Message from the Vice President

Message from the Vice President for Research and Community Services

Bahir Dar University has a vision of becoming one of the top ten premier research universities in Africa. To achieve that we have prepared the Five-Year Strategic Plan (2011-2016) in a way that contributes for the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) of the nation. 

 At higher education, emphasis has been given for research that focuses on solving the nation’s problems and transfer of appropriate technologies for various applications. The researches are based on the community need where thematic areas for research and community services are identified at university and academic unit level of the university. Maximum effort is made to ensure their relevance to the societal needs.

 Research at BDU is addressed through three ways:

===>By research centers - which are established based on the university potential, country demand

====and geographical advantages

===>By research groups – which are established at each academic unit targeted for focused research areas at

====college/faculty/school/institute level with future potential of being upgraded to research centers

===>By graduate programs – BDU has set an agenda to increase the number of graduate programs radically in the

====coming few years so that they will be centers of innovation.

 Community services are rendered in two ways: Services specific to each academic unit are rendered at the academic level whereas those interdisciplinary programs are addressed at the university level whereby different academic units join hands to address the issue based on the thematic areas identified.

 Being public university of the nation, BDU is committed to serve the community in two ways:

    1. Being located at Bahir Dar with campuses at all exit routes of Bahir Dar City, we are committed to make it a university city. To achieve that our academic units are working hand in hand with all community (kebele) administration of the city by identifying the areas of collaboration with all diversified academic knowledge of the university.
    2. We have rural model village called Kollella Andinet, 45 km south west of Bahir Dar city where research outputs are to be transferred and make the village model for others. The village is going to be developed by the community themselves with the knowledge and technology support from the university.

Parallel to the urban and rural models mentioned, there are various supports to the community from different organs of the university.

 The Vice President for Research and Community Service is responsible to:

    • Administer/manage financial matters of research projects funded and executed by the Institute/Center/unit;
    • Work in cooperation with the researchers, academic staff, and relevant Heads of programs to develop and maintain optimum conditions for the performance of Research and Community Service at the highest possible levels;
    • Collect research and community service performance reports from various units;
    • Design and maintain research and community service databases.
    • Design and maintain the research and community service schedules of different units;
    • Ensure research issues emanated from the community (University and local) problems and the outcome is sustained by the community;
    • Ensure programs are more research focused with thematic areas emanated from the development goals of the country and teaching and community activity is benefited from the research outcome;
    • Identify capacity building requirements for research and community service process;
    • Plan and prepare budget requirements for research and community service undertakings.
    • Initiate and support the establishment of Journals;
    • Supervise the day-to-day activities of research teams, staff and has overall financial responsibility for the assigned budget;
    • Keep record of all value adding research and community service activities;
    • Organize and manage research activities ;
    • Organize annual work plan for research and community service and make it available in the intranet;
    • Organize seminars, conferences and workshops to and encourage academics to take part in research and community service;
    • Solicit and support in searching funding sources for research and community service process.

 Dear visitors, the RCS office welcome your reflections/opinions about the activities we are carrying out so that you can be part of the transformation. We hope you will get full information about BDU by browsing its website in short time scan.

We thank you so much for visiting our site and your contribution in the BDU transformation.

                                                                    Tesfaye Shiferaw (PhD)

                                                                                                                                                                                          Vice President for Research and Community Services