inaugural May “Talk to Mama Pesh” mentorship forum pose for a photo with their mentors, including Mama Pesh.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
Should I get into a serious relationship now? Is it the right time to get married? How do I know if I have the right partner? How do I know if I am in a bad relationship? What about sex? How do I achieve academic excellence with all these pressures? How do I grow my career?

Patience Rubabinda Mushengyezi, fondly known as “Mama Pesh” (short for Mother Patience), has been guiding Uganda Christian University (UCU) on these topics and more during monthly forums since May 2023. The monthly “Talk to Mama Pesh,” sessions are designed to be open, honest and informal.

Patience Mushengyezi addressing students during the first “Talk to Mama Pesh” forum. She was with fellow mentors Faith Musinguzi (left) and Jolly Kavuma.

Mama Pesh, wife of Vice Chancellor Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi for 26 years, has been working with university students for over 20 years. She has nurtured over 12 non-biological children from childhood to graduation. She is a premarital counselor for young couples, mentor for young adults and leader at church. She is a mother of four. She is a Deputy Registrar at Makerere University,

“I developed a passion to talk to university students about values and morals to help open their eyes on things that can destroy their lives,” she said. “These are issues such as addictions, which lead to mental challenges and failure to complete their studies.”

Mama Pesh said that she was further inspired by the Bible, in the book of Daniel 1:8, “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself…”. Mama Pesh acknowledged that vices of drug or substance abuse, sexual immorality, wrong relationships and unwanted pregnancies are not limited to secular universities.

“I love the UCU motto of ‘Centre of Excellence in the Heart of Africa’ because my desire is to have academic excellence with values,” she said. “I am passionate about all students, both male and female. When we talk to them, they grow into responsible citizens, wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and have strong Christian families in the future.”.

Students discuss among themselves before the question-and-answer session with mentors at a “Talk to Mama Pesh” session.

One of the goals of the forum is to provide young people a platform to be mentored into leaders of today and tomorrow. The forum is meant to be “a secure space where young people can discuss freely with mentors about issues that affect their academic, social and spiritual lives.”

Mama Pesh emphasized that the end goal is to see that students achieve academic excellence with values. She also provides a safe space for the students that would like to share with her privately away from the presence of their colleagues.

Mama Pesh does the mentorship in partnership with the office of the Vice-Chancellor, Directorate of Students’ Affairs, the Chaplaincy, Counseling Unit and the Guild. In addition, she invites experienced counselors and mentors for the forum. The value of peer mentors is learning from someone who has more recently been where they are.

The forum has become a beacon of inspiration in the lives of UCU students.

Jackson Leoru, a second-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with Education, found the forum beneficial because it helps students prepare to be adults. “Through the forum, I got guidance to make healthy choices that create a positive impact in my life in school and in relationships,” he said.

He said he will pass along to others such learning as relationships need patience and prayer. “I learnt that sometimes you may see someone and think he or she is the one meant for you, yet they are actually not the ones, so we need to pray about it and also be patient.”

Natasha Alinda poses for a photo with Mama Pesh after one of the sessions at UCU main campus in Mukono.

Natasha Alinda, a third-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Finance, said the program is a good foundation upon which a student can build themselves “in order to be first and foremost a very good child to their parents, a very good student in school, and a good citizen in their nation.”

Through the forum, Alinda (a residential assistant at the female’s main university hall) has discovered the value of intentionality and self-worth. “I learned to value myself and carefully choose the people I associate with as well as the friends I make,” she said.

She adds that as a student, the talks have taught her to schedule and maneuver around student leadership, friendships and education.

“I am so grateful to Mama Pesh for sparing time amidst her busy schedule to talk to us and hold our hands through this journey of life at no cost because so many people are charged to get such guidance,” she said.

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UCU Arua campus hits 20-year milestone

August 11, 2023Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, News, Students, UCU School of Business, UCU School of Education, UCU School of Social SciencesPatty Huston-Holm

UCU Vice Chancellor Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi waters a tree planted at the UCU Arua campus during a visit in July

By Pauline Luba
From a trade school to a lay readers training college and now part of the Uganda Christian University (UCU) family, the Arua campus has shown a marked growth in both enrollment and importance to the community in the northwestern part of Uganda.

This year, the UCU Arua Campus marks 20 years of being part of the UCU family and 64 years of being a training institute. Before the campus was made a theological college and part of UCU in 2003, it was offering diploma and certificate courses in theology and also training Lay Readers in the region. However, in 1959 when it was established by the African Inland Mission under the leadership of its first principal, the Rev. Robert Booth, the institution was named the Rural Trade School.

When UCU took over the facility, it had four departments — Theology, Business Administration, Social Sciences and Education — all offering bachelor’s degrees. The facility also had 80 students and 27 staff. However, 20 years down the road, the four departments have still been maintained, but with an increase in student enrolment to over 650 and about 100 staff members.

UCU has since constructed a multipurpose hall, which also doubles as the University Chapel. Another building is the library and a block for lecture rooms to accommodate the increasing number of students. University education at the facility has been decentralized to train the much-needed human resource in the districts at more affordable rates.

In July, UCU Chancellor, who is the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Uganda, the Most Rev. Dr. Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu visited the facility, located in northwestern part of Uganda, for the first time as its chancellor, during one of the campus’ activities to mark 20 years.

UCU leadership, led by the Chancellor, His Grace Kaziimba Mugalu (center), at the celebrations in July

UCU Vice Chancellor Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs) Assoc. Prof. John Kitayimbwa and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Finance and Administration) David Mugawe, were among the team that went with Kaziimba to Arua. While welcoming Kaziimba, the UCU Arua Campus Director, the Rev. Julius Tabbi Izza, said that he was optimistic for future opportunities of development for the campus.

He said the campus had become a home to a number of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic due to their huge presence in the region. Last year, the campus won a regional award as the best higher institution of learning in West Nile for 2022. The criteria for selecting the awardees involved assessing their economic sustainability, operational effectiveness, level of technology adoption, progressive leadership and culture, as well as social and community contribution, commitment and perseverance.

The campus, however, still faces a major challenge of threats on its land. Izza said that the about 100 acres that the facility sits on are under threat from some individuals in the community. Izza, therefore, asked for the process of transferring the land title from the particulars of the African Inland Mission to the trustees of the Church of Uganda or UCU to be expedited.

Among the plans in the pipeline is elevating the campus into a constituent college, a massive student recruitment strategy expected to garner 1,000 learners by next year, beautification of the environment and infrastructure, implementation of the multi-billion masters plan project, development of an endowment project and a staff recruitment plan as well. To achieve the intended plans, Izza argued that unity among the key stakeholders will be crucial.

Jimmy Siyasa, the UCU Public Relations Officer, said there was hope that the Arua campus would morph into a fully-fledged college sooner than later. “In short, there is much to hope for,” Siyasa said.

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‘If God gave his only son, we can give this’

July 31, 2023News, UCU Alumni, UCU School of Education, UCU School of LawPatty Huston-Holm

Some primary students being served by Teach for Uganda fellows in Mayuge District

Text by Patty Huston-Holm, visuals by Irene Best Napendi
Daphine Oitamong talks about Sophie who walked to school two kilometers (1.3 miles) barefooted with rat bites on her heels. Nannyanga Restetuta talks about Dora who went from “jolly and active” to being withdrawn after her parents left her in the care of a sexually abusive uncle. Nancy Ongom, who mentions the name Jafa, grapples to pick just one.

There are so many.

