The 2014 Graduation Destination Survey conducted by the Careers Service in CHED showed that 44% of UCT's graduating class* was already employed by the time they stepped up to the graduation podium to be capped. And those with postgraduate degrees fared better in the employment stakes, with the employment rate for PhDs at 63% at the time of graduation.

While 44% of UCT's 2014 graduating class were already employed, 19% were enrolled in further education, 14% were seeking further education, 18% were seeking employment, 2% were travelling and 2% were undecided about their plans.

According to the survey, 55% of the students who had found jobs would be earning in excess of R15 000 a month. And gratifyingly, 79% of the respondents said their degree was directly related to their job.

These statistics are encouraging against a macro-economic picture of persistent unemployment in the country. In the first quarter of 2014 the national unemployment rate was 25.2% (Stats SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey).

The statistics for youth are even more sobering. According to Stats SA, 67% of all unemployed South Africans are youth. They face the most difficult challenges in South Africa's labour market.

But it's not just a local problem; a global phenomenon, unemployment has become more acute since the financial crisis of 2008. A degree may give students an advantage, but despite expanding access to universities in sub-Saharan Africa, there are concerns about the quality of these qualifications and graduates' preparation and readiness for the workplace.

It's in this space that the Careers Service works, helping students to make the most of their university experience. (In the 2014 survey, 90% of the respondents reported they were satisfied with their learning experience at UCT.)

Skills and knowledge

What makes a graduate (or anyone else, for that matter) employable?

Wikipedia describes employability as "... a person's capability for gaining and maintaining employment. For individuals, employability depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities they possess, in addition to the way they present those assets to employers".

Much of this statement is embodied in the unit's work. Here, students learn that it takes more than a solid academic record to succeed; they also need to develop some relevant work experience and extra-curricular activities, such as socially engaged or volunteer work. Their mission is to support students' careers by helping them realise their potential and contribute to their communities in a meaningful way.

Careers Service director David Casey believes this starts from day one in first year.

"We take students through the paces of developing career management skills by providing information, advice and opportunity services, achieved through a well-resourced Careers Information Centre, workshops, part time work opportunities, employer events and recruitment programmes."

The unit offers a wide range of services and resources to help students at any stage of study with all aspects of career and job-search planning.

"We can help students from first year explore their career options, expose them to personal and professional job development opportunities such as part-time work, internships, graduate jobs, careers expos and employer showcases," said Casey. "We also help them compile job search material such as CVs and cover letters."

In a 'bottom-up' approach, the unit are also looking to build career awareness into the university curriculum. In commerce, for example, there's a credit-bearing course, Careers Discoveries, aimed at helping first-year students think through their career choices and possibilities.

Careers advisors deliver seven other careers-related modules in partnership with academics in other courses.

For many students, the help they get goes beyond addressing statements such as "I don't know what I want to do when I graduate' or "I like what I'm studying but I'm not sure where it's taking me".

The service extends from helping students prepare good cover letters right through to tips for interviews, even going as far as holding mock interviews to prepare students for the real thing.

The Careers Service also helps high school learners make more informed decisions for their lives after school – through one-on-one sessions, large school talks as well as interactive workshops for smaller groups. Aptly called Beyond School, this service helps learners consider what goes into building a career (as opposed to choosing a career), are equipped to make more informed career choices, and gain a better understanding the complexities of the 21st century working world. The Careers Office also offers Beyond School education workshops for teachers and youth workers (and UCT students) that look more specifically at key issues learners face (and how to help them), the current world of work, and aspects of career development theories.

The Careers Service also helps high school learners make more informed decisions for their lives after school – through one-on-one sessions, large school talks as well as interactive workshops for smaller groups. Aptly called Beyond School, this service helps learners consider what goes into building a career (as opposed to choosing a career), are equipped to make more informed career choices, and gain a better understanding the complexities of the 21st century working world. The Careers Office also offers Beyond School education workshops for teachers and youth workers (and UCT students) that looks more specifically at key issues learners face (and how to help them), the current world of work, and aspects of career development theories.

Their vision is simple, says Casey: to be the leading African careers service, recognised globally for innovation, quality and impact.

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Recognising the need for transformation of the country's academic cohort, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Programme identifies highly promising students at a very early stage in their academic careers, and through financial support, mentoring and stimulating academic activities, establishes them on an academic career track.

There is no well-established pipeline of black or female academics in South Africa – or in Africa. It's one of the toughest challenges in transforming the university sector.

Among the recruitment challenges is insufficient infrastructural support for the long and expensive journey to PhD level.

New UCT MMUF fellows will spend a month in the US and are (from left) Qiniso Van Damme, Monique Henry, Ayanda Mahlaba, Jody van der Heyde, Tasneem Amra, Nasrin Olla (MMUF fellow 2011/2012) and Aaron Mulenga.

Recognising the need for transformation of the country's academic cohort, US-based equity programme the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship Programme, funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, extended its programme to South Africa and UCT in 2002.

In 2003, the foundation reaffirmed its commitment and broadened the MMUF's mission, changing its name to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship programme to symbolically connect the mission to the stellar education achievements of Dr Benjamin E Mays (an American educator, minister and social activist who mentored Martin Luther King Jr).

The programme identifies highly promising students at a very early stage in their academic careers, and through financial support, mentoring and stimulating academic activities, establishes them on an academic career track.

Students who are entering the final year of a three-year degree or the third year of a four-year professional degree are eligible for selection as MMUF fellows. Students in a three-year degree programme are expected to apply for an appropriate honours programme as a condition of the award.

MMUF academic coordinator Gideon Nomdo says: "It sets up a holistic collaborative and supportive framework through which students are guided and nurtured into postgraduate studies towards achieving a PhD. ?A particular type of mentoring philosophy informs MMUF's key goal, which is to increase the number of black academics in higher education institutions."

Building knowledge by fostering community

May is always a red-letter month for students entering the programme. They gather for their last briefings before embarking on what for many is their first trip abroad: the MMUF summer institute in the US, held during the mid-year vacation.

This year's newly appointed fellows are Tasneem Amra, Ayanda Mahlaba, Aaron Mulenga, Qiniso van Damme, Jody van der Heyde and Marco Titus. Nasrin Olla (MMUF fellow 2011/2012 cohort), a PhD student at Cornell University, and Kathy Erasmus (MMUF co-ordinator) will accompany those headed for the summer institute at Williams College in Massachusetts, a small, private liberal arts college.

"What makes the MMUF programme unique," explains Nasrin Olla, "is that it recognised, from its inception, that scholarly activity cannot be unbound from a sense of community and friendship. The programme emphasises support structures that are both objectively intellectual and socially conscious; it builds knowledge through a fostering of community.

"Above all, what I learnt from my MMUF experience, to paraphrase the philosopher Hannah Arendt, is that this activity we call 'thinking' is about being open to the words and presence of others."

MMUF fellow Ziyanda Ndzendze (master's, 2011 to 2012 cohort) reflects: "I think the biggest thing for me was that someone saw potential in me and was willing to invest in it.

"Mellon opened a space for intellectual debates, and spaces to converse with big, scary professors. They did a very good job of bridging the gap between myself as a junior student and academic staff, through talks and dinners and other kinds of gatherings – and also getting an academic mentor from my field.

"It also forced me to take my research seriously and taught me how to talk about my research confidently, and gave me the ability to engage with people who are not in my discipline about my research."

Initially, Ndzendze wasn't interested in a career in academia.

