Abstract:
As has been the case in many universities, University of Gondar has been engaged in problem-solving research activities thereby to address a variety of societal problems. To this end, the University organized the 26th Annual Research Conference under the theme “Science and Technology for Ethiopia’s Renaissance” on June 24 & 25, 2016. Indeed, research has been one of the core pillars of the University and that the number of academic staff involved in a range of research endeavors has been increasing rapidly. Evidently, before 2015, the number of researches conducted and/or the number of researchers involved were relatively small while the amount of budget was insufficient to carry out intensive and extensive research works. What is more, previously, researchers focused on fragmented and narrower topics whose outcomes would not bring about significant changes in the socio-economic and political aspects of the society and hence attract the attention of policy makers and advocators. Understanding the idea that the findings of such research topics were not able to address grand issues and that such a research tradition would not encourage team research, in 2015, the Office of Research and Community Service Vice President, University of Gondar took the initiative to establish the culture of team research whose purpose has been to address pressing problems of the society and hence came up with the idea of mega research. Since then, a significant number of faculty members from different disciplines and fields of specialization have come together and tried to address mega research issues. As a result of such a research tradition, the number of female and student researchers who took part in mega researches in the University has also been increasing. The University also has the belief that junior and less experienced researchers can share experiences and gain lots of knowledge and skills in research from senior staffs while such a culture has the advantage of encouraging teamwork and taking responsibility for one’s own work. As a result, encouraging results have been achieved in terms of the number of research outputs being published in the national and international/reputable journals as well. In the conference, hot debates and discussions were made and the contributions were then included and subjected to language editing. At this juncture, it is also worth mentioning that this proceeding is prepared with the objective of reaching the wider academia and to strengthen dialogue on various research issues. In this proceeding, the themes fall under 9 parts, that is, under the colleges, faculties, institute and schools.
The Office of Vice President for Research and Community Service would also like to extend its deepest appreciation to the research presenters, participants, and editorial committee and to the language editors. Finally, the Office wishes enjoyable reading.
