KENYA: A constituent College of CUEA Set to becoming a full-fledged University before end of the year
Tangaza University College which is owned by a number of religious congregations in Kenya and has been a constituent college of the Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA) for nearly 20 years is hoping to become an independent university by the end of the year 2016.
The current Principal, Rev. Fr. Steven Payne, OCD, PhD, said that the institution which was inaugurated in August 1986 has submitted all the documents required by the Commission for University Education in Kenya.
CUEA is the only private university in Kenya with constituent colleges. Fr. Payne told AMECEA Online News that in late October 2013, the Commission for University Education in Kenya met with CUEA and all its constituent colleges. “They informed us that ‘constituent college’ status is meant to be temporary, and that therefore, if we wished to continue operating, we would need to choose whether to become simply a campus of the mother university or to apply for a charter”.
Upon deliberations, the owner congregations decided to apply for the university charter and the institution has been working towards that since late 2013. “We are far along in the process now, we have given the commission a draft charter, draft statutes, they have come for the initial inspection, we have responded to all of their suggestions and there will be another inspection to make sure that we did what they said; and so our hope based on what they said to us is that we could be getting the University Charter before Christmas, sometime during the next semester,” Fr. Payne said.
Tangaza College is planning to merge with another constituent college of CUEA, Marist International University College (MIUC), which is run by the Marist Brothers in Africa and Madagascar. “Sometime last year Marist International University College approached us and said they wanted to join with us as we become a university. So we are having a merger between the two institutions,” Fr. Payne explained describing the merger as a good fit because both Tangaza and MIUC were founded by religious congregations and influenced by their charisms.
“Our focus is not to try and compete with CUEA but to complement one another and build a nice synergy,” he explained, adding that one significant difference between CUEA and Tangaza is that CUEA belongs to the AMECEA Bishops while Tangaza belongs to Religious Congregations in Kenya. And just as in most dioceses where diocesan institutions and the institutions run by Religious Congregations complement each other, Tangaza hopes to complement CUEA.
He further emphasized that Tangaza has its own special mission, vision, and values, rooted in the charisms of the founding and participating congregations, though open to all people of good will. This is what defines its identity which it wishes to safeguard. Its motto is: “Teaching Minds, Touching Hearts, and Transforming Lives”.
Tangaza University College, initially known as Theological Center of Religious, was started to offer theological formation to students from the religious congregations, due to lack of space in the diocesan seminaries to accommodate the growing numbers. But from the beginning it also embraced the broader goal of training men and women, religious and lay, for many forms of servant leadership in the contemporary church and world.
Currently the institution offers a doctoral degree, master’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, diploma programs and a number of certificate programs in School of Theology and its various institutes, which include the Institute of Social Communications, the Institute of Social Ministry in Mission, Christ the Teacher Institute of Education, Institute of Youth Studies, Institute of Spirituality and Religious Formation, Maryknoll Institute of African Studies, and the Centre for Leadership and Management.
By Pamela Adinda and Sr. Immaculate Tusingwire AMECEA Online News
