Marai, new executive dean

The National National
Dr Leo Marai (left) signing his contract in the presence of University of Papua New Guinea registrar Prof Peter Petsul in Port Moresby on Monday. – Picture supplied

LONG-serving academic Dr Leo Marai is the new executive dean for the school of humanities and social sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG).
UPNG council’s human resource committee chairman Peter Baki made the announcement at the UPNG Waigani campus in Port Moresby on Monday.
Dr Marai is a doctorate (Phd) holder in psychology (humanitarian work in psychology) and the senior lecturer in the psychology strand.
He has served the university for almost 30 years and has been head of the strand for six years.
Dr Marai has filled roles as the senior lecturer and senior mentor of the school’s psychology division.
He has contributed immensely in the field of research and publications over the years publishing over 80 articles, journals and publications.
Dr Marai is the first Papua New Guinean to be acknowledged as a non-member of the American psychology association for delivering a paper on indigenous psychology in Hawaii.
He has also been invited on occasions to present the psychology of Papua New Guinea paper at New York University.
Dr Marai said taking the new role would be challenging because the school of humanities and social sciences was a big school with a large number of staff.
“It is challenging in a sense of the transition of how the school has gone through the Coronavirus (Covid-19) error,” he said.
“A lot of learning needs adjustment and systems needs to pick up.”
Dr Marai said the school needed more staff, particularly senior academic staff, to run its programmes.
He said the aim was to recruit more lecturers with high level qualifications such as doctorates.
Dr Marai said the school of humanities and social sciences had been dormant for a long time and needed a lot of work, administratively as well as mounting up new programmes.
He said this was in line with school’s vision of academic excellence.
“All administrations must have a support system in place to mount the programmes and get good quality human resources to do teaching and carry out research,” he said.
Dr Marai said research had declined over the years and the number of publications had declined as well and it was one of the areas the school needed to improve.
He said doing this would enable the school to be on par with other universities in the world.