WELCOME TO THE QUALITY ASSURANCE DEPARTMENT
The Department was established on 1 August 2015. The quality assurance system in place has been designed to guide staff and students on how quality should be managed at all levels to achieve the University’s goal to be an ISO 9001 certified institution. Bindura University of Science Education is a fast developing and dynamic community comprising young as well as experienced students, developing scholars and professional staff committed to performing at the highest standards. The entire staff is driven by a quest for continuous self-improvement in order to meet local, regional and international benchmarks in teaching, learning, research and community engagement.
I am honoured to be part of a newly established quality assurance department that sees itself as the custodian of quality practice in the entire university. We are a steadily developing team that values healthy interpersonal relations, team work, and endeavour to execute our responsibilities with respect, professionalism and commitment. We are open to learning from and sharing experiences with other quality assurance practitioners at all levels of staff in the institution and those from outside.
Quality Assurance is a support department which strives to ensure excellence in the overall quality management system at Bindura University of Science Education. The Department carries out this mandate through coordination of quality assurance activities aimed at achieving the University’s strategic goals in teaching and learning, research, extension service/community engagement and in the delivery of support services. In this way, the Department helps to develop the desired quality culture across all the academic and academic support departments that enable the Institution to develop into a hub of knowledge and a beacon of excellence in the production of competent and universally employable graduates.
We believe that the backbone of a sound quality assurance system is the Institution’s vision and mission statement. These articulate the direction that all activities and programmes should take in keeping with the socio-economic needs of Zimbabwe as spelt out in the country’s Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZIMASSET Blueprint).
To this end the Department strives to assure that existing programmes and those coming on board are in keeping with the minimum standards required and go beyond those prescribed by ZIMCHE with regard to content, duration, teaching and learning and assessment. The department ensures that such programmes are needed by employers, lead to employment and meet and exceed the minimum bodies of knowledge prescribed by the accrediting authority and demanded by other stakeholders. We see our role as that of providing confidence to stakeholders, students, employers, the accrediting authority (ZIMCHE) and the public at large that their expectations and the quality requirements as articulated in the vision, mission and strategic plan of Bindura University of Science Education are fulfilled.
Our purpose in life as the quality assurance department therefore, is to provide an effective and efficient quality assurance system and counsel for all the operational units of the Institution. We believe, as Aristotle did that quality is not an act, rather it is a habit. The quality assurance department takes initiatives to ensure that departments and service units conduct regular staff training and development workshops geared towards improving the overall quality service delivery in teaching and learning, student assessment and monitoring research and community engagement. Students’ evaluation of courses and lecturer performance, peer evaluation of teaching and periodic internal quality audits are carried out on both academic and academic support departments to assure continued effectiveness of the quality management system.
The Department strives to achieve continual quality improvement by engaging in initiatives and keeping up to date with emerging internal and external local, regional and international benchmarks/ standards. Such a quality assurance culture and practice relying on ensuring adherence to documented standard operating procedures and other integral quality assurance instruments should result in high quality products and services, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and repeat business, making Bindura University of Science Education the University of choice.