Daphine, Nancy and Restetuta, who prefers the name Resty, are Uganda primary school teachers with over 100 students per class. While they barely know each other and work in different schools, the young women share the distinction of being Teach for Uganda fellows, having Uganda Christian University (UCU) degrees and owning a passion to serve “the least of these,” as they know from Matthew 25:40.

UCU School of Education alum, Daphine Oitamong, with one of her students and the custodial grandmother

The three UCU alum are among 226 men and women engaged in two-year fellowships helping the poorest of the poor ages 4 to 10 in Uganda’s Kayunga, Mayuge, Namutumba, Mukono, Buikwe, Namayingo and Bugiri districts, according to Decimon Wandera, who serves as a coach for the fellows.

Charlotte Iraguha, co-founder and managing director for the seven-year-old Teach for Uganda NGO, says there are 40,000 students in 151 public schools where fellows are assigned. Uganda has nearly nine million elementary school children. Charlotte, a former teacher, explained that her organization’s model has government teachers working alongside fellows to build a “full child – not just focusing on grades.” Fellows with degrees in various programs teach children and, as time permits, engage with parents.

“When I first came here, I thought I had arrived in another country,” Daphine said of the primitive, rural Namutumba area of the Kamudooke Primary School where she teaches. “I grew up in Kampala and never traveled here.”

UCU Law alum, Nancy Ongom, teaching Kaluuba Primary students in Mayuge District

Namutumba is more than four hours from Uganda’s capital city as well as four hours from where Resty and Nancy teach in Mayuge district. The often-rugged roads leading to all three schools are lined with brick and mud-and-wattle homes, children carrying jerry cans of water from bore holes and fields of bananas, maize, cassava and sugarcane.

According to Decimon, 70 percent of the fellows stick it out despite that most didn’t grow up the way the schools’ students are.

Resty, 26, and Daphine, 29, who graduated with UCU Bachelor of Arts in Education degrees in 2021; and Nancy, 29, who got her UCU degree in law in 2017, are part of the retention group. For them, what started out as sh550,00 ($150) per month for a job vs. no job at all has become a mission for positive change and a reminder of the biblical lessons from UCU.

UCU School of Education alum, Nannyanga Restetuta, teaching English

Quoting Luke 6:38 “give and it shall be given unto you,” Nancy said she interprets that verse to include love, compassion and skill that could break the cycle of poverty she sees every day. She entered her teaching post at Kaluuba Primary School with no formalized pedagogical training but a drive to “go deep in humanitarian action,” to challenge herself and to learn what she could from trained government teachers.

Resty and Daphine applaud the teacher training that came with their undergraduate degrees, citing the value of psychology, discipline and teaching methods they gleaned from the classroom. At the same time, they point out practical experience gaps – especially when working with children in high-poverty, rural areas. These children come to school dirty and hungry or not at all as they are needed at home to plant and harvest food. One frequently absent student explained that her belly is full if she climbs a tree to eat mangos near her home but empty as she sits at a desk at school.

“The school provides porridge as the main food for children during lunch but only for those whose parents can afford to bring some maize so we still have a lot who go the whole day without a meal,” Nancy said. “It breaks my heart.”

Resty and other teachers at Kigandaalo Primary School, start each day with a 7:45 a.m. hair, teeth, body, clothing cleanliness check. Discovery of lice means the child goes home.

“Many days, it helps to remember the servanthood, diligence and Christ-centeredness that was part of our UCU character building because that is what we do,” Resty said. “At the same time, I see now that our university life was too soft. We weren’t prepared for work this hard.”

Hard means understanding a non-native language from children and parents with little to no knowledge of English in a country with as many as 70 different dialects. Resty and Daphine have Luganda mother tongue in schools with children speaking Lusoga and Ateso, respectively. Nancy, who speaks Acholi from her native Gulu, is surrounded daily by indigenous Lusoga speakers.

“Every child is capable of learning,” says Uganda Christian University (UCU) alum, Nancy Ongom. This video, shot on July 10, 2023, gives a snapshot of how UCU graduates are teaching Uganda’s most economically disadvantaged children through a program called Teach for Uganda. (https://www.teachforuganda.org)

Dr. James Taabu Busimba, Head of the Department of Literature and Languages, UCU School of Education, agreed with the value of academic application in real-world contexts. “Knowledge gained is as useless as pride if filed away and never applied,” he said, repeating a quote often attributed to several writers and politicians.

On one day in July, Resty was using phonics and memorization to teach English while Nancy was teaching numbers and how to add them together. Crammed at desks in the two school locations, children were sounding out the words “poison” and “chicken” for Resty and adding the numbers three and four to equal seven for Nancy.

For the three UCU teaching alum, the work doesn’t end with a school day among small children. Their afternoon hours may find them seated with a child’s custodial parent, helping the secondary girls make and understand how to re-use sanitary pads, preparing lessons for the next day and fundraising. Using their UCU alum network, they have raised money for food and clothing for their neediest schoolchildren.

“I learned the value of helping others through UCU’s Save the Buddy program,” Daphine said. “At UCU, we would be looking around, especially at exam time, to see if we had extra money to help classmates pay fees so they can sit for exams.”

According to Daphine, Nancy and Resty, living amongst latrines, filth and dust and the challenged home lives of the children seated before them contains many life lessons and reminders of how Jesus might have lived.

Like Jesus, Daphine feels she is going deep and “testing my strength.” Resty believes that the work in the schools, no matter how difficult, is preparing them for other opportunities. Most days, the three are exhausted but ready to give more.

“If God gave his only son, we can give this,” Nancy said.

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UCU Mbale Campus gets new principal

July 12, 2023News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Erisa Kigenyi, the new principal of UCU Mbale University College.

By Pauline Luba
Dr. Erisa Kigenyi Mazaki, the new Principal of the Uganda Christian University (UCU) Mbale University College, was twice “acting” in the role over the past five years.

In August 2018, he joined the institution as a full-time staff member. Just four months later, the UCU Vice Chancellor at the time, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, shocked Kigenyi by appointing him the acting principal of the college. The position holder at the time had retired.

“I was shocked because I thought there were more capable people than I was,” Kigenyi, an ardent teacher, said. “I was wondering why I had been tasked with the responsibility.”

Kigenyi was the acting principal until March 2019, when Mrs. Mary Gichuki Manana joined the college as the substantive head. Again, last year, when the position fell vacant in November, Dr. Kigenyi was appointed in acting capacity.

In June 2023, the month when Kigenyi was celebrating 50 years of age, he received a notification that he had been appointed as the college’s substantive principal.

For now, his eyes will be focused on ventures to improve the state of the infrastructure of the college, located in Mbale city, eastern Uganda. With improved infrastructure, there is hope that the enrollment and welfare of students at the college will improve.

Last year, the college launched a fundraising drive to raise money for the expansion of the institution’s infrastructure. At the event, more than sh240million (over $64,000) was collected in cash and pledges. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who was represented at the function by Mbale Resident District Commissioner, Mr. Ahamada Washaki, pledged sh200million (about $53,000).

Should any challenges surface during Kigenyi’s tenure as principal, he feels assured of victory. He says his armor is Psalm 121:1-3 “I look up to the mountains, does my help come from there? My help comes from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth. He will not let you stumble; the One who watches over you will not slumber.”

To deliver results in his new position, the father of three boys and one girl hopes to rely on his ever-present and supportive wife, Janet Kigenyi, in affairs of the home. Her management of family affairs enables him to have a peace of mind at work.

