My first Magazine EDUCARE MAGAZINE SPECIAL NOVEMBER EDITION 2019 | Page 5

12 great schools award
profile
A WELL – DESERVED HONOUR!
The entire members of Staff (teaching and non-teaching)
of Altitude Schools and Glamour Special and Vocational
Training School heartily thanks the organizers of the
Educare Education and Transformation Leadership
Awards (EETLA) and also congratulates our Proprietress,
Alhaja R.Y. Abass as you receive an award of excellence
for your distinctiveness in contributing to the growth of
education in Nigeria. So we say:
As you drink continuously from the fountains of
knowledge,
The Future of Black Women Leaders in STEM
employability.
While specific African STEM
initiatives - such as networks and
Centers of Excellence - enable
important concrete development at
varying levels of impact, the vitality,
stature and utility of each STEM
disciplinary enterprise (be it physics,
computer science, engineering, etc.)
depends on the space it occupies on the
regional spectrum of competing
interests, respectability and resource
allocation in the higher education
sector.
The ideas, processes and institutions
that gird STEM education in Africa
must be led, owned and specific to an
e m p owe r e d A f r i c a n s c i e n t i f i c
establishment. The African policy and
international donor establishments
must embrace them. Otherwise, many
well-intentioned major development
initiatives undertaken within Africa end
up as patchy and shallow engagements,
characterized only by workshops and
consultancies. They all too often end up
as short-term transactional
engagements as opposed to long-term
transformative endeavours - a goal to
Educare November 2019
As you tirelessly strive to empower lives through this
which Africa aspires.
Thus, disciplinary and trans-
disciplinary STEM-practicing
communities need to be supported to
organize and collaborate to strengthen
and develop cohesive identities. They
must also be guided to solidify their
roles as linchpins of any (regional or
continental) efforts at advancing STEM
education in Africa, as opposed to being
left at the periphery. As practitioners
and continental experts, only they can
best articulate and implement any
transformative STEM imperatives in
African Higher Education - be it
funding for research and education,
infrastr ucture, cur riculum and
pedagogy, or governance.
The African disciplinary scientific
communities in turn need to actively
engage with scientific discourse going
on outside their own communities, to
better situate the content and
applications of their work. Many
scientists and educators remain unaware
of the expanding contours of the
content and role for their fields, and this
incognizance limits the communities'
abilities to produce broadly trained
students, attract more of them to enrich
the pool of their disciplines, as well as
their ability to
advocate and
influence
impactful
development
reform.
knowledge.
As you advance humanity's cause through the lasting
legacy of education,
And as you sparkle today as an erudite scholar par
excellence;
We wish you all the best and we are so happy that, your
Written By Nkem Khumbah
Nkem Khumbah is a mathematics lecturer with the
Comprehensive Studies Program at the University
of Michigan and Executive Curator of the Next
Einstein Forum (NEF), Africa's new Global
Forum for Science, Policy and Society. He holds a
Doctorate degree in information technology from
George Mason University and has also held the role
of assistant professor of mathematics at North
Georgia College and State University. He also held
research fellowships at the Institute for Pure and
Applied Mathematics at UCLA and the
Mathematical Science Research Institute at the
University of California at Berkeley. An avid
ambassador of international scientific capacity and
human development, he is very engaged in work that
supports African Scientific development, about
which he has written and spoken widely.
Alhaja RAMOTA Y. Abass
monumental strides in the education sector have not gone
unnoticed.
This has proven that Altitude Schools and Glamour
Special and Vocational Training School are forces to
reckon with in the academia !
Keep the flag flying, Ma
Congratulations on your well-deserved award!
Educare November 2019