Published: July 13, 2026
We’ve had several months of relative calm at the University of Liberia. Some people are cheering and others are growing uneasy. I have worked hard to bring calm and stability to the University since my arrival a year and a half ago. Many others have worked with me, so it has been a team effort.
By Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., President, University of Liberia
Our Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Agnes Reeves Taylor, helped early on by guiding the Joint Academic Coordinating Council and Faculty Senate to approve a regularized academic calendar for UL, resulting in three full semesters and one vacation school within the last 18 months, with a one graduation in February and another scheduled for December, following a fourth regular semester scheduled to begin in late August. A week scarcely passes without someone saying thank you for this regularized academic calendar!
Our Interim Vice President for Finance and Fiscal Affairs, Dr. Lester Tenny, helped by regularizing faculty pay, especially for adjunct and overload faculty, and by paying longstanding arrears to virtually all of UL’s Study Leave faculty abroad. He has carefully managed UL’s internal revenue to make it cover essential expenses as well as to eliminate many longstanding liabilities, including bringing UL up to date on our employee health insurance. He also worked with Administration and Government actors on the effort to clean up UL’s payroll, removing ghost employees, duplicates, and other errors, setting the stage for a much more efficient and effective payroll system – no small task.
Our Interim Vice President for Administration, Mr. Sehmah Jallah, helped by mobilizing people and resources to address longstanding infrastructural complaints – painting the famously unsightly Graduate School Building, for example, restarting electricity in the student dormitories, making sure the Mobile Labs had constant fuel so that sensitive lab samples would not be lost, and getting the UL Printing Press up-and-running with donated machines that had been sitting in boxes for years. He has also overseen the development of a normalized set of job descriptions and pay scales for all UL’s positions, setting the stage for the resolution of pay disparities that have long been a staff complaint.
Our Vice President of Student Affairs, Mrs. Saydah Williamson Taylor, finally got student IDs back in production, first for the seniors who graduated in February, and more recently for the general student body. She has also worked painstakingly with student leaders on a new MoU for interim student leadership, since the old one expired in December. A heavy lift, but one that is now in the “done” column!
This is not a complete list of valuable efforts by my team, but it makes a point – things are moving and a kind of stability that is good for the university and its stakeholders – students, faculty, and staff – is unfolding. While none of us is perfect, and while much remains to be done, it is fair to say that we have succeeded in turning a vicious cycle of “negative things breeding more negative things” into a virtuous cycle of “positive things leading to more positive things.” That, in and of itself, is a very special kind of win.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that our students themselves have been quite peaceful lately. People have been focusing on their studies and working towards graduation, engaging in constructive dialogue with UL Administration about their concerns, and generally supporting the stable atmosphere. I am thankful to the student leaders who have worked on this with me, with a special shout-out to the President’s Student Advisory Council. Many students, political and nonpolitical, have confided in me that they see UL headed in a good direction. Students more than anyone want a good future for themselves – a future defined by productivity, prosperity, and wider horizons. I share their aspiration and am investing in UL’s stability so that it can be realized. Just because UL has been characterized as “difficult to enter, difficult to stay, and difficult to exit” doesn’t mean that is has to remain that way!
I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that many faculty and staff have both contributed to and benefited from the increasingly stable atmosphere at UL. While we all agree that resources are still far more constrained than we would like, many have told me that the peace, calm, and stability have made their work easier and given them hope about the future. I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that many, many things are still very hard at UL, especially for our hardworking faculty, staff, and contract employees – but, equally, it would be dishonest to say that things are at a standstill and the UL Administration is not actively working towards better working conditions at UL. The pace is slower than any of us would like at times, but the best way to reach a destination is to put one foot in front of the other until you get there.
The Government of Liberia has also contributed greatly to an increase in UL’s stability. The Ministry of Finance and Development Planning has been a partner on pay regularity, payroll cleanup, and infrastructure development. The National Legislature has signaled its vision of improved facilities at UL by affording significant funding for new and renovated buildings at UL as well as new buses. A number of Government entities and even some community-based organizations, most notably the National Port Authority and Voices of the Elders, have either pledged or paid for new classroom chairs for UL. Many individuals and businesses, too many to name, have donated to UL for student scholarships, bathroom improvements, and other needful activities. And, of course, we must highlight the great investment made by His Excellency President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, Sr. in the form of $50,000 for a graduate research laboratory. To paraphrase inspirational author Paulo Coehlo, it is as though nearly everyone is “conspiring for our success”.
There’s a cardinal principle in human psychology: stability is good for people and instability generally is not. But there’s another equally powerful principle: people are drawn to and tend to recreate what they are most familiar with, whether that is stability or instability. It would seem that these two principles are in paradox, because between them there is an implicit question about whether people who are accustomed to instability can come to appreciate and enjoy the benefits of stability.
Liberia has known instability, whether the episodic instability of political violence and civil conflict or the everyday instability of resource scarcity and economic vulnerability. This is particularly true of the three generations that work and study at UL today – those who grew up before the war, during the war, and after the war. So there’s a very understandable reason why instability may feel familiar, even comfortable. But that doesn’t make it the best platform for our collective future.
All over the world, universities are a nation’s trust. Their longevity, predictability, and stability serve as a kind of haven or refuge against the backdrop of volatile social trends and political ups and downs. They exist for everyone – all strata of society, people of all backgrounds, people of diverse views – and for the nation itself, They generally operate on a shared understanding that they must function beyond and outside the political vagaries of society because education is a common good that benefits all. Universities are stable precisely because they promote free thought and protect speech yet prohibit and prevent its slippage into violence and disorder. They do this by upholding dialogue, even debate, while drawing the line at conflicts that cross the line into hate speech, harm to persons, destruction of property, or disruption of educational activities. Stability is their gold.
The University of Liberia is becoming more stable, and in that stability are many benefits. Those benefits will only increase over time if we let them. So let’s work together and build on our gains.
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