The 6^th Head of Institutions forum took place on the 10^th and 11^th of December 2014 at the Serena beach and Spa hotel with 86participants in attendance. The theme was “Innovations in Human Capacity Development for Higher Education and Research Institutions”.

The guest of honour, Prof. Jacob Kaimenyi, Education Cabinet Secretary, was represented by Professor David Some, the director of the Commission for University Education (CUE) who gave a brief address to the participants on his behalf. The speech emphasized on the financing of Doctoral degree programs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and the importance of rating our higher education institutions in terms of the quality of programs they offer.

The guest speaker Prof. Michael Lightner; Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, at the University of Colorado gave a speech on the Global Trends in Engineering, Computing and Technology Education predicting that by the year 2020 there will be an increase in online teaching and assessment for postgraduate Engineering degrees with Masters of Science degrees in engineering done online from many sources with a lot of assessments.

The conference sessions were well attended with presentations being made by different heads of institutions and invited guests. The presentations “Building Institutional Capacity for Developing and Teaching Blended and Online Courses-A case study of Kenyatta University” and “Innovations in Developing and Retaining Faculty in New Medical Schools- A case study of Maseno University” respectively were felt to have had the biggest impact on the participants in terms of presentation with a satisfactory rate of 84% of the total participants.

Other topics covered during the forum include: Innovations in Developing and Retaining Engineering / ICT Faculty in New Kenyan Universities – the case of Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, national and international accreditation of medical and engineering degree programs – the role of CUE and professional boards,the future of engineering education in Kenya. Participants also focused on increasing the participation of women in agricultural research, and innovations in developing and retaining faculty in new medical schools – the case of Kenya Methodist University.

During the forum, participants were asked to rank the top 10 ICT-related concerns in Kenya’s higher education sector. Financing ICT was ranked as the most crucial issue addressed by institutions represented in the forum. This was followed by developing institutional capacity for teaching and learning with ICT, and administrative ERPs/information systems as the 2nd and 3rd most important. The findings indicate that disaster recovery/business continuity and mobile technologies and device ownership by students and bring your device policies were not a big priority for the majority of the institutions.

The 7^th Annual Heads of Institutions Forum will be held in December 10^th to 11^th, 2015.