Born in 1973 to Mr. Nsangi Amunoni and Annet Nasiyo, Kigenyi had 10 siblings – three boys and seven girls. He attended North Road Primary School in Mbale city for his primary education and then Bukedi College Kachonga from Senior One to Senior Five. He was unable to return to the school for Senior Six because his father faced financial hardships and could not afford to pay the tuition. Kigenyi was then enrolled at Mbale Progressive School, where he completed Senior Six, emerging as one of the best candidates in the national exams.

The top performance earned Kigenyi a government sponsorship for a Bachelor of Arts with Education at Uganda’s Makerere University. In 1988, Kigenyi graduated as a teacher. Soon after, he teamed up with two colleagues and they started their own school, Mbale Comprehensive High School, where he is still a director. He says teaching and molding students into useful citizens is a satisfying experience.

“Students are the reason teachers like me exist,” he said.

In November 1998, he joined Mbale Secondary School, where he taught until 2012. Here, he was a classroom teacher before being promoted to the position of head of the history department. He was also appointed as the chair of the staff of the Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOS) and patron of student leaders in a school of over 4,000 students.

In 2005, Kigenyi joined UCU for post-graduate studies, graduating in 2007 with a Master of Science in Human Resource Management in Education. In 2010, he enrolled for a Post-graduate Diploma in Public Administration and Management at Uganda Management Institute, graduating with a first class in 2011. Two years later, Kigenyi went back to school, enrolling for a PhD in Management Science at Mbarara University of Science and Technology. He graduated in 2017.

Before joining UCU as a full-time staff member in 2018, Kigenyi served the university on a part-time basis for seven years, up to July 2018.

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New students applaud UCU’s curriculum, technology, values, safety

June 23, 2023UCU School of Education, UCU School of Law, UCU School of Medicine, UCU School of Social SciencesPatty Huston-Holm

Some of the nearly 4,000 new and continuing students getting registered for the Trinity intake at the main campus in Mukono.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
Roughly 2,165 first-year students were enrolled at Uganda Christian University (UCU) at the start of the Trinity semester that kicked off on May 2. The freshmen, who were visibly thrilled to be accepted, joined over 1,761 continuing students at the Centre of Excellence in the heart of Africa.

New students starting their university education at UCU and continuing students who went for holidays in April (short holiday) and January (long holiday) appeared glad to resume their academic journey. Freshmen and their parents expressed appreciation for security and safe water, among other aspects of UCU.

The programs at UCU are offered in three intakes: Easter (students report in January), Trinity (May intake) and Advent (starts September). More than 11 undergraduate programs wee available for the Trinity intake. These included schools of law, education, medicine and social sciences. Seven of these Trinity 2023 intake students provided comments.

Majorine Narwambala, pursuing Bachelors of Law, hails from Kasubi-Makerere in Kampala. She selected UCU over universities closer to her home.

“I am very excited to be admitted to UCU, one of the most prestigious universities in Uganda,” she said. “I was inspired by my brother who studied from here. I am also pleased with the way UCU kept us updated online – they always updated us on Twitter.”

Lucky Opwonya, a first-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering and environmental engineering, is likewise following in the footsteps of his elder brother, who assured him that he would never regret studying at UCU.

“I heard a lot about UCU from my brother who was here for a bachelor of procurement and logistics in 2022, and I hope to see the good things he told me about,” said Opwonya, who is looking forward to living on campus, as is expected of

all first-year students.

Martina Mary Mugabi, who was admitted for a diploma in business administration, was impressed by the warm hospitality during registration. She said the staff were very helpful and friendly in ensuring her
Martina Mary Mugabi, a first-year student admitted for a School of Business diploma in business administration.

documents were in order.

“I was so happy to receive calls and emails from UCU as a follow-up on my application process.,” Mugabi said.

Dorcus Kwagala Natabo, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, was inspired by her parents who work at UCU as well as by the university’s focus on Christian values.

I hope to join the choir,” she said.

Walter Bwambale heard about how good UCU was when a lecturer visited his high school (St. Mark Senior Secondary School). He spent over six hours on the road to reach UCU to study a Bachelor of Law.

“I traveled from Kasese, western Uganda, to come to UCU, and I am glad I don’t have to suffer looking for where to sleep because I will be staying in the university hall of residents,” he said.

Esther Twikirize, a second-year student (Bachelor of Law) is happy to be back for Trinity semester after breaking off in November last year. “I was missing my friends and WiFi while I was at home,” she said.

UCU’s main campus has 75 percent WiFi coverage in addition to its 10 computer laboratories mainly for teaching and research purposes. Twikirize also is happy about the opportunity to worship during Tuesday and Thursday services.

Emmanuel Gerald Abura, a second-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Social Work and Social Administration, from Lira, northern Uganda, praised the green and beautiful environment. “Some of us joined UCU because of its appearance,” he said.

Abura, who still stays in the university hall on campus, said the residency has made it easy for him to attend classes and save him from spending time and money on transport.

“Unlike outside the university, where sometimes there’s no power, at campus, we always have power which helps us read even when there is a blackout,” he said.

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Education Lecturer Attributes UK Contributor and UCU for Success

May 10, 2023Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

By Irene Best Nyapendi
Coming from a humble background with a peasant father, Patience Akampurira had no hope of joining a university after completing A’ level in 1998. It was like a dream and yet an answered prayer when her father, a very committed Christian and a canon in the Church of Uganda heard about Uganda Christian University (UCU) and how it offered other programs apart from theology. Her father quickly sent for the application forms, and she was offered an opportunity to study for a Bachelor of Arts concurrent with a Diploma in Education (BAED).

The added blessing is that her father’s friend from the United Kingdom – a woman who had visited their church in Uganda – offered to pay her tuition for the three years. Akampurira says Alexandria Mynors and her family changed her life through a donation of about £50 (about $62) each month. The sponsorship saved her from worrying and reinforced her determination to focus on her studies and excel.

Akampurira joined UCU for her undergraduate studies in 1999. Hard work yielded a high-level, “second upper” for Patience. No sooner had she completed her Bachelors of Arts in Education in 2001, than she was retained by the university to work as assistant lecturer. She was an assistant lecturer for over 10 years. She loved the emphasis on Christian values that UCU imparted to the students.

“When I was at UCU, a lot was instilled in us such as discipline, Christian morals, conduct, commitment to God, prayer, love and care for one another,” says Akampurira, who is now a lecturer at Cavendish University Uganda. “I also remember indecent dressing at that time was prohibited. This modeled us to be the responsible people that we are today.”

Akampurira is still guided by those principles at work and her day-to-day life. She stands out as an excellent teacher: committed to work, very organized and disciplined – traits she learned at UCU. For her, the quality of education UCU offers distinguishes young professionals from other institutions.

“Most of my fellow alumni are very responsible people holding high positions of leadership and management in various organizations, government and politics because of how UCU modeled us,” she says.

Akampurira is a proud alumnus and holds good memories of the Christian university that helped make her who she is today.

“It was indeed a blessing and great opportunity to have had a chance to be trained at UCU with a holistic education that is transformative, employable and entrepreneurial and to start my career there,” she said. “This was possible because someone was kind and generous enough to pay my tuition and support me in all ways.”

It was Mynors and her family (which has many professional teachers) who inspired Akampurira to become a teacher. Mynors invited her to the UK for an experience of a lifetime – teaching in a UK school in 2002.

“It was a life changing experience being with someone with a golden heart; her invitation filled me with indescribable joy,” Akampurira says. When she returned, she was a better teacher and resumed teaching at UCU and also was coordinator for professional and continuing education at the education department.

