The University of Education, Winneba (UEW) has awarded a scholarship package to a total of 279 students studying at the institution under the Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship Fund (VCSF).
A presentation ceremony was held to hand over the package to the beneficiary students at the Winneba campus of UEW.
Each of the recipients received GH¢1,000 and would be eligible to apply for renewal based on their academic performance for the 2019/2020 academic year, provided a beneficiary maintains a minimum Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 2.5.
A total amount of GH¢279,000 was therefore spent in the granting of the scholarship to cover all the 279 students.
The granting of scholarship to needy brilliant students was recently instituted by the university to reduce the financial burden of the beneficiaries and to promote academic excellence.
It was solely funded by the university and opened to all needy brilliant Ghanaian students pursuing undergraduate programmes at the university.
The Chairman of the VCSF, Prof. Dominic Mensah, during the presentation, commended management of UEW for increasing the number of students to benefit from the Fund.
The number of beneficiaries, he noted, increased from 120 recorded last year to 279 this year, saying, “The growth constitute an increase of 129 percent over the 2018 figure.”
Prof. Mensah indicated that, the VCSF Board observed that some students with potential defer their programmes or drop out entirely due to financial challenges they go through.
That, he said, prompted the Board to prevail on the Management of the institution to increase the scholarship to cover more students.
“The rationale behind the move is to make it accessible to many more qualified applicants to benefit from the scholarship package,” he said.
Prof. Mensah admonished the beneficiary students to work extra hard not just to justify the investment the University was making in them, saying, “You must strive to ensure that you come up with excellent results as well as meeting the minimum CGPA of 2.5.”
He said, it was only when they meet the minimum CGPA of 2.5 that they could be maintained on the VCSF.
Some of the beneficiary students who spoke at the ceremony expressed gratitude to the Vice-Chancellor and the Management of the University for instituting such a programme to lessen the psychological trauma that needy students go through in order to access tertiary education on the UEW campus.
They pledged their commitment to work assiduously to get good grades to be maintained on the VCSF.
Prof. Mensah (seventh from left), wearing smock, with beneficiary students and other officials of UEW after the programme
