"Your graduation today is a testament to the fact that you have worked hard and burnt the candle at both ends; you have withstood challenges in the academic arena and have sacrificed your energy and time to achieve success," Prof Owusu said at the University's College of Humanities congregation at the weekend.            

"Today, the University is officially dispatching you into the wide world as its able ambassadors. I challenge you to raise the bar of excellence, and to be team players wherever you find yourselves," he added.

In all 3,858 students graduated at various levels from all four colleges of the University.This number is made up of 1,148 at the Post Graduate level, 2,449 at the Bachelor's level and 261 at the Diploma level.

Aside the July congregation, another set of graduation ceremonies would be held in November this year.  "Great success lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative teamwork effort. The secret of getting ahead is getting started," the Vice Chancellor said.

On research, innovation and development, Prof Owusu said any higher educational institution worth its sort must ride on a vibrant research portfolio."Having declared our intentions to become a research-intensive university, the Office of Research, Innovation and Development (ORID) is taking the lead in ensuring that we meet our set goals," he said.

"At the end of the review process for the most recent call for proposals for faculty development grants, eight grants with a total value of GHC244,302 were awarded to faculty," he said.

The Vice Chancellor said the 10th call for research proposals by ORID yielded 17 awards with a value of GHC881,733; adding "this year, ORID has disbursed 82 conference grants with a total value of $ 111,142".

On capacity building, Prof Owusu said the University of Ghana was part of five higher educational institutions awarded 1,359,975 euros to run the Africa Regional International Staff Exchange (ARISE II) programme under the intra-Africa Project.

He said under this project, applications were being received for both staff and student exchange. He said through the efforts of ORID, the University of Ghana was hosting two full time masters students at the Department of Crop Science under the ARISE Phase I project.

Prof Owusu said the University of Ghana was one of seven universities that had been selected by the World Health Organisation to host an international postgraduate training scheme for masters and PhD students.

He noted that the first cohort of the students under this scheme completed their programme in July 2016 and the second was expected to complete later this month. The third call for applications had been processed and five applicants had been selected to receive the awards. In addition, the University, through ORID, co-ordinates the Climate Change Impact Research Capacity Leadership Enhancement programme, under which four visiting fellows from Tanzania, Nigeria and Uganda had been admitted to a one-year fellowship with departments in the University.

Prof. Owusu said University of Ghana, the Lead Institution, together with its partners; Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen, had submitted a proposal for a grant of 13 million Danish Kroner to run the Building Stronger Universities (BSU) Phase III programme.

He said under the current phase of the programme, four PhD scholarships had been awarded and six short courses on research had been organised for faculty and post graduate students.