Let us start Building Togdheer University

Waxa qorey:  Dr. Mohamed O Nur- (Shacabi)

By: Dr. Shacabi

It is time for a bold new initiative for Burao University. Fortunately, I believe that we should be able to draw on some new sources of revenue to create new levels of excellence without eroding our core programs. I accept the responsibility for identifying new streams of funding from a variety of sources to create a new fund for investment to build excellence in the future.

I am asking the Somaliland government and Somaliland loving educational high aptitude standards without focusing only the Hargeisa University and Amod University to provide the direction in establishing our major academic priorities to expand the higher education to all major regions of Somaliland. Let us turn the question of the University's future into a research problem and assign this to a team of faculty researchers. Such a research project would require a candid assessment of the status and quality of current programs, an assessment of where special opportunities might lie, an analysis of major problems affecting the world or our nation that this University is well positioned to solve, and the vision and creativity to imagine what might be possible with enhanced resources or a reconfiguration of existing resources.

To help us chart the course for the future, Let us ask ourselves and anyone who cares to do something for his/her children and grand children in the near future to pledge and support this great cause of our broken education system. What are our areas of greatest strength or potential for future development where significant new investment would move a program or a constellation of programs up to a new level of excellence and reputation?

What are the great issues, the great problems affecting the Somaliland Ministry of Education and the level and the care of the children in Burao Region that need to be solved? What problems or opportunities are unique to use the space of old Burao Technical Institute to build and to start the foundation of Burao University that should shape our agenda? Which of those areas ought we to claim as ours? What are the unique resources of this University in attacking those problems?

Our premise is that excellence is best built upon existing strengths or in responding to special opportunities. This strategy may lead to greater focus in selected areas. We must temper this approach with several constraints. First, we must maintain an internal balance between and among the major segments of learning and research. We cannot become a technological institute. We must balance the hard sciences with the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences. And we cannot become so focused that we abandon our comprehensive mission.

Moreover, we must attain greater focus in our research mission without distorting the balance of our multiple missions. We must remain on course with regard to the renewed emphasis on teaching and learning, on excellence in our undergraduate programs, and we must remain faithful to our country fair education mission of engagement and outreach to the people of the regions and the districts throughout the Somaliland.

This effort will need to be coupled with intensified strategic planning within the Somaliland Ministry of Education and the citizens in the Burao Region. In every Burao Resident Citizen and all who care about this project, we need to be asking the same questions I posed above. Ultimately, it will be proposals from the Somaliland Educators, Businessman/Businesswomen, Elected Regional and District officials, elders, teachers and many more, or from interdisciplinary consortia that cross college lines, that will determine where the investments are made.

These new resources are made possible through a variety of sources, the most significant being private philanthropy. We have made some enormous strides in private support in the last few months. Now, we need to add one more project and that is helping our children to give them a true hope and true education right next to their backyard, let us fulfill that dream and build Burao University.

Best regards, Dr. Mohamed O Nur- (Shacabi)