From Tuesday 14th to Friday 17th August, 2018, Faculty and Senior Non-Academic Staff of Landmark University with renewed energy and enthusiasm converged at the International Conference Centre for the 2018/2019 Alpha Semester Executive Advance Programme (EAP) towards setting direction for the new Academic Session. The programme hosted an array of highly refreshing and stimulating presentations in line with the theme: Driving Academic Excellence and a Formidable IGR Base. It was targeted at building the capacity of both Faculty and Staff and preparing them for profitable academic operations in the new session. 

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Adeniyi Olayanju in his speech welcomes all staff back on campus as he charged them to hit the ground running. He added that “Urgency is Energy” will be the University’s Slogan for the semester. Professor Olayanju stated further that one of the goals Landmark would be setting is to feed her immediate community starting from the current session. “Learning is continuous. It is, therefore, important to show that we have the potential to save the world from hunger,” the Vice-Chancellor said as he declared the Advancement programme open on behalf of the Chancellor, Dr. David Oyedepo.  

The uniqueness of this year’s Executive Advance was in the quality of resource persons, topics of discourse and the doggedness of the participants as it featured over fifteen paper presentations and four group sub-sessions by the Chancellor, Dr. David Oyedepo, the Vice-Chancellor Landmark University, Professor Adeniyi Olayanju, the Vice-Chancellor Covenant University, Professor A.A.A. Atayero, the Registrar LMU, and Dr. Azubuike Ezenwoke. Others are DCLR, Dr. Jerome Idiegbeyan-Ose; DPPD, Arch. Segun Olaonipekun; Director Academic Planning, Dr. Babatunde Adebesin; and Ag. DCSIS Opeyemi Matiluko amongst others. 

In his presentation, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Adeniyi Olayanju who spoke on the topic “The place of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in Driving the Agrarian Vision of Landmark University” indicated the importance of building a formidable IGR base as an Institution while also listing some sources of IGR in operations. Professor Olayanju, who engaged the SWOT approach in analyzing the state of IGR in LMU, admonished Faculty and Staff to possess a stakeholder’s mentality in the discharge of their duties. 

The Vice-Chancellor added that, “The University is expected to generate fund which will foster collaborations and partnership.” He noted that development should spread from the base to the centre and not the other way round; therefore Landmark should be financially independent before her first decade elapses. 

The Vice Chancellor, Covenant University, Prof. A. A. A. Atayero, presentation was on “Impact Measurement and Reward towards Building a World-Class University: The Covenant Experience”. He prefaced his presentation with the vision, mission and departure philosophy that serve as the driving impetus of Covenant University. He said that in order to give these guiding principles concrete form, Vision 10:2022 was conceived. He explained that Vision 10:2022 is the compelling quest of Covenant University “to become one of the top ten universities in the world by the year 2022”. He emphasized that the metrics are pointing in that direction. He pointed out that Vision 10:2022 (1-of-10-in-10) is considered fulfilled whenever Covenant University attains a Top 10 position in any reputable global academic ranking outlet, irrespective of the ranking methodology.

Also, the Registrar, Dr. Azubuike Ezenwoke whose paper was titled, “Driving Administrative Efficiency in the 21st Century: Adopting a Stakeholder Approach”, urged the Executive staff to think of how best to maximize productivity. He put the participants through the standards of measuring University’s world-class status as Citation, Teaching, Research, International presence/recognition and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) among many other factors. Dr. Ezenwoke encouraged the participants to possess stewardship and business mind in the course of discharging their duties through capacity building. 

Other presenters who pitched their tents around the theme; instructed, admonished and challenged participants to prepare for the session ahead with a renewed energy, optimism and commitment with clear emphasis on driving visibility through high impart publications, researches and innovations.