More than 300 students who are graduating from the University of Fiji today have been reminded that the university has trained them all to be leaders whether or not they were born to any leadership position through inheritance.
While speaking to more than 700 people gathered to witness students graduating from the five schools of the university at the Saweni Campus, Vice Chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem says leaders are not born; they are made.
She says we know, in the traditional sense in some of our communities, that birth determines whether there is an expectation of leadership.
Professor Shameem says nevertheless, as we also know, only a special few really take to that responsibility.
She says leadership and service have to go together for a community to benefit the public good
Professor Shameem says that leadership has special unique attributes the university’s graduates have acquired through the human values approach to education.
She further says even if one has some form of authority bestowed by inheritance, qualification, for example for religious leaders, or by election or appointment to a position, the qualities of leadership, as opposed to management or authority, must retain their humane and human values foundation for it to be considered as leadership for the public good.
She says the university was proud of all its graduates because the staff had trained Fiji’s future leaders and nation-builders from the human values perspective.
Professor Shameem adds that allowed the university to feel that it had achieved its aims as a higher education institution in Fiji.
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