Twenty-five female students of the Department of Physics at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have been rewarded for their academic brilliance in physics under the Dr K.C. Whittaker Endowment Fund.

The 25 students, comprising 16 undergraduate and 9 postgraduate students, benefited from the Ghc87,500 financial package, with each receiving Gh₵3,500 from the fund initiated in 1998 by Mrs Rose Whittaker to award extraordinary female students in physics.

Professor Caleb Kesse Frimpong, Head of Department for Biochemistry and Biotechnology and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Biosciences at KNUST, who represented the Provost of the College of Science, expressed his appreciation to the Whittaker Foundation for introducing the financial support arrangement, which has contributed enormously towards female students choosing physics as their course of study.

“One of the greatest educationists once said, ' If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation.'" For continuously supporting our female students for nearly three decades, the institution is most grateful to the Whittaker Foundation. For some of us, this award has come at an opportune time, and we want to see the beneficiaries of this award push more ladies into this field of study. For me, I am very excited and thankful for the continuous support,” he said.

Professor Kesse Frimpong also urged other foundations and endowment funds to emulate the Whittaker Foundation and extend their support towards other programmes offered at the university.

“As I am sitting here, I was just thinking, God, can we have another endowment fund for mathematics or even chemistry? And the reason why I’m saying that is because when you go to our secondary schools, you realise that Physics, mathematics and chemistry are, most of them are, male-dominated, and the young girls need motivation to push them,” he stated.

Meanwhile, a trustee of the Whittaker Foundation, Solomon Quanzie, announced that the foundation wants to expand to involve former awardees to guide the young ladies who choose physics as their course of study.

“We also want to expand, and so we are toiling with the idea of having a certain platform for fellowship of former awardees so that we can have the old ones mentoring the new ones who are coming. It takes money, but we believe when we have a project properly done, of course with the support of the faculty, we should be able to get a platform that is very viable and to the advantage of everybody.”

This year’s recipients included level 400 student Joyce Coffie, who has been a beneficiary of the award since her first year in school.

She says the financial support has been extremely helpful to her, absolving her parents of the burden of paying her academic, hostel and other user fees.

“I don’t really come from a rich background, so it helps me pay my academic and many other use fees on campus, which gives me the peace of mind to study and not thinking about how to pay my fees and other stuff, so it has been very helpful.”

Joyce stressed that the scholarship scheme has inspired her to do more with her academic work.

“It has inspired me a lot knowing that there are females that have been on the scholarship, and now they’re lecturers, holding big positions up there. It inspires me a lot to do better and also climb to the top,” she said.

Present at the presentation ceremony were other members of the fund, including Chairman of the Trustees Mr Eric Inkoomsah, Mr Ernest Prah, Mr Owusu and Mrs Irene Schandorf.

The fund annually supports female students pursuing physics at KNUST. Presently, that small fund, which started in 1998 with one female student per year, is now supporting up to twenty-five students from BSc, MPhil and PhD levels.

The K.C. Whittaker Foundation has so far supported over 350 exceptional female physics students at the KNUST, and they promise to continue in the years ahead.