"For a while I felt like academia was selfish and only focused on using people (participants) to write papers and share them with the elite academic spaces. And when I started thinking about it, because of my interest in teaching and research, it felt a bit far-fetched for me as a black student because of the face of academia around me.

"A programme like MMUF addresses transformation, and with so many people passionate about social justice and community, I started to see more and more how one can make a career out of academia and still be a socially conscious citizen at the same time.

Overcoming the obstacles

Ndzendze believes more internal programme are necessary to build a new, inclusive academic corps.

"Each university needs to take responsibility, acknowledge the problem ... and start creating space to cultivate academics of colour.

"The reality is that there are too many obstacles in the way for students of colour, when it comes to pursuing higher education, that are beyond their control. If the university claims to care about transformation, they need to take the mission of producing academics from diverse backgrounds seriously."

Advice to young black students interested in a career in academia?

"Believe in yourself, surround yourself with like-minded people, realise that you have an important contribution to make in academia – your experience is just as important as everyone else?s. And read and read and read ..."

Dr Sean Samson is one of 12 candidates who completed his PhD on the MMUF programme (2005/2006 MMUF cohort). He now lectures in the Humanities? Academic Development Programme and works on the First-Year Experience project.

"I've met black academics from far afield who, through sharing their experiences, helped me do away with the 'myth' of the academy or my own naiveté. By this I mean ideas around a linear route to achieving the PhD, and an assumption about where obstacles would come from. In short, life happens.

"My own journey has been characterised by health concerns, funding issues, and family issues; not to mention the obstacles that come with the actual research (cue the violins). While these concerns have not made the journey easy, I knew that others, from similar backgrounds, had made it through.

"I had access to a network of supportive fellows, and black academics who had maintained their integrity (research and otherwise), especially in those cases where they are called upon to speak for the marginalised. I think that this network of black academics that MMUF creates has been the key resource for me.

"MMUF is focused on increasing diversity in the academy, but it has a development focus where the current calls for transformation require more immediate responses. I became a fellow knowing that the work the MMUF community produces will contribute to diversifying scholarship, but it is only recently that I began to think about what teaching for transformation would look like, what the classroom in which this kind of teaching takes place could 'feel' like.

I've also been reminded of the issues (outside of the classroom) that affect academic success, and that are still racialised. Interestingly, this is refl ected in my own student experience – but in my memory I had made it the experience of a minority, which it isn't. I'm finding my feet at the moment; this is the kind of consciousness I'm trying to develop as a teacher, and I believe that MMUF has contributed to this thinking."

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Je'nine May.

Can our university system evolve to teach students about the world they face in the 21st century? Can it teach them how to be compassionate, ethical and engaged citizens in an increasingly interconnected and complex world?

These questions are at the heart of UCT's Global Citizenship Programme, now in its sixth year and aimed at creating civic-minded 'modern intellectuals' through a "different knowledge project".

As part of the Global Citizenship Programme, students help out and have one of their classes on the GC2 short courses at Mothers Unite in Lavender Hill, where over 150 children have access to books, computers, art therapy, sports and play – as an alternative to the gangsterism they're witness to on the streets. (Photo courtesy of the UCT Global Citizen Facebook page.)

These are graduates who are socially engaged and concerned with social injustice and who think and debate differently about local and global issues.

Funded by the vice-chancellor and the DG Murray Trust, the Global Citizenship Programme is a free, non-credit course for all students.

The programme's mainstays are three interlinked but separate extra-curricular short courses: Global Debates, Local Voices (GC1); Service, Citizenship and Social Justice (GC2); and voluntary community service, 60 hours of self-organised community service followed by structured reflection (GC3).

Teach students about 'being' in the world

Each is designed to teach students three key things: knowledge beyond their degree or discipline; skills such as leadership and critical thinking, active listening, and argument and debating skills; and values such as social justice.

"Universities need to move beyond the 'mantra' of knowledge and skills – knowing and doing – and equip students for 'being' in the world in new ways," said Dr Janice McMillan, a senior lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching, and convenor of the Global Citizenship Programme.

Global citizenship is an essential part of what McMillan refers to as "cultivating humanity": teaching students to critically examine their own traditions and beliefs, recognise their community and fellowship with human beings around the world – and consider what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.

While it draws from the academic disciplines, it is knowledge as an "enablement of 'being' in different ways".

"All the work on these courses gives students a slightly more complicated lens with which to engage the world. It helps them make sense of their knowledge and how they enact it."

While few could argue the merits of this kind of 'depth' learning, it's been an uphill battle for the team, because it's potentially disruptive of mainstream learning. "It asks different questions," said McMillan.

Adding breadth to depth

Their challenge is how to bring relevant aspects of the programme to bear on the formal curriculum in a more sustainable way. In an already crowded curriculum that must also address poor student preparedness for university, it's a tough ask.

One way has been to align the programme more closely to the university's four strategic initiatives: Safety and Violence; African Climate and Development; Schools Improvement; and Poverty and Inequality.

All four themes are evident in the GC1 short course (global debates, local voices) but also serve to frame aspects of the GC2 short course (service, citizenship and social justice). In both GC2 and GC3, students critically refl ect on their community service in the context of poverty, inequality and social justice.

"Initiatives like these provide core contexts through which students can engage with key issues in service work and service organisations," said McMillan. In its six years the programme has developed crucial partnerships with the faculties, each of which has taken up the programme in different ways.

One coup is the credit-bearing course on social infrastructures introduced in the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment, and held during the June/July winter term. The course has grown from 60 to 100 places.

"It helps students locate their emerging engineering knowledge within a much bigger societal context," said McMillan. It's this context that's so valuable to learning.

In the commerce faculty, the GCP has been very popular with fi rst-year students, starting in O-Week when students debate some complicated issues on poverty, education, gender inequality and climate change, all global citizenship themes.

In addition, each of the core commerce courses (evidence-based management, information systems (IS), economics and maths) offers a GC lecture as part of their fi rst-year programme. And the IS honours community service component requires their students to complete the GC1 and GC2 modules.

In the law faculty they're working with colleagues to link up with the faculty's community service block, to help students think about community service in specifi c ways.

In the health sciences faculty the team has been offered potential space in the MBChB curriculum for research projects, elective models and co-teaching.

"These students are already learning in the community as part of their practice learning. The faculty is keen to do things in a more transformative way by introducing global citizenship-thinking to their curriculum."

With its very full curriculum and student throughput demands, the science faculty is a challenge. There's little space to introduce the breadth the Global Citizenship Programme brings to academic programmes. But it's also essential to get science students to think differently about the application of their knowledge in the real world, says McMillan, who is working with the faculty to make this possible.

Beyond academic departments

Outide the academic departments, the GCP team has forged links with departments such as student affairs, careers services, student residences and SHAWCO.

Taking this a step further, the programme has piloted the GC-Act project this year, providing an opportunity for students to development activation campaigns on campus. For this, the GCP has made contact with four activist-oriented student organisations on campus: Amnesty International (themes of war and peace); Equal Education (public schooling); InkuluFreeHeid (equality and democracy); and the Green Campus Initiative (climate change/sustainability).

As the programme gathers traction, other opportunities arise. McMillan is particularly excited by a new venture with the Global Network for Young Europeans (GLEN).

They have submitted a funding proposal for an international collaboration on the practice and understanding of global citizen education to bring youth to various global sites in several partner countries in both Europe and Africa.

The GCP has asked to be a partner in the initial phase over the next 18 months.

