Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) will graduate its first batch of 12 trained medical doctors during the 21st graduation ceremony on December 11th 2024.
The University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Solom Shibairo, said during a Media Breakfast that the doctors have successfully completed their six years of study uninterrupted and added that they are equipped with the required skills to serve Kenyans.
He said that, being the first time to train doctors, the university has had to overcome challenges of infrastructure and occasionally address lack of equipment, other resources and trainers.
“Training doctors is not an easy thing, but I want to say that we have had success. My students have not delayed, they have actually taken their exact time and the reason is they are the first ones for us, we had the passion, the energy and the will to make sure that they do their studies and they graduate on time,” the Vice chancellor said.
With the first Medical Students, the university, according to the Vice Chancellor, is in the process of establishing a School of Health Sciences that will be constructed on a 34-acre piece of land at Approved School grounds.
“Since we are going through this for the first time, we actually don’t have a building allocated for school or college of medicine, we have a masterplan document which we are passing to donors to help us finance some of the university projects including the health sciences building,” he added.
The VC also asked the Kenya UK Help Alliance, which is a relationship between the United Kingdom and the Kenyan Government, to help the university to grow as a medical school.
“We are also working closely with the Kakamega County General Hospital and other hospitals to train our students as they offer services to those facilities. We are also urging the government to quicken the completion of the Level 6 hospital so that our students can learn there,” he noted.
The Medical Doctors are among 3,962 graduands who are set to graduate on 11th December as the Vice Chancellor assured that all preparations for the day are ongoing with the expectation that over 15 000 people, including high profile visitors, both from local and abroad, will attend.
“The largest school to graduate is the School of Education with 983 students and the smallest is the School of Medicine. I really note the smallest number because we are doing this for the first time, the university has never graduated doctors,” he pointed out.
“We are also expecting guests from abroad, this is because the council has worked so hard to connect us to very high-profile people abroad who are helping the university in development in various areas,” he added.
The VC raised concerns that some students might be locked out of graduating this year for failure to complete paying fees on time and will be forced to wait until the next graduation ceremony.
“School fees has been a major problem and especially among our students coming from this county, and we gave a window for them to pay until Wednesday evening, so now, that window is closed, so those who have school fees challenges, will pay and then graduate next time,” he added
“I humbly ask our Members of Parliament (MPs) to help us in this issue of school fees. Many students have been coming to us for help that they are unable to raise fees as they come from impoverished homes, where parents are poor, are peasants, they come from homes where parents are maybe single moms or single dads,” he explained.
The Vice chancellor noted that the persistent requests from students from humble backgrounds, has forced him together with the Dean of Students, to sometimes support them with money from their own pockets.
He noted that at one time, students from Kakamega owed the university close to Sh60 million in school fees.
“I want to thank the MP for Mumias East, Peter Salasia and MP for Lurambi Constituency, Titus Khamala, who personally came and issued cheques to students in addition to allocating bursaries through the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) to cater for school fees,” he disclosed.
He noted that the University’s Council has also developed a relationship with the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) to develop a revolving fund which can help some of the students.
The Vice Chancellor is however optimistic that the University Alumni is developing an endowment fund which he believes would help some students who come from humble backgrounds.
“There are two purposes that our endowment fund will do; for development of the university and where possible to help needy students. We also want to sell this idea to the Members of Parliament and members of the Kakamega community so that they can contribute. Many universities in the world have a very strong endowment fund mainly run by the alumni and it helps a lot in development,” the VC disclosed.
