Victoria University has started equipping its employees with artificial intelligence skills, as it works to weave AI into everyday operations and ready its students for a labour market shaped more and more by technology.
The session took place on campus on Monday, September 28, 2026, and drew employees from several departments. The university wants them to gain hands-on AI abilities they can use in their own jobs.
Vice Chancellor Dr Lawrence Muganga explained that the exercise belongs to a wider campus-wide drive to make sure no member of staff is left behind while AI continues to reshape education, employment and the way workplaces run.
Dr Muganga told journalists that the university is obliged to send out graduates who can function in an economy where AI matters more with each passing year.
“Whatever position one holds in this university, they must know how to use AI and apply it well to solving the different problems we face here,” he said.
He noted that every employee, whatever their role, would be covered by the programme, and argued that AI knowledge should not be reserved for those who work directly with technology.
In his view, the aim is to set off a chain reaction: staff pick up practical skills, which then flow down to students and strengthen the university’s operations.
Julius Bukyana, the university’s Corporate and Public Relations Manager, said Victoria University wants a workforce that can fold AI into its routine activities.
“When they have learned the skills and are applying them daily, we know the impact on our students will be huge, even in their professional lives, because they will be practising it too, and the result should be a very big improvement across everything we do,” Mr Bukyana said.
Tim Abels, an AI investor and technology expert, led the session. He urged participants to master practical AI tools that raise productivity and take over repetitive tasks.
Mr Abels named AI Studio, Gemini Notebook and n8n Automation as tools that anyone working in business ought to know, describing them as useful for automation and boosting efficiency.
“You need to work a hundred times smarter,” he told the attendees.
The training arrives at a time when universities and employers are wrestling with how AI will alter the skills the workplace demands.
At Victoria University, the emphasis reaches beyond staff in computing and other technical fields. The institution maintains that employees in every function should understand how AI can be applied to what they do.
Dr Muganga said the strategy is meant to make sure staff can work effectively in an AI-driven setting and, in turn, help students prepare for a changing world of work.
The session forms part of a larger professional development programme through which the university hopes to grow AI capacity among its workforce.