Though it's been a battle to embed the thinking around global citizenship into the formal academic offerings, McMillan believes the time has come to take the programme to another level across the curriculum, "so that the GCP can contribute to the debate at UCT about what it means to be an African university".

"Hopefully, we've begun to lay the foundations for this over the past five years."

Story by Helen Swingler

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

Fifty percent of South Africa's university intake does not graduate, at a cost of some R5-billion in subsidies, a massive waste of human potential, and a severe drag on transformation.

Only 10% of the country's black youth get into higher education. UCT enrols the top end of these students – and yet, in a number of our undergraduate programmes, only one-third graduate in regulation time, and a similar proportion do not graduate at all. It?s a revolving door that sees many talented individuals leaving with nothing but debt.

"It's an indictment on our higher education system," says Emeritus Professor Ian Scott, former director of UCT's Academic Development Programme (ADP).

"We must ask the question: Why are UCT's performance patterns still so skewed by race when we're attracting an elite?"

The answer goes to the heart of transformation, which is not just about access, but critically, about success among a group of students rendered vulnerable by the articulation gap between school and university, says Scott.

The central challenge of transformation in the student sector lies in substantially growing the number of black graduates, with the ultimate aim of achieving "equity of outcomes".

Twin goals of access and success

This challenge has been at the heart of the mission of the ADP since its establishment in 1980, when the then-government was entirely opposed to such work and the resources for it had to come from antiapartheid donors and UCT itself.

Scott notes that the ADP's original mandate was twofold: to ensure that places were available for talented black students, the great majority of whom were then from disadvantaged educational backgrounds and did not meet UCT's admissions criteria; and, in partnership with the faculties, to establish or promote teaching-and-learning structures and approaches that would facilitate these students' success.

Over time, against the backdrop of wideranging social and institutional changes, the ADP has introduced a range of educational development initiatives to pursue the twin goals of equity of access and equity of outcomes.

The key elements have been: the establishment of the Alternative Admissions Research Project (AARP, now CETAP, an independent unit in CHED), which pioneered innovative pre-entry testing to identify talented students from a range of backgrounds; the development of foundational courses and 'extended programmes' to enable students who are underprepared as a result of educational inequalities to acquire sound academic foundations for completing their degrees; and the provision of interventions in key academic literacies, particularly in language and numeracy, that are essential for successful university learning.

The ADP staff establishment now comprises some 50 academics from a range of disciplines who have specialised in educational development. They are located in the faculties, where core teaching and learning takes place, and in two inter-faculty units, the Language Development Group and the Numeracy Centre. They're supported by 12 PASS staff.

Mainstream the interventions

As the ADP's main purpose has been to redress historical educational inequalities, its work has focused on black students as the group most affected by the legacy of apartheid. Given the demographics of UCT's intake, ADP interventions have generally been limited to a minority of the student body.

However, it has become clear that educational development approaches now need to be expanded into UCT's 'mainstream' teaching-and-learning processes, for two reasons: first, to strengthen UCT's capacity to deal effectively with the wide diversity that exists in students' educational and linguistic backgrounds (an essential condition for accelerating transformation); and second, because it's evident that the need to strengthen learning is not confined to a minority of black students.

This need is making additional demands on all ADP staff: to work not only with students, but increasingly in partnership with the faculties and academic departments, on tasks such as course and curriculum design, inclusive teaching approaches, and integrating academic literacy development into regular programmes.

Establishing a curriculum structure that allows diverse educational backgrounds to be successfully accommodated – with the additional and different forms of teaching and learning this entails – has been a key ADP objective, says Scott.

"This is shown in the growth of extended programmes, as an adjunct to the traditional curricula, which have already contributed to producing many hundreds of black graduates.

"However, add-on foundation courses are not enough to address the problem. These interventions must be mainstreamed."

Change at national level

But changing mainstream structures is largely beyond the power of individual universities. Scott therefore believes that a key element of the solution lies in establishing an extended and fl exible higher education curriculum framework at national level.

Supported particularly by his long-time colleague and dean of CHED, Professor Suellen Shay, Scott was involved in a major Council on Higher Education study that culminated in a proposal for such curriculum reform published in 2013.

"An extended framework, as the norm, would create the curriculum space needed for educational innovations designed to facilitate success among students who are not well served by the traditional curricula – who already constitute the majority of the student intake nationally," says Scott.

"Flexibility in the framework would help to accommodate diversity, enabling students to progress at their own pace, including allowing those who are able to graduate in a shorter time to do so."

The CHE proposal argues that the waste of human and material resources arising from current higher education attrition calls for decisive policy change to meet the needs of the majority.

"Our current system, inherited from colonial times, was designed for a small, largely homogeneous and well-off group," notes Scott.

The system is not well geared to meeting the genuine learning needs of students outside that 'traditional' group. "The outcome, that only 5% of black youth are succeeding in higher education, is disastrous in today's world, and is blocking transformation."

Facilitating transformation through mainstream educational development is now a key challenge, Scott concludes – for the ADP, CHED and the academic community at large.

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

Applying and being accepted into UCT is the first big hurdle students face. Treading the minefield of big classes, massive campuses and an even bigger workload can trip up even the brightest freshers. This is where UCT's First-Year Experience (FYE) steps in.

One of the help desks dotted around campus at the beginning of the year, to help new students settle into campus life.

Launched in 2012, UCT's First-Year Experience (FYE) aims to put new students on a firm footing, in the knowledge that a good grounding during their first year of study can prevent them going down a slippery slope when the going gets tougher later on. FYE has four main objectives: strengthening pre-admissions support and first-year careers advice; providing a welcoming and supportive environment for prospective and new students in all faculties; promoting a renewed focus on fi rst-year teaching; and promoting an integrated approach to student development, linking initiatives that respond to students' academic, affective, social and material needs, explains FYE director Dr Danny Fontaine.

One of critical ports of call for new students is the library – in this case, the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, as commerce first-years are guided along by their yellow-clad orientation leader.

The project has a four-pronged approach to realising these goals, and has launched pilot projects in the faculties that focus on early assessment of new students, specialised Vula sites, extended orientation programmes since 2014 (think essay-writing and timemanagement workshops) and nuanced digital literacy training for freshers. The latter two are particularly interesting, as they enlist the services of senior students to guide their new colleagues through the labyrinth of tertiary education.

"Every student entering higher education has a first-year experience," says Fontaine, who took over the directorship of FYE nine months ago. "For some it is a good experience that is characterised by independence, a growth in confi dence, intellectual and personal growth. But for others it can be an experience that is characterised by loss of confi dence, failure, and feeling despondent."

Noluyolo Ngomani, a 2014 orientation leader in the Faculty of Humanities, getting UCT freshers ramped up.

FYE is CHED's commitment to making new students' overall experience a positive one. It's work they can't do alone; to ensure a network of support for students, they partner with the university's faculties and support services. This means a student's experience is unique to their faculty and department.

"Since coming into this position, I've spent a lot of time listening (deliberately so) – really trying to get an understanding of what is already taking place in the faculties under the umbrella of FYE," says Fontaine. "The interesting (and sometimes frustrating) thing is that while the term First-Year Experience sounds like it refers to an experience that all first-year students are going to have when they arrive at UCT, the reality is that while there are certainly some common elements to the FYE for students across campus, a student's actual FYE can look very different depending on which faculty they're in," she adds.

First-years are exposed to the social side of campus life during O-Week, for example, when sports clubs and student-run societies set out their stalls on Jameson Plaza.

