The University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) on Friday admitted 2,393 undergraduate students out of which 21 per cent are females, to pursue various programmes.

The Vice Chancellor (VC) of UMaT, Prof. Richard Amankwah, said the students had been selected to pilot the Ministry of Education’s novel Engineering Scholarship for the Needy Programme.

Fifty of the students who were identified in different communities nationwide would be sponsored by the Bulk Oil Storage and Transport Company Limited (BOST).

The VC said UMaT had been nominated to pioneer the novel Non-Science to Engineering Programme, adding that the university would pilot the programme with 100 students.

He said the current student population was above 5,300 with 37 foreign students, saying that the university would do well to increase the number of foreign students in the near future.

Prof. Amankwah said COVID-19 and the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) strike interrupted academic work which made teaching and learning very challenging.

He said the combination of virtual and face-to-face interactions as practised on campus, was aimed at reducing the spread of the disease and to bring mining education to the doorstep of Ghanaians.

The VC advised the fresh students to bring their intellect and enthusiasm to bare, to solve some of the economic, social and environmental challenges that continued to confront the nation.

He told the new students to explore and learn as many new things as possible, many of which might seem irrelevant for now, but might lead to their success in the years ahead.

To the postgraduate students, he told them that their presence was all about problem solving and adding new concepts to existing knowledge, adding “do well to solve significant problems which have the potential to influence Ghana and the world positively”.