Welcome to the School of Arts, University of Ghana!
The 21st-century presents us with an exciting time to be embedded in the process of the growing breadth and depth of knowledge production in our world today if only we would surmount the challenges of globalization and grasp its opportunities.
In our Strategic Plan 2014-2024, the University of Ghana sets out a vision to become a “World Class research-intensive University” over a ten-year period. The underlying mission of this vision is to “create an enabling environment” that makes the University “increasingly relevant to national and global development through cutting-edge research as well as high-quality teaching and learning”. Clearly, all units and members of the University have to share in this vision and mission for their realization and no School stands a greater opportunity in doing so today than the School of Arts. The School of Arts is repositioning itself as the foundation of university scholarship, the cradle of the core disciplines we call the humanities, from which all other disciplines emanate. While the debate is raging among scholars in the west on the need for the humanities more than ever before, scholars in our part of the world have yet to participate eloquently in the discussion, which makes this the opportune time to do so.
There is no doubt that our society stands to benefit from the humanities. Not infrequently, the value of a STEM (sciences, technology, engineering or mathematics) education has been overemphasized as possessing the key to our development. This view is, however, not as tenable as it would appear since STEM itself is steeped in critical thinking, which is the hallmark of the humanities and the social sciences. Thus, our disciplines - archaeology & heritage studies, history, the study of religions, philosophy & classics - engender curiosity, creativity and critical thinking skills which we need in Ghana more than ever before.
The School of Arts can rekindle the fervour of this need in many a young person under our tutelage to the advantage of town and gown. This mission intertwines very well with my personal vision to contribute to the School of Arts becoming a trailblazer in strengthening the humanities, a mission which will be reflected in the strategic plan we are developing, and which in turn will shape those of the School's various units.
Reading for a degree in our School would provide students with the timeless value of acquiring the breadth and depth of knowledge as well as the critical synthesis required thereof to succeed in whatever walk of life into which one would be inserted. It would be our privilege to assist you in this endeavour.