Fontaine, a UCT alumnus, compares the last nineteen months of her life – in which she's moved back from the USA to take up her post at UCT, and had a baby daughter – to one's first year at university, a time of constant transition.

"But that said, it is exciting times for the FYE in SA," she says. "May saw the launch of the South African National Resource Centre for First-Year Students and Students in Transition at the inaugural FYE Conference in SA. This centre – while located at the University of Johannesburg – is a resource centre that is here to support institutions across the country with their FYE programmes."

The establishment of this resource centre – only the second of its kind in the world – suggests there's growing recognition of the importance of the first-year experience.

Story by Yusuf Omar. Photos by Michael Hammond and Raymond Botha.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

In 2011, 100 promising grade 10 students from schools in Khayelitsha were chosen by UCT for a mentoring programme, to help prepare them for university. Ninety of those students, who matriculated in 2013, were offered places at UCT for 2014, with 73 taking up the offer. To support their student journey at UCT, CHED started the 100UP Plus programme.

"The university needs you."

This was Assoc Prof Suellen Shay's message to the trailblazing cohort that graduated from UCT's 100UP schools programme and was accepted for fi rst-year study at UCT last year.

Students shared a light moment with Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price at the launch of the 100UP Plus programme last year.

She was speaking at the launch of 100UP Plus in 2014, which supports 100UP students enrolled at UCT. During their time at the university, and as part of 100UP Plus, students are supported by a mentor from within CHED and participate in a peermentorship support structure that includes workshops and social meetings.

"In order for us to be an excellent university, you've got to actually be here," Shay told the students. "You've got to be in this place. What I want you to remember, even in those dark hours, is that this place needs you. It needs you to be here; it needs you to succeed; it needs you to walk across that stage and make a powerful contribution in our society."

A two-way teaching experience

Mentorship forms an important part of the 100UP Plus programme. Each student is assigned a CHED staff member, with whom they meet once a month to talk about the challenges and triumphs of university life.

Anita Campbell is one such mentor.

"The programme aims to smooth the transition to university for students from Khayelitsha schools in recognition that students from these schools have been underrepresented in the UCT student body, and that most are first-generation students, who may be less familiar with what is expected of university students, as a result of not having family members who can pass on first-hand experiences of being university students," says Campbell, who teaches mathematics.

"If students have questions or concerns that we can't help with, we use our knowledge of the UCT systems to refer them to where they could get help. We encourage them to persevere through their challenges and we celebrate their achievements. I've been very impressed by my mentees. I'm definitely benefiting from being their mentor!"

The mentoring programme often ends up being a two-way teaching experience. In speaking with their mentees, mentors learn about what aspects of the university are most challenging, and where improvements can be made to the culture of the university system.

Tandie Nkosi is reading for a bachelor of social sciences degree, majoring in film and media, international relations and public policy and administration.

She says being part of the 100UP and 100UP Plus group has had its highs and lows. "As part of the group you feel less alienated in this strange and new place ... [UCT] has a different culture completely to what we know as students who are from Khayelitsha," she explains.

"This programme has taught me that sometimes being part of a group of individuals who understand your struggles and background can be incredibly benefi cial for your academic survival here at UCT."

Story by Yusuf Omar. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

One of the first interactions students might have with CHED comes well before they even set foot on campus – in the form of the National Benchmark Tests (NBT).

These multiple-choice tests, developed to assess applicants' academic, quantitative and mathematical literacy, are one of two national assessments in South Africa, the other being the national school-leaving examination, the National Senior Certificate (NSC), which is a statutory requirement for entry into higher education. The NBT consist of two papers. The first (AQL) tests a student's levels of academic literacy and quantitative literacy competence, while the second (MAT) tests the student's level of mathematics competence.

While the NBT project is an initiative of Higher Education South Africa, it's run by CHED's Centre for Educational Testing for Access and Placement (CETAP). Launched in 2006, NBT help universities interpret applicants' school-leaving results (especially where there have been curriculum changes), decide what level of support first-year students might need, and address any changes needed to entry-level curricula. The NBT therefore assist in addressing low throughput and high drop-out rates – and their associated costs.

UCT is among other leading South African universities that use this test to supplement the information from an applicant's performance on the National Senior Certificate.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

Assoc Prof Suellen Shay. Dean of CHED.

This issue of Monday Monthly profiles CHED's work from the student point of view, with a special focus on how we strive to provide 'enabling pathways' that extend from school right through to the world of work.

The importance of providing students with supportive 'pathways' is highly topical in higher education discourse, as institutions around the globe are wrestling with the challenges of high drop-out rates, especially in STEM areas of study (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). While CHED has a good national and international reputation, it is important that we continue to benchmark ourselves in a rapidly evolving area of scholarship and practice.

CHED's wide range of services – from FYE to Extended Curricula, Global Citizenship to Career Expos – recognises two important realities about UCT's students. The first is that our students are amazing – they are some of the most talented and academically capable students in the country and from across the continent. They bring with them immense cultural and social capital, given their diversity of background and experiences. As you will read in the write-ups, many of CHED's services seek to draw out these strengths and to provide opportunities for students to fl ourish. As they flourish – as students, leaders, activists, researchers – they contribute to UCT's excellence. They are in fact an essential contributor, if not the essential contributor, to UCT's excellence.

The second reality is that many of these very same students arrive at UCT against great odds given the ongoing legacy of unequal provision of education. Even though most of our students come from good public and private schools, the pernicious effects of inequality continue to manifest in feelings of alienation and frustration, and unacceptable differentials in academic performance between white and black students. This is unacceptable. If UCT's commitment to redress in its admissions policy is to translate into equity of outcomes then there must be unequivocal support for students all along the pathway.

This is what CHED is about.

CHED (through its ADP programmes based in each of the faculties) has focused predominantly on the transition from school to university, but increasingly the pathway extends further up the curriculum. More recently we have begun to work at the postgraduate level, providing intensive support for the writing that is so critical to the success of postgraduates. Many of CHED's services extend to all students – FYE, Writing Centre, Career Services, Vula and its 'products' – ensuring the continual improvement of the teaching and learning experience. CHED's reach includes the diverse audiences of Summer School and its extension programme, which seeks to make the intellectual resources of UCT available to those beyond its walls (extra-mural). Most recently through MOOCs our 'students' are all around the globe.

CHED's contribution to transformation – to helping UCT meet its commitment to equity of access and equity of success for students, both at university and in their chosen careers – is as relevant now as it has ever been.

To find out more about the Centre for Higher Education Development, visit ched.uct.ac.za and follow @CHED_UCT on Twitter. Alternatively, get in touch directly on 021 650 2645 or ched@uct.ac.za.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

A safe, collegial space for new lecturers – those with no more than five years' teaching experience – to develop meaningful responses to the challenges facing them, their students and their classrooms. This is what the New Academic Practitioners Programme (NAPP) strives to be.

NAPP graduate Dr Buhle Zuma (psychology), at a 2013 NAPP function held that year, likened the experience of being a new academic to an octopus grappling with invisible walls.

"We want to create a climate that encourages and supports UCT academics. We aim to enable the holistic development of professional practices for new teachers in higher education," says Assoc Prof Jeff Jawitz of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT).

CILT spearheads the New Academic Practitioners Programme (NAPP) with input from the Research Office and the Transformation Services Office. The NAPP team works with new academics to equip them with the basic skills they need as educators, researchers and members of the UCT community. To do this, they focus strongly on teaching, learning, technology and assessment. Given the growth of and need for greater diversity within the student body and academic ranks, the issue of transformation is also high on the priority list.