“My life has been a success by God’s grace in that I got a sponsor from senior one till university. Immediately I completed my undergraduate degree, I got a job at UCU, then pursued a Master’s degree at Makerere University, all sponsored by Mynors,” she said. “And three years ago, I won a prestigious scholarship from the Gerda-Henkel Foundation to do a PhD, which I completed last December.”

Akampurira, who also is a mother of three daughters, is thrilled about the UCU 10K campaign, which is an innovation of sponsoring needy students.

“I would urge any student who is lucky to get a sponsorship opportunity to use it to the best of their ability and excel,” she said. “A little dollar can change a life and even change the life of those around them.”

Akampurira recommends students to consider attaining their university education at UCU because the Christian institution offers all-round training.

“My story started from UCU, which gave me an opportunity to develop my career and a chance to progress in the field of academia,” she says.

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New education dean: ‘I see it as a calling from God’

January 4, 2023News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Mary Kagoire (left), the newly appointed Dean of the School of Education at UCU, with Nassaka Olivia Banja, the predecessor of the former.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
When Mary Teophira Kagoire Ocheng applied to pursue a course at Makerere University in Uganda, her score in the national exams earned her the Bachelor of Education course toward a career that was not in her vision. Thus, she initially rejected the offer. However, her contemporaries prevailed upon her, and eventually convinced her to take up the course.

It is the fruits of that course that Kagoire has been benefiting from for more than 30 years. The latest in her line of achievements is the August 2022 appointment to the position of the Dean, School of Education, at Uganda Christian University (UCU).

“I’m excited to be the dean,” Kagoire said. “I see it as a calling from God to do His will.”

She considers her appointment as a great opportunity to contribute to the growth of the School of Education and she plans to do this by transforming the school into an icon of student recruitment, enhancing the quality of teachers being trained, and improving research among the faculty.

“As a school, our teaching focuses on the learner, and we follow it up with a lot of learner support in terms of using rich, student-centered approaches,” Kagoire explained.

Kagoire said she sees her new position of Dean as a calling from God.

She takes over office from the Rev. Canon. Assoc. Prof. Nassaka Olivia Bbanja who was recently appointed Vice Chancellor of Ndejje University, also founded by the Anglican Church in Uganda. Faith Musinguzi replaces Kagoire as UCU’s new Head of the Department of Education.

Before assuming the position of dean, Kagoire was the Head of Department in the School of Education and a coordinator of the PhD in Education Administration program. She also served as an academic mentor to PhD students. She praises UCU’s e-learning services, noting that she wants to see the university become an e-campus that is self-sufficient.

She holds the view that students learn on the job as they are sent out to practice what they are taught, noting that being a teacher enables one to gain confidence because of the constant interaction with the learners.

UCU is uniquely poised compared to other universities, Kagoire says. “The working environment at the institution is conducive, unlike the case in other universities, and the students are creative and empowered.”

During her free time, Kagoire plays golf. In fact, she served as lady captain at the Uganda Golf Club from 2016 to 2017.

The 61-year-old, who recently retired from Makerere University, after 27 years of service, joined UCU in 2018. She retired from Makerere University at the position of senior lecturer.

“As soon as I joined UCU, I was assigned to facilitate the curriculum review, and it gave me pride as a curriculum specialist to see all the faculties review their curriculum and have it accredited by the National Council for Higher Education within a short time,” said Kagoire, who earned her master’s in education, specializing in curriculum studies and PhD from Makerere University in 1991and 2003, respectively.

Kagoire’s replacement, Musinguzi, said she is pleased with the former’s style of leadership. “Dr. Kagoire is so approachable, kind and hardworking, and she doesn’t sleep over work; it has to be done immediately and she makes sure she doesn’t leave others behind.”

Jonathan Okello, a student leader in the School of Education, says Dr. Kagoire has already started meeting his expectations by helping students who are missing their marks. “I also hope she can at least help students who are unable to sit for exams because of tuition by sourcing scholarships,” he said.

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Banja narrates how UCU prepared her for greatness

December 26, 2022Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

The Rev. Canon Assoc. Prof. Olivia Nassaka Banja is the new Vice Chancellor of Ndejje University in Uganda.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
Hard work rarely goes unacknowledged. For the Rev. Can. Assoc. Prof. Olivia Nassaka Banja, the sweat that she has been breaking in the academic sphere has yielded results with her appointment to the apex management position of a university in Uganda.

Banja is the new Vice-Chancellor of Ndejje University. Her appointment makes her the third Vice Chancellor of Ndejje, and the first woman to hold that position in the university. Banja was the Dean of the School of Education at Uganda Christian University (UCU) for about a year prior to her new position.

“I’m grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to serve at UCU, where I have been groomed, shaped, mentored and equipped with skills that I am taking with me to serve and lead in another institution,” said Banja, who was head hunted for the position because of her stellar performance and tested legacy as an administrator at UCU.

Banja became the first female dean of UCU’s Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology in 2008 and served in the position till June 2014, when she became UCU’s Director for Teaching and Learning. It was from this position that she switched to head the UCU School of Education as its dean in September 2021.

Formerly Bishop Tucker Theological College, the school, which started in 1913, gave birth to UCU, in 1997. Looking at Banja’s academic journey before becoming the dean of the UCU’s Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, it was evident she was undergoing formative preparation for the big job. For instance, as early as 1993, she was the curate of St Andrew’s Cathedral Mityana Diocese and was made the acting vicar of the same cathedral the following year.

Banja was part of UCU’s inaugural staff members, serving as a lecturer and also the Female Students’ Warden. In 2004, she was promoted to the position of Senior Lecturer. She was part of the team that developed the first PhD program at UCU, the Doctor of Ministry.

The holder of a bachelor’s degree, three master’s and a PhD was ordained deacon in the Church of Uganda on December 19, 1993. She says that the day she committed her life to God was the day she “saw her path.”

Also in 1993, she was a recipient of a First Class in Bachelor of Divinity at the Bishop Tucker Theological College Mukono. In 1996, she earned a Master of Arts in Religious Studies of Makerere University and added another master’s degree, MA, Mission and Ministry of St John’s College, Nottingham University in the UK, the following year.

And Banja was not done yet, with her master’s degrees. In 2000, she earned her third, Master of Theology by Research of the University of Edinburgh. In the same year, she started her PhD course in the same university, graduating in 2004.

As she leaves UCU, Banja looks back with great pride at the first graduation ceremony of the university in 2000. She remembers typing and printing all of her exams before heading to the nearby Mukono town to photocopy because the university did not have such services at the time.

“After all we had done, seeing the university produce its first graduates was a great joy to me,” she said.

For all that the 55-year-old has achieved, she thanks her parents, James Lwanga and Daisy Ndagire. “My father didn’t have gender stereotypes, and he believed in me to be an achiever at a very young age.”

For her primary education, Banja attended Bat Valley Primary School and Nakasero Secondary School for both her O’level and A’level. Both Bat Valley and Nakasero are located in Kampala.

She married the Rev. Canon Venerable Moses Banja in April 2001. Banja says she spends her free time cooking and reading when not busy with academic or religious work.

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UCU’s top two graduates choose teaching careers

December 5, 2022News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Some UCU graduates after receiving their degrees.

By Irene Best Nyapendi
The Uganda Christian University (UCU) top two graduates in October 2022 have a commonality in struggles and interest.

