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There are two clips of Chuka University’s Vice Chancellor, Prof Henry Mutembei, that keep replaying in my head. In one of them, he is modelling as a special act during the university’s cultural day, a stylish walking stick in hand, a majestic fedora on his head. Alongside him is Prof Gilbert Nduru, matching the Vice Chancellor’s stride amid wild cheers from students.
In the second clip, Prof Mutembei addresses students who finished their secondary school last year and who are applying to join a university. He appeals to them to select Chuka University, which he calls ‘home away from home’. The clip is on the landing page of the school’s website.
I have met Prof Mutembei once. He is an affable man, and in the comments under some of the viral clips, his students say as much.
At a glance, his behaviour might seem quite ordinary. It should be expected that a Vice Chancellor, the chief executive of his institution, is a student’s friend and can, once in a while, be seen in their company, taking part in some of their activities. After all, no one ascends to that position without initially showing excellence in the lecture halls and directly interacting with the students.
However, this is not the case. Vice Chancellors are rare in many institutions, and students barely get a chance to see them. They are as revered as the hallowed halls they enter once in a blue moon to make an address. The general feeling is that they are concerned with matters way above the students, and that they can only be spotted in high-level meetings of equals. You will not see a Vice Chancellor casually walking along the university corridors after, say, a lunch break.
If anything, you are more likely to see them on television than in school.
To many, it does not matter. We do not give enough thought to the fact that the Vice Chancellor is barely available. This probably stems from the fact that we have learnt to expect that they are not easily available because they are busy people. Nobody complains when the President fails to turn up for the village baraza. He is a busy man, and no one expects him there anyway.
Similarly, it would be outright weird to expect to see the Vice Chancellor appear for an inter-faculty football match.
Yet Prof Mutembei is doing exactly that, appearing where we know Vice Chancellors never do, and speaking the language we never hear them speak. It is important for the psyche of the students and for the image of the institution.
The argument here is that Chuka University is not an old institution. Chuka University College was established through a Legal Notice No. 161 of 2007 as a Constituent College of Egerton University. It was given a full university charter status in 2013 by President Mwai Kibaki.
The Vice Chancellor, defying the norm and coming out as approachable, shines the spotlight on the institution, and the tens of comments from the students praising his demeanor are bringing the university the attention it needs. There will be more potential students checking the school out, and over time, increased enrolment. We cannot be blind to the benefits positive public reviews can bring, especially to an institution that depends on public goodwill to increase its clientele.
While he was a great administrator, the late Prof George Magoha did not randomly appear in social events during my time as a student at the University of Nairobi. In fact, during my five-year stay at the university, I saw him very few times, most memorably during orientation when he made it clear that the University of Nairobi was a regional behemoth.
But for a university on a growth trajectory like his, the demeanor of the Vice Chancellor greatly improves the image of the institution.
If you doubt a leader’s public image influences how people think of his constituency, then take a keen look at New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and see the general direction of public opinion of him, and of New York City, now.
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By Peter Theuri