Since its inception in 2004, no fewer than 400 academic staff members have come through this five-day programme (spread out over a semester) – which includes a three-day residential retreat at Mont Fleur Conference Centre and two one-day, oncampus workshops.

As a key component of the NAPP experience, participants identify critical teaching challenges they'd like to explore over the semester. To support these projects, the NAPP team consults with participants and visits their classrooms, to observe them teaching and offer constructive feedback.

Great for networking

Dr Connie Bitso from the Library and Information Studies Centre was part of the 2013 NAPP cohort. She describes her experience as overwhelmingly positive: "It was not only about improving my teaching and recalling the learning strategies and theories that I learnt in education ages ago; and it proved to be a great networking forum. I connected with people that I did not know, with whom I still interact even today.

"NAPP reminded me that teaching and learning is about human development in totality – that it occurs in a social space that is characterised by an array of factors. Consequently, every aspect of it has to be meaningful and planned with care, because it is more than just achieving the learning objectives stipulated in our course outlines."

Dr Dean Chapman, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, appreciated the "simple but sound advice on how to structure a lecture and enable learners to keep track. Another thing I learnt was that the use of technology must defi nitely not be viewed as an end in itself. Technology should be used to usher students into the lecture," he said.

A space for critical reflection

Through the programme, Dr Emma Fergus from the Department of Commercial Law learnt to reflect continuously on her teaching. "There is always something I can do to improve my teaching. Time constraints, busy schedules and lack of technological knowhow need not be obstacles to better teaching.

"Prioritising teaching is absolutely part of my job, and so I shouldn't feel bad about setting research aside (if only for a while) in order to do so. Related to this and perhaps most importantly, I've learnt that teaching can be fun no matter how dull the subject matter!"

NAPP convenor Kasturi Behari-Leak comments on how critical programmes such as NAPP, are early on in any academic's career: "The sooner new academics feel enabled and included, the easier it is for them to contribute in meaningful ways to UCT and higher education in general."

Story by Abigail Calata. Photo by Raymond Botha.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

Postgraduate research and writing can seem daunting to the freshly initiated; so CHED stepped in with a map and compass – of the scholarly sort.

Researchers engage at the first Navigating Research Writing course in 2012.

Aimed at prospective postgraduate students from any discipline, CHED's pioneering short course, Navigating Research Writing, seeks to orientate students to the unique demands of conducting research towards a master's or PhD degree.

Originally called Navigating Research Literacies and started in June 2012, the non-credit-bearing course helps students understand and articulate their research interests, develop a research identity, sustain a strong writer's voice, and formulate sound arguments; and also introduces them to the fi ner details of citation and information literacy.

Previously, CHED had offered once-off or tailor-made writing workshops and writer circles, but a focused, comprehensive course hadn't been available before this. The course design blends an intensive, one-week faceto- face component with online components before and after that week.

It's been offered twice annually since its 2012 launch, and the plan is to make it a regular part of the UCT calendar. Most students have very limited exposure to research during their undergraduate degrees, explain course convenors Assoc Prof Lucia Thesen and Dr Mathilde van der Merwe. Those who are in transition between countries, languages or disciplines, or are returning to study after an extended time in the workplace, have a particularly tough time.

"These students often fi nd adapting to postgraduate studies (with a research component) challenging," says Van der Merwe.

The course guides students through expressing an initial interest in a research topic, thrashing out research questions and articulating an argument. "The focus of the course is on writing," says Thesen. "Each student writes a 1200-word pre-proposal concept paper in which they express how their research thinking has progressed."

A highlight of the course is a day-long workshop facilitated by Dr Sharman Wickham, who guides students deeper into their research interest.

There's been an even spread of students registered, with honours, master's and PhD students from a range of backgrounds, disciplines and age groups all signing up.

Not all of the students are based at UCT and some do not intend pursuing postgraduate studies here, report the convenors.

To keep classes small, a maximum of 24 places are available per edition. And every course has been well supported, says Janet Small, who is the course development offi cer at CHED's Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching.

"An online version is being developed to offer more flexible engagement with this kind of material – which should be available by the end of the year," adds Small.

Write science

CHED also offers a companion course – aimed at science students and convened by Van der Merwe – called Write Science. The popular course gives senior postgrads from science, health sciences and engineering a chance to get to grips with scientific writing beyond their thesis. Think writing to publish in academic journals or for peer review, as well as how to communicate specialist scientific knowledge to a public audience.

While postgraduate students work closely with their supervisors in writing their theses, many are not adequately mentored into the practices of publication. Disseminating your research through publications and conference presentations is a crucial skill for any researcher to master. Likewise, learning to communicate your research to the public is the responsibility of all researchers, but a skill that needs a lot of practice.

Mixing online peer-review tasks, contact days with lecturers and three assignments, the course encourages students to practise science writing and get feedback from academics and peers – a daily experience in the world of scholarship. The contact sessions not only deal with writing, but also provide space for lecturers to share their experiences of communicating science to various audiences.

Students are expected to write a "polished" abstract (says the course brochure), a journal article introduction (specifying which journals they will target for publication), and write a piece aimed at communicating a scientific message to a non-specialist public audience.

Write Science was offered for the first time in July 2013, and has since been offered every year. Classes are kept small (20-25) in order to provide all participants with thorough feedback on their writing.

But the demand for Write Science has exceeded the number of students it can accommodate, with over 130 applications streaming in every time. And the response from students who have completed the course has generally been positive. "I am more equipped with information to guide me in my journey as a scientist" said one. "Write Science was an eye-opener!" attested another.

Van der Merwe, a genetics PhD who won the 2010 NRF SAASTA Young Science Communicator of the Year award, enlists the help of UCT's scientists to facilitate some of the sessions. The library and writing centre are also involved.

Story by Yusuf Omar. Photo by Morgan Morris.

Read more stories from the July 2015 edition.

Women's rights to life, dignity and privacy are well protected by the country's progressive Constitution, says Associate Professor Waheeda Amien (Department of Public Law). But it's particularly Section 9, the equality clause, that affords women specific protection against all forms of unfair discrimination. The law scholar takes a brief look at sections of the Constitution that have broadened political and civil freedom for women.

Section 9, the equality clause, is far-reaching, prohibiting unfair discrimination on the grounds of gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, and sexual orientation.

Section 11, the right to life, affects issues such as domestic violence and femicide.

Section 12 concerns freedom and security of the person and the sub-section that applies specifically to women is 12(1)(c), which says everyone has the right to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources. 12(2) says everyone has the right to bodily and psychological integrity, which includes a woman?s right to make decisions concerning reproduction and to security in and control over her body.

Section 15 guarantees the individual's freedom of religion, belief and opinion. Section 15(3)(a)(i) and (ii) enables government to enact legislation to recognise either marriages or systems of personal law that are concluded under any religion or tradition. "But it also includes a rider in Section 15(3)(b), that: recognition in terms of paragraph (a) must be consistent with this section and other provisions of the Constitution. The Constutition says if you're going to enact law to recognise marriages or personal law systems founded in religion or tradition, it can?t violate among others, women's rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights."

Section 30 protects an individual's right to use her language and participate in the cultural life of her choice.

Section 31 recognises the collective right of members of a cultural, religious or linguistic community to among others, enjoy their culture, practise their religion and use their language in association with each other. In both instances, the Constitution requires that these individual and collective rights not be exercised in a way that infringes other rights in the Bill of Rights, inclusive of gender and sex equality.