To make ends meet for her family, Candiru Zainab, studying at UCU’s Arua campus, taught at a nearby school, Najah Muslim Secondary School in the northern Uganda district of Arua. To have more chances of getting better-paying jobs, the mother of four children worked toward a Bachelor of Education degree, which she was awarded at the UCU main campus in Mukono on October 28. Candiru was among the 1,570 graduates that day.

Candiru Zainab and Robert Cadribo, the best students.

With a Cumulative Grade Point Average of 4.75 out of 5.0, Candiru was the Best Female Student at the graduation. To her, this feat is nothing short of a miracle, seeing how far the Lord has brought her and with obstacles. In 2009, Candiru lost her husband and father of her first two children to appendicitis, a tragedy with recovery she felt would never come. However, two years later, she thought she found love again. Sadly, that relationship, which yielded her other two children, did not last; it ended in 2016.

During her undergraduate studies, Candiru says she lacked the basic necessities, including 2lst century learning tools. She could neither afford a smartphone nor a laptop. She could neither easily type coursework nor benefit from online reading materials.

Obstacles are likewise part of the story of Robert Cadribo, UCU’s Overall Best Student, who also received a Bachelor of Education degree at the October 28 graduation. Cadribo, who graduated with a 4.86 GPA, says he was financially incapacitated to the extent that he could not afford to photocopy the handouts that lecturers gave out. However, he had plan B. He resorted to borrowing handouts and writing down whatever he considered valuable, before returning them to the owners.

Graduands dressed in newly branded gowns.

Just like Candiru, Cadribo has been earning a living through teaching. As a teacher of Biology and Agriculture at Koboko Town College located in the northern Uganda district of Koboko, Cadribo says he has been earning sh250,000 (about $66) per month.

“The biggest challenge I faced was my family and my studies struggled for the same resources,” he said. “Oftentimes, I gave priority to my studies.”

Candiru and Cadribo were among the 36 students who graduated with First Class at the October 28 ceremony, which was also the apex activity for the silver jubilee anniversary of UCU. Before the graduation, other key activities were held at UCU as part of the celebrations. There was a thanksgiving service on October 23, an alumni homecoming on October 25 and a public lecture on the history of UCU, held on October 26. The public lecture was delivered by former vice-chancellors the Rev. Prof. Stephen Noll and his successor, the Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony that had 828 female graduates of the 1,570, Vice Chancellor Aaron Mushengyezi narrated the history and the success story of UCU in the last 25 years.

“We are forever indebted to the men and women who conceived the UCU vision and those who made it happen, we celebrate you,” he said. “I look at UCU and the institution that preceded it from St. Paul’s imagery of a seed in 1 Corinthians: 3:6-8.”

This year, the university acquired land and a teaching facility at Besania Hill, acquired an official home for the UCU Kampala Campus, constructed a parking lot at Kivengere Building on the main campus and improved walkways around Kivengere and Maari blocks. Mushengyezi also named Prof. Monica Chibita, Dr. Angella Napakol, Dr. Miriam Mutabazi and Dr. Emilly Maractho as some of the UCU academics who either wrote books, published papers or won grants.

The Chancellor, Archbishop Dr. Stephen Kaziimba, urged the graduates to be passionate about what they choose to do.

“If you have a great idea, work at it, don’t give up. The world is currently ablaze with start-ups, which have been initiated by young people,” Kaziimba said, before adding: “Your success shall be measured by the vibrancy and dynamism of your individual ideas.”

The University Council chairperson, the Rev. Prof. Alfred Olwa, reminded the graduates that a graduation ceremony is the “starting point for further achievements,” urging them not to rest on their laurels.

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UCU officially opens writing centre

November 28, 2022News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Prof. Mushengyezi cuts a ribbon to officially launch the UCU Writing Centre. (Photos by Joel Muhuza)

By Nyapendi Best Irene
Uganda Christian University (UCU) has officially launched its writing center, the first of its kind in any Ugandan higher institution of learning. Intended to improve the writing skills of both students and staff, as well as improve the collaboration between writers and tutors, the center, launched on October 10, 2022, is housed at the UCU Hamu Mukasa Library, Mukono.

UCU Vice Chancellor Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi said the center is expected to support all genres of writing. He summed up the latest addition to the 25-year-old UCU as “as a place where you should go to workshop your ideas; to be assisted to improve your draft; and not to edit your work, but rather guide you through the process of revision until you get your work perfected.”

According to Mushengyezi, a student who cannot write well cannot thrive. Writing centers may offer one-on-one scheduled tutorial appointments, group tutoring, or writing workshops. They are maintained by universities or created as part of the writing program to help students find their writing voice and tackle any writing challenge.

The launch of the center, a brain child of Prof. Thomas Deans from the University of Connecticut in the USA, is a dream come true for many creative arts enthusiasts, including Mushengyezi, who hopes to build it further to the level of other writing centers in renowned universities. The center, whose proposal was the centerpiece of Dean’s Fulbright application, has been open and operational since April 2022. A “soft launch” happened on two separate days in August and September 2022 with presentations by American journalists and authors, Alan Johnson and Patty Huston-Holm.

Deans, who was an American Fulbright Scholar in Uganda from August 2021 to February 2022, and Mushengyezi share an affiliation with the University of Connecticut, where Deans is a professor and the director of the writing centre, and Mushengyezi earned his PhD in English. When Mushengyezi first met Deans, the former was an academic at Makerere University.

In Deans, UCU could not have asked for a better person to help them set up the centre. Before joining the University of Connecticut, Deans played a pivotal role in steering a college writing program. He was the Director of College Writing at the Haverford College in Pennsylvania. No doubt he is fully aware of the benefits an institution can reap from a center designed to enhance writing skills. In a November 2021 article, Deans said “students won’t grow as researchers unless they are writing papers that involve sustained research.”

Mushengyezi speaks during the official launch of the writing center in October 2022

He believes that writing is a craft that needs to be exercised. Drawing lessons from his experience at the University of Connecticut, Deans said: “Writing is not something you graduate from; it’s a skill you constantly practice and build.” In a February 2022 podcast, Deans explained the significance of writing centers in higher institutions of learning.

During the launch of the centre in October, Mushengyezi extended an invitation to all interested undergraduate students to participate in an essay writing competition due February 29.

The guest speaker at the event, Hilda Twongeirwe, the Executive Director of Femrite Publications, commended UCU for establishing the center and urged both students and staff to make use of it.

“You cannot be a prolific writer if you are not a prolific reader,” she said. Femrite donated over 100 books to the UCU Writing Center.

Dr. James Busimba, the Head of UCU’s Department of Languages and Literature, where the center falls, said for now, the center is a learning facility and that any ventures to generate revenue for the establishment will be thought about in future.

During the launch, students performed two poems, including How To Eat a Poem by Eve Merriam. The university has committed $10,000 for one financial year to support the writing center, according to Mushengyezi. The Muriel Lile Trust of Fenton, Michigan, USA donated $10,000 to the establishment of the center through the Uganda Partners non-governmental organisation.

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Prof. Wangusa hailed for contribution to literature in Uganda

August 26, 2022News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Prof. Timothy Wangusa gives a speech during the celebration at Makerere University

By Kefa Senoga
A fountain of knowledge. A man gifted with words. A man who can weave words to create a magical appeal. These were some of the descriptions bestowed on Prof. Timothy Wangusa as the academia gathered on July 8, 2022, to celebrate a man who has contributed to Uganda through the spoken and written word.

