Purpose and Key Strategic Drivers
The UoK context
Established in 2013 as an accredited private institution, the UoK currently has about 8000 students, and is transitioning from 3-year to 4-year undergraduate degrees and 1 and ½ to 2-year masters degrees. The UoK is regarded as one of the top producers of research in Rwanda, having been ranked 4th best university in the country fairly regularly over the past four or five years.
Institutional Development, Research and Innovation is a key portfolio in the university created to deliver the knowledge production, utilization and development needs of the university and its intimate communities. Overall, the goal of the strategy is to lay out the vision of transforming the UoK into a research focused university to complement its current teaching concentration.
Goals and objectives
The overall goal of IDRI is to deliver the following: knowledge production, utilization, and development goals of UoK
To contribute to substantial institutional advancement, through appropriate human capacity development, infrastructural and resource mobilisation, and the cultivation of a self-sustaining and motivating knowledge production culture with likeminded institutions locally, regionally, and internationally.
Objectives for Institutional Development
- To create a minimum of four research thrusts at the UoK through which research capacity, ideation and scholarship will be developed
- To introduce a seminar series which will allow sharing, and the development of transdisciplinarity in research at the UoK
- To develop, diversity and intensify third stream revenue generation at the university in order to support research, teaching and scholarship development.
- To develop a system which regularly rewards excellent performance in research amongst the academic staff
- To establish hub/center where meetings can be held, people can ‘shut up and write’ and where tele/digital conference meetings can be held
To progressively transform the university from a purely teaching intensive focus into an increasingly research-intensive focus.
Objectives for Research
- To support all full-time academic staff at the grade of lecturer to publish a minimum of one double blind refereed output in reputable high impact journals or as a chapter in an edited volume each year
- To support staff above the lecturer grade to publish at least two outputs per year in reputable outlets
- To establish at least two UoK based journals which staff can regularly submit articles to and which will further enhance our scholarly engagement with transdisciplinary research in critical areas
- To establish and implement a system of rewards for research excellence at UoK
- To create a strategic partnership and internationalisation office which promotes mutually beneficial knowledge creation formations with local, regional, and international collaborators
To increasingly transform the UoK into a space for the development of relevant societal solutions aimed at tackling society’s most persistent, environmental, business, law and IT and educational problems and challenges.
Objectives for Innovation
- To support staff with remarkable research findings to turn these into patentable ideas.
- To develop our most outstanding staff and students research into popular publications so as to broaden the knowledge engagement base with our research
- To work with Marketing department to develop excellent marketing tools about the university
- To create communities of Practice/Scholarship which lead highly impactful research and innovation in selected areas of the green economy, business, law and IT, and education
- To establish an innovation hub whose purpose will be that of turning knowledge into usable forms.