"What's important," says Amien, "is that the Bill of Rights doesn?t just place obligations on the state to respect, protect, promote or fulfil rights. It also has what we call 'horizontal' application, which creates obligations between individuals.

"This has important ramifications in the private sphere, particularly regarding the kinds of abuse women suffer. The Constitution says that it's not just the state that has an obligation to ensure we?re able to live fulfilled lives, but that we have an obligation to each other to do that."

"Government has made an attempt to give effect, through legislation, to protect women?s rights. For example, the Domestic Violence Act offers remedies to survivors of domestic violence and the Sexual Offences Act has reformed the law relating to sexual offences. In addition, the Civil Union Act enables same-sex couples to access the same benefits that couples in civil marriages enjoy.

"It's also important to note that South Africa is a signatory to a host of international conventions and treaties," added Amien. "In particular, we have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which commits the country to incorporating provisions of the international treaty into its own legislation."

Compiled by Helen Swingler

Are women with feminisms rooted in different eras able to speak with one voice on big issues affecting them? And does it matter? Dr Nadia Sanger addressed this issue in a recent series, 'Conversations on Feminisms', presented by the South African Association of Women Graduates.

UCT gathered en masse in February 2013 to demand an end to systemic violence against women, following the brutal rape and murder of teenager Anene Booysen.

When the Sex Workers Education Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) began to campaign for the decriminalisation of sex workers, not all feminists agreed this was important.

SWEAT advocates for the rights of sex workers to earn a living, enjoy protection and healthcare – this in the context of an environment rife with unemployment.

But some in the feminist movement see sex work in another human rights context: the perpetuation of patriarchy and the exploitation of women's bodies, resulting in economic slavery. Both are pro-women groups.

Feminism in context

"Both are understandable, rational arguments," says Sanger, an independent researcher and part-time lecturer in gender studies at UCT. "And they both make sense within their own contexts."

These 'generational' viewpoints have different situational contexts, one in intellectualism and theory, and the other in the reality of on-the-ground experience, characteristic of civic movements. The result is a schism, a lack of collaboration and a severely compromised message about essential issues affecting women.

"Right now the feminist movements are not espousing different ideologies but different circumstances. It's critical that these differences don't stop the conversation."

In the 90s, for example, the focus was on political rights for women, and black feminists championed issues to do with race.

"It was very important for black feminists to say: 'The knowledge [production] is still owned by the white feminists. We want to produce other kinds of knowledge around feminism that is linked to our realities'".

Side by side

Dr Nadia Sanger. (Photo by Michael Hammond.)

There have been big shifts in the issues affecting women since the 90s (thanks to the new Constitution), but some things have remained the same. Race and class still dominate, but now jostle with more pressing socio-economic issues in women's lives – such as access to employment in a context where rates of unemployment are exceptionally high.

Sanger believes feminists need to re-evaluate their universal goals. "We need to review what was important 10 years ago, two years ago and what's pertinent today and say, okay these issues remain important so we need to build strategies around them."

Generational differences are apparent even among her students in gender studies.

"Young women are saying different things. Some are speaking the language of the 90s, because some of those issues haven't disappeared; others are saying 'I don't identify as a feminist', because they find the label exclusionary and want to talk about gender and not feminism."

Counting heads

Others are interested in a more 'technicist' approach to gender. They want to know how many women are in business and academia and in Parliament. But there are dangers to this approach, says Sanger.

"We should ask: are the women in Parliament actually representing the interests of women outside Parliament?"

One example is the ANC Women's League, which Sanger believes has been co-opted by the patriarchy in Parliament and no longer represents women's interests. And in spite of all the advances in human rights since the 90s, feminists remain a marginalised group.

"We still do not have a strong feminist movement in the country."

And feminists need to be held to account too, even though we're working in different spaces. "We don't need to be saying the same thing, but we do need some common goals."

One voice, one banner

When Bredasdorp teen Anene Booysens was gang raped, murdered and her body dumped, there was no outcry by women united under one banner.

"We need collaboration and coalescence against such endemic violence and it must be tackled on every side – inside and outside Parliament, in the community and in the academy.

"Ultimately, one of the central feminist goals is to disrupt and eradicate patriarchy. But part of the problem is that the various factions of feminists are separate – and it's unsustainable in the current context. If the goal is to stop black lesbians being raped in the townships, we may not agree on the steps or methods, but we can agree on the end result and we need to move towards that."

Head and heart

Some academics that work only with theory are separate from the realities women face right now: high rates of poverty, HIV/AIDS and violence.

"We need to look at whether not engaging feminists outside academia is not perhaps arrogant, considering the kinds of social and political issues we're dealing with."

"It's not an anti-intellectual position," Sanger argues. "Activism should be foregrounded by intellectualism."

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Je'nine May.

What is the demographic profile of women in South Africa? What is their average age and where do most work? How many are formally employed? And what are the prevalent diseases that kill South African women? Looking at UCT with a smaller lens, what are the significant numbers attached to women at UCT? How many are students and PASS staff and how many employed as teachers, lecturers and researchers? This snapshot gives us a 'macro' and 'micro' glimpse of some telling national and institutional tallies.

Compiled by Yusuf Omar and Abigail Calata.

It's been a career defined by the 'politics of belonging' for outgoing Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Crain Soudien. In this interview with Monday Monthly he talks about his first day at UCT 42 years ago and what it feels like to be caught in the middle of some of the hottest debates on campus.

Professor Crain Soudien leaves UCT at the end of August to take up a position at the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria.

"Yes, it has been very strange," says Soudien of leaving UCT at the end of August. In September, Soudien takes up his position as the newly appointed CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, bringing to a close a significant chapter of his life at UCT that started some 42 years ago.

Soudien, a recognised authority on education and social inequality, has been Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Transformation and Student Affairs since 2009. He held joint professorships in Education and African Studies and chaired the Ministerial Review Committee into Transformation in Higher Education that produced what became known as the 'Soudien Report'.

'Everywhere is home'

But Soudien had begun grappling with issues of injustice and education long before he enrolled as an undergraduate student at UCT in 1973 or joined the Faculty of Education in 1988. At the time, just deciding where to study was a "political choice", he points out.

Raised in Johannesburg and having been schooled in the UK, he refused to attend an "apartheid institution" like the University of Durban-Westville. With the advice of his father, he chose UCT from a range of options, among them Roma in Lesotho and universities in the UK.

He cites Edward Said, the late postcolonial literary critic who wrote extensively on the politics of exile and belonging.

"For most of my life as a sociologist, I've tried to live according to the Said ideal of 'everywhere being home'... and I make the argument myself that I, as a human being, need to consciously think of everywhere as part of my commitment and responsibility, my connectedness to life."

He vividly recalls his first day at UCT, when he was introduced to what became his favourite space. "The taxi drops me at the foot of Jammie Steps [there was no plaza back then] and I get out into this mass of young people. That was a memorable moment for me arriving as a stranger to Cape Town into that environment."

University Avenue brings back "very nostalgic memories" of how he had to find his place on the campus, but he was also acutely aware that he came as a "privileged person" whose political education had begun in Johannesburg's "liberal anti-apartheid community".

It was along that avenue that people like Roy Gentle – whom he describes as having been "more politically sophisticated" than himself – formed the core of an environment that Soudien says was unconditional in its demand "for all of us to express our full dignity as human beings".

