The University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) on Monday, held its Alumni Homecoming 2011, with an objective to raise $50 million to improve and expand the delivery of business education in the country. The money would be raised within a period of a decade under the UGBS Endowment Fund which was set up in July this year. The fund has been created to provide a revenue stream for funding research to solve industrial problems, support the expansion of PhD programmes of the school, support staff development, provide scholarships and support the geographical expansion of the school into the sub region and beyond. The homecoming event, which is dubbed “Time with UGBS”, is being held alongside an Education Fair to showcase what the UGBS has been doing over the years. The Dean of the UGBS, Professor Kwame Ameyaw Domfeh, said the school was putting up a multi-purpose graduate complex to cater for the increasing number of students who sought admission to the school. The new complex will provide state-of-the art teaching facilities, a spacious and peaceful environment for learning, and a world-class facility that sustains the Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) and other graduate programmes in the future. Due to the lack of space, he said, the school was unable to take in more students, and that the first phase of the new facility would cost GHC12 million. He said the school had been doing well since its establishment and that there was the need to create more space having introduced and added new programmes to meet the demands of the business world. Some of the new programmes are: EMBA, Weekend Master of Business Administration, Master of Public Administration, Development Finance, Master of Philosophy, and PhD. Prof. Domfeh said the homecoming event was to provide the platform for the alumni to reconnect with their alma mater, see old friends and meet new ones and learn at first-hand the changes taking place at the UGBS. “It is my hope that the fair and the homecoming would be memorable events for everyone,” he said. He charged the alumni to support the school to realise the objectives it had set under the Endowment Fund. The immediate past Dean of the UGBS, Dr K. Osei, said the school had attracted the most talented students and therefore, always had a very good percentage of its students graduating with first class honours. “The school can, therefore, boast being a leader in business education in the country, as well as boast producing the best graduates,” he said. The time for the establishment of an Endowment Fund, he said, was ripe with the hope of reaching as many graduates as possible to give something back for a very good cause. Dr Osei said the sources of funding for the Endowment Fund included mobile money, local companies, multi-national companies and the UGBS alumni. The UGBS has been in existence since 1952. It started as the Department of Commerce at the then Kumasi College of Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). In 1960, the Department of Commerce was moved to Achimota and by an Executive Instrument (EI) 27 of 1961; it became the College of Administration and was given the status of a faculty to offer degree courses in general management, accounting, public administration and health services management. In 1974, the then School of Administration introduced masters programmes in Business Administration and Public Administration. In addition to the degree programmes the school offers diploma programmes in Public Administration and Accounting. In 2004, the name of the school was changed to the UGBS with the creation of six academic departments under it.