The event, whose theme was Celebrating Wangusa@80, was convened by Uganda’s Makerere University as part of activities to celebrate 100 years of the university. It also coincided with a celebration of 80 years of the literary giant. Wangusa, a poet and novelist, was born on May 20, 1942.

UCU lecturer Timothy Wangusa has a birthday that coincides with Makerere University’s centenary. The university applauded his service for literature in the country and region during his 80th birthday celebration and the launch of his four books.

Wangusa also is a name known at Uganda Christian University (UCU), where he played a key role in establishing the department of languages and literature in the School of Education. A research fellow at UCU from 2003 to 2005, he was a research supervisor and was instrumental in developing UCU’s Master of Arts and PhD program in literature.

Prof. Timothy Wangusa receives gifts from Makerere University officials on July 8

At 27 years, Wangusa joined Makerere as an academic. Six years down the road, in 1975, he bagged a PhD in literature, becoming the first person to acquire the qualification at Makerere. Six years later, Wangusa became one of the few African professors at Makerere.

Wangusa jokingly refers to himself as the mean point between Makerere University with it’s 100 years of existence and Uganda with its 60 years of independence this year

“If you add 100 years of Makerere to 60 years of Uganda and divide by 2, you get me,” Wangusa explained to the July 8 audience.

Wangusa, who hails from Manafwa district in eastern Uganda, says throughout his teaching and writing career, he has emphasized the mutual importance of the spoken and the written word.

One of his inspirations for the “economy of words,” Wangusa narrates, is when, at the age of 10, he attended Sunday school in the eastern Uganda region of Bugisu, his native area. He says the preacher summed up his message in four words: “Always love one another.” To Wangusa, if anyone practiced the love for one another, they will have obeyed all the Ten Commandments.

As a teacher, he says he found it difficult to teach what he calls the most difficult doctrine to comprehend, the doctrine of the Trinity. He says, in his wisdom, he attempted to define God to his students, by coming up with the Trinity Tree, which he described in a 15-word poem:

The father in the root

The son in the shoot

The spirit in the fruit

Wangusa says that his discovery of the significance of the economy of words has informed his career and he testifies that he has been inspired by words which have guided his humanness of character and style of writing.

“My first novel – Upon This Mountain – could have been four times longer if I had been an expansionist, but I am a ‘compactionist’,” he said. The novel, which is 116 pages, is part of the literature syllabus for many secondary schools in Uganda.

The event at Makerere University also was used to launch Wangusa’s latest books – I Love You, You Beast, a book where he shares reflections on faith and literature from 1969 to 2009; Pathfinders’ Footprints in Modern African Poetry, a collection of poems; Lost in Wonder, his autobiography; and Niyanga Nilaliila, a translated autobiography in Lumasaaba, his native language.

Arthur Gakwandi, a novelist, short story writer, diplomat and Makerere lecturer, said Wangusa creates “cryptic communication, packed with meaning and difficult to comprehend.”

“He can find meaning in simple things,” Gakwandi said. “He can see the supernatural in ordinary things, a tree or object, which most people ignore. He then finds a word to communicate that momentary insight.”

Dr. Susan Kiguli, a poet and senior lecturer of literature at Makerere, said she always thought that great writers were only dead people. So, when she came across poems and novels by Wangusa in secondary school, she had no reason to believe that the professor was still alive.

“However, when I joined Makerere University, I was shocked to learn that Wangusa was one of our lecturers,” Kiguli said. “Being a man of small stature, he did not tower over us. But when he began to speak, he was larger than life. He is small, but carries a mountain of achievements.”

Peter Mugume, a lecturer at UCU, says he first met Wangusa as his undergraduate teacher at Makerere University. He says he later got the opportunity to work with Wangusa as a colleague lecturer in the department of literature at UCU.

Wangusa attended Nabumali High School from 1958 to 1961 for O’level, before joining King’s College, Budo for A’level from 1962 to 1963. From Budo, he joined Makerere University, where he pursued a Bachelor of Arts in English course, and then to the UK’s University of Leeds for a master’s degree in literature.

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UCU embarks on building modern infrastructure, beautification

August 3, 2022UCU School of Business, UCU School of Education, UCU School of Journalism, Media and CommunicationPatty Huston-Holm

A worker at the Bishop Tucker main building.

By Kefa Senoga
Aesthetics is a core design principle. Visually, aesthetics includes factors such as balance, color, movement, pattern, scale, shape and weight. Emotionally, such optics impact attitude that, as in the case of a university, influences work and learning.

Since Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi took over as Vice Chancellor of Uganda Christian University (UCU) in 2020, he has had his eyes set on beautification and improvements. In May 2022, Mushengyezi accelerated the vision to improve both individual safety and sense of well being with a beatification campaign focused on the main campus.

Walkways, parking and painting are being realized at the onset with on-site banking facilities, a first-ever food court and more to come.

Brief look at new touches to a UCU parking area, Bishop Tucker, Nkoyoyo

Eng. David Kivumbi, UCU’s Director of Facilities and Capital projects, has a ringside seat to the activity. As of early August 2022, renovations and additions completed and planned at the Mukono site include:

Nkoyoyo Hall area has a new look with an added balance of greenery and pavement.
Adjacent to the Hall, the building where the worship band holds practices has been refurbished along with the nearby toilets.
The Bishop Tucker building (Principal’s hall) and its executive toilets have been refurbished with paint, updated fixtures and lighting.
Just below Tucker, renovations are planned on a complex that has housed nursing administration, social work and the Standard newspaper.
The building housing the offices of the Directorate of Research, Innovations and Partnerships has been refurbished.
The building that houses the UCU Department of Communication and Public Relations and the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration has had the roof cleaned and building painted, retrofitted, and furnished.
The former Foundations office block near the library is being converted for use by the Computing and Technology department.
Bishop Tucker Road (the murram road below the university) up to Ankrah Road has been improved in order to access the other side of the university premises where the new male halls of residence and the School of Business are being located.
There are plans to work on broken fences and painting to improve the main gate and give a face lift to the eastern side of the campus that includes the Mackay block where the School of Education is located.
At some point, the offices of the Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellors will be re-located together in a new building below the Ham Mukasa library.

“Landscaping is being carried out in preparation for future developments,” Kivumbi said. “We are going to landscape to prepare space for architectural work to begin for the Senate building which is supposed to house offices of all the senior administrators.”

He noted that as renovations, refurbishments and constructions are taking place at the university, lighting of the university campus is being explored.

Workers clean and fix the roof at the former Foundations block that is going to be converted into ICT department offices.

“Right now, we are working on improving the dark spots at night, to put lights in the parking yards, compounds, at the archives building and at the Vice Chancellor’s residence,” Kivumbi said. “We are targeting October, when UCU celebrates 25 years, to finish most of these works.”

UCU ‘s vision statement of becoming a Centre of Excellence in the Heart of Africa is added inspiration for aesthetic change.

At the Kampala campus, the University is refurbishing its new premises and is also constructing a new storied building to act as the main classroom block. The ground breaking for the $703,340 (sh2.5bn) Kampala campus block was done early this year. UCU acquired the land for the Kampala campus in June 2021.

“We are about to reach the topmost floor of the new block and we will begin with the roofing,” Kivumbi said of the three-level building with a basement.

Joseph Kiva, a lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Communication who was a student at UCU from 2007 to 2010, muses that his peers who left 12 years ago and never returned would be amazed by the new UCU appearance.

