It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Office of Doctoral Programmes (ODP) at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).
Since 2010, University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) has introduced several Master’s degree programmes in areas such as Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Auditing, Global Leadership and Corporate Governance. With the institutional experience gained managing these graduate programmes, the University, with the approval of both the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the National Accreditation Board (NAB), has begun offering doctoral programmes.
UPSA doctoral programmes exhibit a strong linkage between theory and practice and offer students an interdisciplinary environment, enabling the review and discovery of creative discipline-specific ideas and the development of analytical skills for the effective and efficient resolution of complex problems. Students enrolling in the programme will benefit from a number of unique and highly desirable programme features.
The first is the diverse and multi-stage rigorous assessment regime. This enables regular evaluation of the student’s work in different types of assessment tools.
Secondly, students are offered practical course-based research and teaching sessions which lead to journal; publications and in-class teaching.
A third unique feature helps maintain higher levels of student retention in the programme and ensure timely graduation through a multi-dimensional academic experience monitoring and evaluation system. Specifically, this includes (a) a rigorous admission process which ensures a good fit between student academic capabilities and the university’s supervision resources; (b) the institution of a regularly evaluated student mentoring system; (c) mandatory faculty tracking of student coursework performance; (d) incentivized faculty-student research collaboration and documented student-supervisor interactions.
Finally, with the aim of producing doctoral graduates grounded in our local context and yet internationally informed, course instruction and research supervision in the programme will be facilitated through a dynamic and innovative collaboration between UPSA professorial rank faculty and a select group of international and local adjunct doctoral programme faculty.
The Office of Doctoral Programmes has the primary responsibility of overseeing this focus and the growth of UPSA into a globally recognized doctoral research institution that responds to the doctoral training needs of the nation and the larger world community. This we pledge to, working closely with our stakeholders and the public at large.
Prof. Raymond K. Dziwornu
Dean, Office of Doctoral Programmes (ODP)