Wolaita Sodo University

Wolaita Sodo University is one of the recently established government higher education institutions, which were the results of the capacity building strategies undertaken by the Ministry of Education in order to enhance the number of universities and to alleviate the shortage of educated man power in the country at large. The University is found at a town Wolaita Sodo, which is around 390 kilometers away towards South from the capital Addis Ababa. Based on the underpinning public request as well as the Government’s wish, it was decided to establish the University at its current location Wolaita Sodo. The university was officially inaugurated on March 24, 2007. After a while, the firstly completed phase of the construction provided the basis for operation of Wolaita Sodo University college, as it was first named, that received its first batch, 801 (609 Male and 192 female) students in four faculties and sixteen departments. Out of these numbers, 569 (481 male and 88 female) of them completed their studies and graduated with a BSc and B.A. degrees on July 18, 2009. Meanwhile, the University has gone through a series of developments since its establishment as a higher learning institution. Due to the great demand of trained man power in the region as well as in the country at large, the university has witnessed tremendous expansion in terms of fields of study. In the academic year 2008, the former Faculty of Education came apart in to two faculties namely the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities and the Faculty of Natural and Computational Science. And, the School of Law was added at the same year. Furthermore, the Faculty of Engineering and Technology was also established in 2009 for further diversity of the training programs of the university. Thus, currently, the university offers undergraduate programs in 5 Faculties and 2 Schools, comprised of 22 departments.