“During our time of study at UCU, most roads were murram (clay like) in the campus and most of the infrastructure that has been set up like the Noll building, main library, school of journalism offices, basketball court, volleyball courts were not there,” he said. “In fact, during that time we used the current small gate as the main gate.”

Opolot Cuthbert a third-year law student at the UCU says that one of the key things he has observed from the management and administrations that lead UCU, is that they understand the value of infrastructure in a high learning institution. “These kinds of developments create a conducive environment for studying and other student related activities,” he said.

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UCU offers to help primary-secondary teachers upgrade credentials

July 25, 2022Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Chaplains during the workshop in Nkoyoyo Hall.

By Israel Kisakye
Uganda Christian University (UCU) has announced a special, affordable offer for teachers who hold certificates and intend to upgrade to the degree level.

Addressing chaplains of institutions in Mukono Diocese during a workshop in June, UCU Vice Chancellor Associate Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi implored teachers, especially those in Church of Uganda-founded schools and holding Grade Three and Grade Five certificates, to take advantage of UCU’s opportunity to continue their teaching jobs with degrees.

Vice Chancellor Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi addresses chaplains.

“We are preparing a special intake for all teachers, especially those from the Church of Uganda (COU)-founded institutions, starting with the advent intake,” Mushengyezi said. He noted that the institution was considering packaging a more affordable tuition for the teachers, starting in September.

The Grade Three certificate is the lowest qualification for a teacher in primary school in Uganda, while the lowest rank for secondary school teachers is Grade Five. The move by UCU follows a government announcement that it intends to phase out the two teaching qualifications, in preference for holders of the bachelor’s degree in education.

In 2019, Dr. Kedrace Turyagyenda, the Director of Education Standards in Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports, said the policy of phasing out teachers without degrees would be implemented in a gradual manner after discussions with stakeholders to best prepare teachers for the transition, as well as to allow students already enrolled in the certificate-awarding institutions to complete their courses and be supported to upgrade.

At the workshop held in UCU’s Nkoyoyo Hall, Mushengyezi urged the chaplains to ensure that their works show the Christ-centeredness that the church advocates and strengthens the Christian religious education in their schools.

“Make yourselves relevant to the mission of the church,” Mushengyezi told the chaplains. “You are the torch bearers of Christ’s message in the schools, hospitals, and prisons where you work.” The Vice Chancellor told them not to “get tired of spreading the Gospel.”

The workshop was held to equip chaplains with focused training and spiritual support to be able to function in multi-faith contexts. Mushengyezi revealed that the university had approved a special fund to support the work of the mission, evangelism and discipleship.

The Rev. Canon Diana Nkesiga, the Vicar of All Saints Cathedral Nakasero, addresses chaplains.

The Rev. Canon Diana Nkesiga, the Vicar of All Saints Cathedral, Nakasero in Kampala, urged the chaplains to take their profession as a calling.

“This is a profession that must be respected and given full attention,” Nkesiga, who was one of the facilitators at the workshop, said. “Your role is crucial, especially in the schools where you are posted.”

The Rev. Canon. Geoffrey Muwanguzi, the chaplain of Ndejje University, re-echoed Nkesiga’s call, urging the chaplains to “know their roles in the schools, hospitals and prisons where they are posted.”

The Rev. Assoc. Prof. John Mulindwa Kitayimbwa, the UCU Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs (DVCA), noted that one of UCU’s aims is to promote Church-founded schools by admitting more students from such facilities. He challenged the chaplains to master the new education order and evangelism systems that have emerged in the post-Covid era. Most of the courses taught in UCU are now through blended learning – partly physical, partly virtual.

The Rev. Assoc. Prof. John Mulindwa Kitayimbwa, UCU Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, reinforces the value of continued learning.

Robinah Kato, one of the chaplains who attended the training, said she learned new skills about dealing with children and asked for more of such trainings.

Joshua Lujja, another chaplain, said he was looking forward to the programs that the clergy and teachers will benefit with improved skills from through UCU.

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Okello: From school dropout to UCU First Class degree

May 20, 2022News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Bernard Okello poses with his family after UCU graduation on October 22, 2021; children hold the plaques he earned for UCU performance.

By Eriah Lule
A full-time job rarely gives space for good grades at school. But that may not be the only challenge. Previous school failure, age and family responsibility are three more.

Bernard Okello, age 38, working, married with two children and a former school dropout defied the odds.

In addition to his full-time teaching job at Global Junior School in Mukono, Okello was able to concentrate on his studies at Uganda Christian University (UCU) and receive a First Class in Bachelor of Arts in Education. He was part of the university’s 22nd graduation ceremony held at the institution’s main campus on October 22, 2021.

Okello says his wife was instrumental in helping him pull off this feat. Jackeline Okello decided that her husband’s salary would pay his tuition and that she would meet the rest of the financial needs of the family.

“I had only one option – to support my husband because any opportunity he chased after was for the wellbeing of our family,” said Jackeline, a nursery school teacher. The two have been married for 13 years.

When Okello got the green light from his wife, he embarked on a journey to upgrade from holding a certificate to a degree in education. Okello had graduated with a Grade Three Certificate in Education in 2004.

Resilience
The challenges Okello faced in his early life, he says, helped to mold him into a resilient man.

He grew up in an impoverished and dysfunctional family in Alebtong district, northern Uganda. At no time did his basic needs come on a silver platter. In fact, at one point, Okello dropped out of school during O’level.

“I lost my mother at a tender age,” he said. “My father rarely had time for us, so we had to struggle, sometimes, to meet our basic needs.”

The third born of four boys of Michael Otim, a primary school teacher, and Rose Otim, says his major challenges as a boy were lack of tuition to keep him in school and knowledge to lobby for available scholarships.

He was hopeless for a while, until a scholarship opportunity came his way, enabling him in 2001, to join Canon Lawrence Primary Teachers College Lira in northern Uganda. It is here where he got a Grade Three Certificate in teaching.

In 2009, Okello joined Unyama National Teachers College in Gulu, northern Uganda, from where he graduated in 2012, with a diploma in teaching. For the next two years, he taught at a school in Gulu.

In 2017, the Okellos relocated to Mukono, after he got a teaching vacancy at Global Junior School. The choice of Mukono was not by mistake. The Okellos looked for a school near a university, so that it would be easy for him to pursue his degree course.

Indeed, Okello soon got admitted to UCU’s undergraduate education program offered via a modular, blended (on-line and in-person) program. He says the modular, blended-learning arrangement gave him the opportunity to concentrate on his work better, since the sessions for face-to-face were during school holidays.

And, it’s not only the transcript that Okello says he walked home with, upon graduation at UCU in 2021. UCU imparted in him strong Christian morals that he had always admired. As a result, he notes that some of his workmates at Global Junior School as well as his family have been beneficiaries of the virtues implanted in him during the three years of his undergraduate study.

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UCU launches first writing center in Uganda

May 13, 2022News, Students, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Lilian Lyavaala, left, acting coordinator of UCU’s new writing center, with student, Nassozi Gelda, outside the Foundation Studies building on the Mukono campus.

By Patty Huston-Holm
At 9 a.m. Monday, April 4, 2022, an email from Lilian Lyavaala popped up. It read: “I am glad to inform you that we now have office space for the Writing Center.”

I smiled as I suspect Lilian did. This was one more step in establishing a specific Uganda Christian University (UCU) space with a specific purpose – quality writing. The center’s designated area is up the first flight of steps of the Hamu Mukasa Library on the main campus in Mukono.

