GULU, UGANDA: Gulu University has installed modern science equipment worth 197 Million Shillings to bolster practical lessons.
The equipment purchased in July last year with the University fund will aid practical education for third-year students pursuing Bachelors of Science in Education and majoring in Physics.
The new equipment includes 10 dual power suppliers, four signal generators, 10 multi-meters, two desktop computers, four cathode oscilloscopes, 50 analog meters among others.
The University Deputy Public Relations Officer James Ojok Onono, on Monday said that the new equipment is a milestone to science education.
He says the installation of the equipment at the University science laboratory will now end the costly hire of Makerere University laboratory where their third-year students have annually been taken to conduct practical lessons.
Onono says annually, the University since its inception in 2002 has been incurring about 20 million shillings as expenses in taking third-year students to Makerere University.
Festo Kiragga, the Head of Physics Department says that with the new laboratory at the university, they won’t work on a crush program.
He notes that they have been hiring Makerere University laboratory for a short time and depend on their timetable when the laboratory is out of use.
Kirraga says the new equipment will also enable the lecturers to teach the students further unlike in the past where practical sessions are squeezed within a period of only two weeks while the students are at Makerere University laboratory. The physics department currently has 20 students in their final year.
Besides the Physics laboratory, the University also currently runs a state of art research laboratory facility with seven specialized laboratory rooms designed for the detection and containment of infectious diseases.
The laboratory was funded by the Government of Uganda and African Development Bank-ADB at the tune of USD 4.5 million, where USD 2.5 million was in equipment and USD 2 million on construction.