Thursday, 22nd November 2012: The University’s robust and sustained investments in current and emerging ICT’s for teaching, learning, research and service delivery enhancement got a major recognition recently when the University was given the award for Best Institution of Higher Learning in Use of ICT 2012 by the Computer Society of Kenya (CSK). The award was received at the CSK’s 17th Annual ICT Pinnacle Awards Ceremony held at the Laico Regency Hotel, Nairobi on the 22nd November 2012.
The awards seek to recognize institutions, organisations and individuals that have made tremendous impact in utilisation of ICT for service delivery or for creation of solutions. They cover various categories of sectors and disciplines and the winners in each category / sector are identified through a Professional Awards Panel of Judges appointed by CSK.
This year’s award ceremony was presided over by Hon. Samuel Poghisio, Minister for Information and Communication who lauded the commitments shown by the winners in leveraging the power of ICT for enhancement of service delivery. The Minister recounted the major milestones achieved by the Government of Kenya in the ICT sector over the last 5 years. He pointed out how just about three years ago Kenya did not have a single undersea optic fiber connection and relied on the expensive and sometimes erratic satellite connections for international traffic. However, Kenya now enjoys three high speed undersea optic fiber connections in TEAMS, EASSy and SEACOM with two other cables expected to land in the very near future. This presents countless opportunities for all sectors of the Kenyan economy. He urged all Kenyans to make full use of the already laid infrastructure including the ongoing projects such as the National Optic Fiber Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI) among others
In hand to receive the award was Vice Chancellor, Prof Alfred Mutema, flanked by among others Prof. Robert Gateru - Principal, Nairobi Campus; Dr. Salesio Kiura - Dean, Faculty of Computing & Informatics; Mr. Austin Onyango - ICT Director; Mr. Gitonga M’Mbijjewe - Head of Corporate Communications among other staff and student leaders.
Some of the key achievements of the University in the ICT sector which contributed partly to this award includes among other things;
• Wide Area Network connection across the five University campuses in Meru, Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru and Nyeri which includes a backup redundancy link.
• Teleconferencing facilities in all five campuses enabling real-time meetings and other learning services to take place thus greatly reducing costs.
• Voice over IP (VoIP) connectivity across the WAN enabling seamless communication across all campuses without incurring leased line costs. Calling any campus from any other campus is simply by way of phone extensions.
• 80 MB/s bandwidth subscription through the Kenya Education Network (KENET) as the primary link.
• Subscription to over 70,000 e-books and 20,000 e-journals which are accessed through our Digital and Online Libraries. The University has continuously recorded the highest number of journal downloads among all members of the Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium (KLISC) for the last 3 years.
• Over 1200 student computers.
• All Campuses enjoy optic fiber last mile connections.
• Wi-Fi hotspots in all campuses.
• The University is the first in Kenya to subscribe to Qualtrics online survey portal. This enables Staff, Students and Management to create, distribute and collect research surveys online without need for physical questionnaires or travelling. It is used by top universities and institutions in the world. See here.
• All academic staff are facilitated to own personal laptops / tablets.
It is worth noting also that due to such investments, the University was earlier in the year awarded Overall Library of the Year 2012 award at the 2012 Maktaba Awards held at the Dr. Louis Leakey Auditorium, National Museums of Kenya.
We wish to thank all our stakeholders for the continued support and patronage. We especially thank our dear students for making full use of these sound investments and assure you of the University’s commitment to give you the best environment and facilities to enable you achieve your full potential for the betterment of humanity.
The full list of this year’s CSK awardees is available here.
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