"We were living in a politically subjugated space, [but] the disenfranchisement of people such as myself didn't reproduce itself in my kind of psychologies."

Not quite a middleman

Soudien has been at the coalface of many seminal moments for education in South Africa, from the 1976 Soweto Uprising to the 'Mamdani affair' at UCT in the late 1990s which sparked a transformation debate of its own.

At the time, Professor Mahmood Mamdani held the AC Jordan chair in the Centre for African Studies. A dispute between himself and members of a curriculum planning committee about what should be taught on the course ultimately led to his very public departure from UCT.

How did something like the Mamdani affair affect what Soudien did at the university?

"It was personally complicated for me because I knew all of the people involved, and I had personal relationships with all of the people involved."

No stranger at being caught in the middle of such points of conflict and tension, Rhodes Must Fall is a more recent example of a similar scenario.

"It's about being in the middle of something which is not a cut-and-dried politics of positioning, where it's clear on (either) side," Soudien says. "And this is important stuff to talk about. Historically I land up in situations where I have both political and, if you like, organisational relationships, that in the heat of the moment would ... be understood as being in the middle."

Soudien again references Said: "I don't belong to anybody, right? I don't belong to any group; I don't feel a kind of atavistic sense in a primordial way that I owe blood loyalty to anything or to anybody."

Has UCT changed since 1973?

"We were on campus at difficult times," he says. He and his contemporaries couldn't easily join the campus clubs and societies, but the students they associated with made the point that they hadn't come to UCT to participate in the kind of extramural activities that "diminished our sense of humanity ... we boycotted them deliberately".

Of course they were interested in student politics and student life, but knew that this too involved the "politics of complicity".

One might be critical of the 1994 settlement, but it opened access to the political machinery and governance structures, Soudien says. ?Students now have an unfettered right to [these structures] in a way we didn't; we were not allowed to, and that's the major difference.? Soudien remains an Emeritus Professor so he hopes to retain regular contact with the university.

"But it will be strange not having an office here..."

Story by Yusuf Omar. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Quinn Slobodian, author of Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany, wrote of West Germany's "own #RhodesMustFall moment".

On the Africa is a Country blog, Slobodian recalled how West German students tore down monuments to colonial leaders Hans Dominik and Hermann von Wissmann that stood in front of Hamburg University in September 1967.

One of the first causes the "previously apathetic" German students championed was South Africa, at the time under the jackboot of the apartheid regime. This newfound consciousness, says Slobodian, was partly because of one Dr Neville Alexander, a student who had completed a PhD at Germany's University of Tübingen in 1961, and around whom his West German colleagues rallied.

Alexander, who had spent six years at UCT earning undergraduate and master's degrees, was to return to South Africa after the Sharpeville Massacre in March that year to oppose the political system. He soon raised the ire of the then National Party (NP) by involving himself with movements such as the National Liberation Front, which he co-founded.

UCT will hold an official renaming ceremony that will usher in the Neville Alexander Building to the space once called the Graduate School of Humanities. Signage has already been erected. A colloquium will also be held in the Centre of African Studies Gallery on UCT's Upper Campus, where the library will exhibit much of Alexander's writing.

Alexander established the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa at UCT in 1992, which he directed until shortly before his passing, and was an influential writer, notably on education and postapartheid language policy.

Before teaching sociology and education at UCT, which he commenced part-time in 1979, Alexander spent 1964 to 1974 jailed on Robben Island for his anti-apartheid activities. His book, One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa, remains a seminal rebuttal of the NP's take on 'race' and 'nation'.

The university will in due course announce details about officially renaming another of its buildings, the Arts Block, which is now called the AC Jordan Building, in memory of the pioneering black scholar.

It's the season of change. There's a tinge of orange left above Devil's Peak at 6pm, some oak trees threaten to sprout new leaves, and the first-year cohort are now veterans of their first full semester at university. And change is afoot around campus in a big way. Two buildings have already been renamed – look right for more about that.

Since 1 August, Professor Anwar Mall of the Faculty of Health Sciences has sat in the administrative seat of the university in Bremner Building. Mall will act as Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1 September. He fills a gap left by one of the university's stalwarts, Professor Crain Soudien, who bids farewell to his DVC duties on 31 August.

Soudien's 42-year UCT tenure has seen him make pivotal contributions to understanding and undoing the nuts and bolts of social inequality, in his capacity as professor of education and African studies, and as the deputy vice-chancellor responsible for transformation. Monday Monthly spoke to him on the cusp of his step towards the Human Sciences Research Council, where he will continue to enrich debates about racism, sexism and their fellows from the director's chair.

One of the 'everyday' sexisms that has lingered since the dark ages is the idea that some women are 'spoken for'. In lieu of August Women's Month, we've decided to rest our pens and let the women of UCT speak for themselves. Monday Monthly caught up with women from around the university, be they in academic offices, PASS departments or the in the often 'invisible' Supercare uniforms. We asked what lessons they'd learned from their mothers and grandmothers.

Some of the issues raised in these interviews are unpacked by Dr Nadia Sanger on page 10, who lectures part-time in gender studies at UCT. Sanger argues that pro-women groups would see more success if they rooted intellectual rigour and theory in the 'on-the-ground' realities, such as HIV/AIDS and access to employment.

The great and imagined divide between intellectualism and lived experiences is only harming efforts to quell endemic violence against women, such as the horrific fatal attack on teenager Anene Booysen in Bredasdorp, she says.

We've also 'painted by numbers' a fleeting glimpse of where women find themselves in terms of employment and livelihoods – in South African society, and at UCT in particular.

Parts of the university are also commemorating the third anniversary of the Marikana massacre near Rustenburg &ndash check our online spaces for coverage of those events.

This edition closes with getting to know Julian Mayer, the principal technical officer in mechanical engineering, who uses a 1972 Fender Jazz bass guitar (read: a very nice one) to demonstrate wave propagation to students.

Finally, while there's something to say for the tactile experience of reading a newspaper, the newsroom wants to reach more and more readers via their email inboxes. You might find it worth your while to subscribe to UCT's electronic newsletter, which demands of you naught but following this link.

Enjoy and engage.

The Newsroom Team

Neonatal nurse trainer, midwife, paraglider, animal lover and high‑mountain trekker Hilary Barlow of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health is next up in our series of getting to know the people of UCT.

Hilary Barlow on Kala Patthar in the Himalayas. Image supplied.

The walnut cake and cappuccino at Café de Hunza in Karimabad, a small settlement on the Karakoram Highway, almost surpasses the view of the Hunza Valley, 2 440m above sea level in Gilgit‑Baltistan, northern Pakistan.

To the south‑east is Nepal, where the Himalayas boast eight of the world's 10 tallest mountains.

Hilary Barlow has trekked in both countries. First was Pakistan, on the Biafo Glacier to Snow Lake, continuing over the Hispar Pass (5 150m) to the Hispar Glacier; and then to Karimabad, from where her group visited their guide Momin's family in the village of Shimshal.

"It's the best thing you can imagine after two weeks of trekking," says Barlow, remembering the walnut cake. The coffee‑and‑cake tip‑off had come from two students climbing in the Hispar Glacier region.

"The café is a bookshop – with maps, so you can sit there and just take your mind back on your journey."

The Hunza valley invites reflection; its beauty is thought to have to have inspired the Shangri‑La of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon.

In 2013 Barlow and a friend returned to the region to trek in Nepal, a land of teahouses, yak caravans, Hindu temples and prayer wheels, mani stones and Buddhist stupas.

