The centre for professional development, the national university-Sudan: Evaluating the achievements

Abstract

Background: The National University-Sudan is a private university, in Sudan that has been established in 2005. It consists of eight colleges: Medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, medical laboratories, physiotherapy, and administrative sciences. The Centre for Professional Development (CPD) was established in 2010. The aim was to provide and organize training for academic, administrative, and information technology staff. The plan was to have a basic phase focusing on the provision of basic concepts and skills. With the basic phase coming to an end, this paper is a review of both the achievements of the center and the setbacks, in the period between 2011 and 2013. Methodology: Data were collected from the needs assessment forms, meetings, activity evaluation forms filled by participants by the end of each activity, attendance sheets, the annual CPD reports, and discussion with different faculty members. The collected data were analyzed using Excel program. Results: On comparing the faculty attendance per college in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, a decline in the attendance was found in radiography (from 59.09% to 28.48%) and in medicine (from 28.52% to 15.8%). On the other hand, the faculty attendance from dentistry rose from 20.91% to 33.3%. The same trend was found in pharmacology with a rise from 21.43% to 36.67%. In nursing and physiotherapy, there was an increase in the percentage of trained staff to 6.75% and 1.25%, respectively. In both years, participation from the faculty of administrative sciences was weak. Conclusion: There was an increase in the total percentage of faculty members attending from 2011 to 2013. Yet, the details of academic staff attendance show a lot of variation between the 2 years with some faculties attending more activities while others have a declining attendance. While the use of attendance records was useful in reflecting the response of the academic staff to the CPD activities, it did not reflect the actual role played by the CPD as an advisory body to individual faculties or staff members.