Two law institutions to introduce doctorate degree
Two law training institutions in Ghana are collaborating to introduce a doctorate degree in law with the view to enhancing the teaching and learning of law and promoting the country’s development.
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When the joint initiative is consummated, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and the MountCrest University College (MCU) will become the first law training institutions in Ghana to offer a doctorate in law.
The Leitner Centre for International Law and Justice at the Fordham Law School in New York is supporting the partnership between GIMPA and MCU to deliver the doctorate degree in law programme.
A Clinical Professor of Law at the Fordham School of Law, Professor Paolo Galizzi, told the Daily Graphic last Saturday at Larteh in the Eastern Region that the initiative by GIMPA and MCU was a laudable idea that would give Ghana a lot of opportunities.
He said offering a training programme in law at the doctorate degree level would strengthen and enhance the development of local and regional legal scholarship through domestic research and increase and strengthen African voices and ideas on the map of international legal research.
Legal research
Professor Galizzi said although a rich legal research environment already existed in Ghana, there was the need to build on it.
He said it was also important to give choices to students who wanted to pursue higher academic programmes in law.
Professor Galizzi said there were many Ghanaian law graduates who travelled abroad to study law at the doctorate level because there was no institution in the country that offered such programme of study.
But with the initiative of GIMPA and MCU, he noted, such students could now achieve their academic pursuits at home with the benefit of affordability and convenience.
Tour of site
Professor Galizzi, with research interests in international law, human rights, environmental law and law of sustainable development, had joined the staff and students of MCU on a visit to Larteh to tour the site earmarked for the establishment of the university’s main campus.
On Wednesday, August 14, 2013, the Eastern Regional Minister, Ms Helen Adjoa Ntoso, cut the sod to signal the beginning of construction works for the building of infrastructure for the MCU School of Medical and Health Sciences, the School of Business and the Faculty of Laws.
At the time of the visit by the staff and students, one month after that official ceremony, construction works were progressing steadily.
The Rector of MCU, Professor Joseph Atsu Ayee; the Registrar, Mr Samuel Bannerman-Mensah, and the founder, Mr Kwaku Ansa-Asare, led the staff and students on the tour of the approximately 18-acre site.
Professor Ayee expressed the hope that the project would be completed on schedule.
He said the allied health sciences programmes – Nursing, Midwifery, Psychiatric Nursing, Physician Assistants and Medical Laboratory – were scheduled to begin in March 2014.
Laudable initiative
A deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations, Murtala Mohammed, who is also a law student at the MCU, said the project was laudable and one worth the government’s support.
He expressed the hope that with such an initiative to train more doctors and health professionals, Ghana would become an exporter of doctors in the near future.
To commemorate their visit and to identify with the history of building the university, the students offered labour by carrying some building materials to the construction sites.
By Kofi Yeboah/Daily Graphic/Ghana