Just one week prior, March 28, while sitting in plastic chairs under a tree near the Foundation Studies building, Lilian and I mildly celebrated her appointment as the center’s first “acting” coordinator as we joked that we couldn’t even find someone who had a key to unlock the designated space for the center and if we could, there wouldn’t be furniture to sit upon there.

The UCU journey to better writing is decades long. Like most universities, writing at UCU has been taught in foundation (general education) courses and seminars and strongly emphasized in research and lectures about avoiding plagiarism.

But a center?

That trek was accelerated with the late summer 2021 arrival of Prof. Tom Deans, American Fulbright Scholar in Uganda and Director of the University of Connecticut (USA) writing center. In collaboration with UCU academic staff, he drafted a plan. The five-page plan talks about a “hub” where students and staff can get peer coaching. While reinforcing the value of all types of writing for various purposes, Deans commented in a November 2021 article that “students won’t grow as researchers unless they are writing papers that involve sustained research.”

Hub of the UCU writing center, located inside Hamu Mukasa Library on the Mukono Campus

With cautious excitement, Deans and Lilian talked about the center, which would be the first for any university in Uganda, while being interviewed in a late February podcast through the UCU School of Journalism, Media and Communication. In that interview, they described centers as “welcoming places to meet students wherever they are” and writing as the “core of human learning.”

Now, it was early April. Things appeared to be moving. A UGX 26 million ($7,500) budget for computers, tables and chairs was approved, but money not allocated. That budget did not include funding to pay the center’s coordinator and tutors. In mid-April, a $10,000 donation, contingent on a matching $10,000 from UCU, and from the Muriel Lile Trust of Fenton, Michigan, USA, through the Uganda Partners NGO appeared to seal the deal. On April 25, a letter from David Mugawe, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Finance and Administration, confirmed the UCU $10,000 match. The writing center, under the UCU School of Education, has a $20,000 budget for 2022-2023.

Dr. James Busimba, head of UCU’s Department of Languages and Literature, which is the umbrella for the writing center, said that the door for writing tutor applications and student/faculty users of the tutors is open.

“The room is available,” Dr. Busimba said. “We are grateful that we have come this far and are hopeful.”

Lilian is likewise excited.

“There is a big gap in writing practices,” she says. “Students in secondary (high school) are only taught to pass their exams. The university should overhaul this mindset and strike a balance. It’s important to transform minds to let students know how they can and should use writing in all careers.”

Once the UCU center is fully operational as defined by Deans as “when the first student walks in,” there will be a coordinator and tutors among the furnishings. The design calls for a coordinator to work 15 hours a week. The interim coordinator is Lyavaala, a UCU lecturer since 2010. During the most-recent semester, she was teaching to students of Law, School of Medicine, IT, Computer Science and Civil Engineering.

“I begin my classes by telling my students why writing is important,” she says. “Then, I take them through the whole writing process. Writing is not spontaneous, but gradual. One has to think of what one wants to write, gather information, draft it, making the necessary changes and then coming up with the final draft, while focusing on the audience. At this stage, the students also get opportunity to unlearn what they learned wrong.”

Across the different faculties and schools Lilian Lyavaala teaches or has taught, she finds the best writers from all, but especially students studying law, medicine and engineering. Their classes are fascinating to teach, since most of them are self-motivated.

“They seem to understand that they need to write lab reports and document findings and that scientists need to be able to present findings that everyone can understand,” she said.

For Lilian, reading and writing were her passions since childhood. Her parents said she was spelling out words at an early age. She would sit for hours, listening to her grandmother tell stories. In primary, teachers had her lead reading classes. Her love of language helped her attain her master’s degree in Literature in 2018 at UCU, where she also had earlier attained her bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature.

“You don’t have to be as passionate about writing as I am to be a good writer,” Lilian says. She echoed what Deans asserted during his time on campus in that the tutors don’t necessarily have to be perfect writers but “capable and care about writing.”

“Everybody can write,” she said. “It’s time we stopped saying otherwise.”

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Benefits of being a mentor in UCU Honors College program

April 6, 2022News, Students, UCU School of EducationPatty Huston-Holm

Screenshot of Peggy and Christy during a virtual interaction

By Peggy Noll
What do a Ugandan Honors College student in her first year at Uganda Christian University (UCU) and a retired American English teacher and former missionary have in common?

More than you might imagine at first glance, as Christy Asiimwe and I are discovering in our new roles as mentor and mentee, through a program started early in 2021 through the Honors College at UCU.

In one of our virtual monthly meetings, I told Christy that I always learned more as a teacher than I did as a student, by way of affirming she had made a good choice to work as a teaching assistant at her father’s school during her off-semester. I think the same might be true now, where I, as the mentor, may benefit more than Christy, the one being mentored!

After three or four virtual conferences of about an hour each and intermittent emails, I have already been encouraged in at least three areas of mutual interest.

First, in our initial encounter on zoom, it was Christy who suggested that since we did not know one another, we might start by giving our testimonies. As my husband and I have prayed over the years for UCU to be a genuinely Christian university and not Christian in name only, I was thrilled that over 10 years after our departure, I would meet a student serious about her faith as well as her education.

Again, at my request, Christy sent me a copy of the devotion she had written for her students based on John 15:9-17, “Why do you think God created man? To love Him and to be loved by Him.”

Next, we were able to meet online by zoom or Google Meeting only because Christy, not I, had the skills to set up the meeting. I told her that when we arrived in Mukono in 2000, there were only two computers on campus, both dial-up, one in the VC’s office and the other in the library. Just 20 years later, she as a first-year student has computer access and skills we could not have imagined then.

In yet a third area of overlapping interests, Christy’s long-term goals include working in education, possibly curriculum development, and becoming a servant leader in that sphere. The week before the conversation where she shared these goals, our son Peter, who heads an NGO that runs a hospital for the poor in Oaxaca, Mexico, had sent me online a recent draft of his newsletter to proofread, in which an interview he had organized and written up was titled, “Servant Leadership with Friar Carlos Eduardo.”

I challenged Christy to think about how she would define “servant leadership” and forwarded the interview to her as an example of someone in faraway southern Mexico with a desire similar to her own to follow Christ as a servant leader.

At my request, Christy sent me the link to ACE, the Christian curriculum used by her father’s teaching center outside Kampala, where she is currently helping him. In our conversation about the books she was reading with her students, she mentioned several titles by the English author Patricia St. John. Again, I had some background knowledge of the author I could share with her. St. John was a long-term missionary in North Africa. She was also invited to visit Rwanda and write an account of the East African Revival, which she titled Breath of Life. I have a copy here on my shelf in Pennsylvania, with an Introduction written by the Rev. Festo Kivingere! In a timely coincidence, I was able to send Christy a book I thought she would enjoy, the autobiography of the same author titled An Ordinary Woman with Extraordinary Faith.

Many, many years ago, my father, who spent most of his career working as a lawyer for the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., was invited to leave his post to teach at a law school which he chose to do because, as he explained to me then, he had learned a lot in the practice of law that he would like to pass on to young people at the start of their careers.

Being a mentor for Christy brought that conversation back to my mind. I feel I learned a lot teaching English language and literature at a community college in the U.S. and, added to the privilege of living and teaching at UCU for 10 years, I now might be able to pass on some small bit of what I have learned to the next generation of students at the University still so close to our hearts. In the process of being a mentor, I am being blessed by hearing about Christy’s hopes and plans for her future.

If you are reading this article and are asked to be a mentor, I would urge you to consider saying “Yes,” and I predict you will be the biggest benefactor in the relationship!

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