GEOGRAPHY

Programme Development Resource Persons:

• TEACHING STAFF

         I.1 Permanent Lecturers

Visiting Lectuers

• MISSION STATEMENT

In view of current trends and developments in historical scholarship, the Department seeks to teach the history of world civilizations. Its centre piece is African history wherein Cameroon history is emphasized. The programme intends to blend pedagogic training with overt attention to the acquisition of universal knowledge in historical sciences.

• GENERAL VISION OF THE DEPARTMENT

Produce well-trained and competitive teachers of history for secondary schools and colleges, who are also competent in historical research and production.

• OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME

1. To give the students a thorough understanding of the nature and purposes of historical knowledge.
2. To impart a sound knowledge of the philosophical basis of the structure, roles and functioning of World History.
3. To equip the students with analytical skills and arguments in order to enable them appreciate historical problems.
4. To provide the students with the necessary ample background skills for postgraduate work in History and related fields.
5. To seek and encourage joint research and teaching exchange programmes with other institutions/universities.
6. To provide students with a working knowledge in such related disciplines like archaeology, anthropology, etc which are necessary for the proper functioning of a historian.
7. To organize routine seminars, inaugural lectures and colloquiums at national and international levels.
8. Train teachers to instruct in secondary schools and colleges.
9. To elicit patriotism and instill a sense of re-ennoblement.

• EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

History as a discipline provides a sound basis for a number of varied professions and career possibilities. Upon completion of the programme, the student will have good employment opportunities in Teaching and research; administration (ENAM); Diplomacy (IRIC); Military (EMIA); Police (ENSP Yaoundé); Archivists; Researchers and Museum Managers; Librarians, mass Communicators, etc.

• SKILLS TO BE ACQUIRED

The programme seeks to produce well rounded historians who are:

• Teachers and Researchers—scholars competitive in global employment market
• Well equipped to serve in the international bureaucracies of the U.N. systems and the ever-expanding network of global NGOs.
• Flexible enough to adjust their career plans, if necessary in mid-career, to take full advantage of new employment opportunities.
• Well rounded and disciplined citizens able to engage in and promote life-long learning within a democratic ethos.
• Patriotism and pedagogic output.

THE BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN EDUCATION (B.ED)

The Higher Teacher Training College was established by the state to meet the pressing academic needs for teacher for secondary and high schools in Cameroon. The concept was good, praiseworthy and served the purpose for which it was intended. After more than five decades, it has now become essential that some modifications should be introduced in order to ensure that the institution also responds to the issue of the training of trainers. So with the high degree of scolarisation today in Cameroon, it is now essential that holders of the Teachers Certificate should be backed up by a huge knowledge base from the first degree component so as to make our children in the secondary schools more performant than in the past. In this respect therefore, a number of strategies could be used to provide this added advantage.

It is today a welcome relief to align our previous educational system with the long standing and well tested BMP programme which has now been adapted by countries all over the world. As the Higher Teacher Training College was governments own creation to train teachers for our Secondary and Higher Schools, we should pay tribute to the state for a job well done. Should the BMP be embraced in the spirit that it should be, then the task ahead will be easy to handle. For the core courses, we have harmonised the maximum credit values to four (4) while the pedagogical courses stay the way they were proposed.

The courses were programmed in the approximate ratios of 65:25:10 representing the geographical core courses, the professional courses and the university requirements respectively as proposed in the working document. This distribution shows that the academic or knowledge component has been given a high premium in order to enhance further academic access into post graduate studies since the essential details or sound foundations have been taken care of. The Bachelor’s Degree in Education (B.Ed) or Curriculum Studies and Teaching (CST) based on the above ratios provide a sound and satisfactory knowledge platform such that the candidate can teach both at the secondary and higher school levels. This is an easy and clean way of providing both the academic and professional components in one package so as to enhance the candidates’ opportunity of doing graduate work in the academic discipline later on. This joint package makes the teacher at the secondary school level more performant than those for whom more emphasis was on pedagogy

For the courses in Geography for example, we have gone for only some of the core courses while most electives and some of the geographical tools are left out. In the marriage between the professional and the academic components, certain aspects must fall off as a compromise.   These tools are:

• The various courses in Mathematics and
• Quantitative Methods

Of the major proposed courses, some of the credit values were modified so as to conform with the credit requirements. We believe that a meticulous execution of such a programme at the Bachelor’s Degree Level would give a final product that would be good at the Secondary and Higher School Levels as well as ensure academic advancement in geography in particular.

As it was recommended that the sixth semester of the course, that is, the second semester of the third year, should be reserved exclusively for teaching practice, the courses for that semester were therefore either shifted to the first semester of the third year while others were redistributed and integrated into other semesters.

Furthermore GEO 498 which the Research Project was brought in alongside the teaching practice as the only logical place for GEO 498 remains the last semester of the three year study course. On the whole, the degree programme has been based on the 180 credits for the bachelor’s degree (B.Ed) course.

EMERGING NEEDS OF THE FIELD

The world today is confronted by numerous social, environmental and economic problems. So at the dawn of the Third Millennium, we should be able to find answers to the problems that plague the planetary environment. In order to address these problems, the teachers of geography must have competencies in those subjects that have been dubbed as specialisations. These are only a few out of the several venues that we have in geography. These include amongst others the following.

1. Regional Planning
2. Resource Evaluation and Management
3. Urbanization
4. Hydrology and Water Resources
5. Climate change
6. Man and the Environment
7. Hazard Geography
8. The population problem
9. Development Geography

Modern Analytical Techniques /Remote Sensing

CONTACTS OF LECTURERS:

• Sop maturin 677 01 85 76
• Kometa       675 39 83 30
• Achankeng   677 019 99
• Mofor           677 06 75 60
• Samba         677 40 54 87
• Yemelong   672 51 5141
• Niba             6 7 9 200 196