Dangerous and extreme

After three days in Kathmandu they flew to Lukla, whose unofficial title induces some misgiving: the World's Most Extreme and Dangerous Airport. Only small, fixed‑wing aircraft like the Dornier Do 228 manage the steeply‑angled drop onto a runway with no turning circle, and a sheer drop at its southern end.

Waiting for the mist to lift before the flight, Barlow, a seasoned paraglider, experienced some disquiet. Once they were airborne, the airhostess came around with a tray of cotton wool balls (for the noise) and sweets.

"I thought we were going to die!" Barlow recalls.

In Dingboche, altitude sickness put an end to her trekking partner's trip, and Barlow continued up the Khumbu Valley to Kala Patthar (5 550m), the 'black rock'.

"Here I had a perfect view of Sagarmatha [Everest, in Nepalese] and then trekked down the Khumbu and up the Gokyo valley for another more distant view of 'Mother Goddess of the Earth' from Gokyo Peak, at 5 360m. Then it was the downward trek back to Lukla, and Kathmandu."

In Kathmandu Barlow visited the local hospital to see its shipshape neonatal unit, and was delighted to find a young Tibetan mother and father providing kangaroo care for their newborn twins.

Canopy of delight

Paragliding started with her love of the mountains.

Her first training flight was in the Wilderness, now a favourite spot. Harnessed and running up the beach to pull the glider up, there was that first moment when her feet lifted off the ground.

"You're on the beach and there's a little dune, and beyond that a big dune. It's almost intuitive; once you've run down the beach and you've felt the weight coming off your feet, then you go a little higher, and you actually fly for a few seconds."

The next weekend saw her at Porterville, near Piketberg.

"That was quite scary, because that's about 450m above the landing."

But she lost her nerve for flying at Porterville after a friend died there, paragliding in strong winds.

"It wasn't flyable; conditions were horrible. He shouldn't have been flying, but he was on the crest of a wave. He'd got the award for the best flying that year..."

Hilary has lost two good friends to pilot error and bad weather conditions.

Outside the envelope

That said, she's philosophical about the dangers.

"One December we were in Porterville flying in a competition. There's a phenomenon known as 'valley release' that happens in the right conditions at the day's end. Warm, buoyant air from the valley is released as the sun's angle drops to the horizon, and you can have a really wonderful flight.

"We thought there would be a great valley release that afternoon, and went up to take off. But the valley release wasn't happening and I spent 45 minutes on an almost vertical zigzag climb in strong winds, flying away from the mountain, and then descending very slowly to land. In light conditions it should take less than 10 minutes, as it's a height of only 450m and a distance of only 1.4km.

"That's the reality of living life outside the envelope. I used to say to my children: if anything happens to me, I want you to know I died doing something that I absolutely love. And they just said, 'Ja, no, right, mom!'"

On high: Hilary Barlow on Signal Hill in Cape Town with her paragliding gear.

Her yellow 26m² paragliding canopy folds neatly into her backpack, making her very mobile. She's flown all over Europe: Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Norway and Germany in the Alps, and around Bassano in Italy.

"It gets you travelling. It's a close community, and we watch out for each other. We're all a bit like nomads."

Does she get scared? "If you don't get scared, then you should be worried. So, ja – I still get scared."

Out on a ledge

The heights that do scare her are ledges. Barlow has helped UCT ornithologist Dr Andrew Jenkins ring peregrine falcon chicks that nest on a ledge at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, where she works.

Jenkins has been ringing 'peries' for some time. (There were peregrines nesting on the Athlone cooling towers; and only once the chicks had flown did Jenkins give the go‑ahead for demolition.)

At home Barlow has three feral cats, adopted from outside the hospital's oncology ward, and 11 common Cape angulate tortoises (yes, she has a permit to keep them).

The oldest, Josephine, has been with her since 1982, and has a penchant for gazanias.

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Read more stories from the
September 2015 edition.

Professor Jenni Case has been working in academic development in the Department of Chemical Engineering since 1996. She reflects on how the department has gone about improving graduation rates, with positive spin‑offs for transformation.

Graduation is always a highlight of the academic year. Electrical engineering master's student Ifedayo Akinsolu celebrates her graduation at the ceremony held in June 2015. Photo by Je'nine Hammond.

Of the approximately 3 000 students estimated to have signed up for an engineering degree in South Africa in 2015, fewer than half will graduate after five years, according to the Department of Higher Education and Training.

South Africa isn't alone in struggling with this. In the US only about 50% of engineering students complete their degrees, according to research published in the Journal of Engineering Education. In Australia the figure isn't much higher.

One of the earliest attempts to turn this situation around was started in the chemical engineering department at UCT in the mid‑1980s. At the time, the department's classes were largely white and male, and the graduation rates were low. A few black students were enrolled, but their success rates were poorer than those of their white peers.

A QUARTER CENTURY OF CHANGE

Nearly 30 years later, UCT engineering undergraduate enrolment rates have risen and white students make up less than 40% of the South African students in the programme. By 2011, the programme posted an overall graduation rate of nearly 70%, with dramatically improved rates for black students.

– the academic development programme's overall graduation rate in 2011

A group of higher education researchers and I recently worked with data to build a case study of how change can happen in a university department. One of our key questions was: 'What makes educational change possible?'

We wanted to take a long‑term view, because so much of our present discourse on social shortcomings – particularly in education – fails to do so.

EXPLORING THE MAINSTREAM

During the 1980s, driven by the needs of an increasingly diverse student body, South African universities began to develop a new way of thinking about academic development.

The experience of UCT's chemical engineering department over 25 years is an interesting example of what can be termed 'academic development in the mainstream'.

Jenni Case.

This is exciting because it opens the door to universities exploring different routes to greater inclusivity, and explores a space that traditional foundation programmes have not occupied before.

Here is how it was done.

First, an independent advisory board was established for the chemical engineering department. Its members were recruited from key positions in South African industries – a sign that the department was building closer links with business and was receptive to its views.

From its side, industry did not buy any arguments that low success rates were inescapable in engineering. The board also rejected the idea of a separate academic programme for black students, and urged the engineering department to prioritise the social integration of its student body. It was convinced that an energetic department with a strong academic base should be able to build an undergraduate programme that could help students from a broad range of social backgrounds to succeed.

A few years later, a large industry donation led to the creation of an academic post in the department to focus on academic development. I have held this post since 1996.

The department also made changes to its curriculum and introduced new approaches to teaching. They established a first‑year engineering course, improved industry exposure at the junior levels, and developed better systems for advising undergraduate students.

LESSONS FROM THE JOURNEY

These are three key lessons from the chemical engineering department's metamorphosis.

First, rather than making pejorative statements about its students, the department took a positive approach and emphasised success, even when pass rates in courses might have suggested otherwise. I found this quite striking, when examining 25 years of departmental deliberations.

* This is an abridged version of an article originally published in The Conversation in May 2015, drawn from the journal article: Case, JM, Heydenrych, H, Kotta, L, Marshall, D, McKenna, S, & Williams, K (in press). 'From contradictions to complementarities: a social realist analysis of the evolution of academic development within a department.' Studies in Higher Education.

Second, the department did not shy away from critical feedback. It did ongoing research and then shared the findings, even when the results reflected poorly on it. For example, a key study showed how good intentions in building a new design course were not being carried through to the level of assessment and feedback.

Third, industry's demands were a significant spur to change.

On some scores, these changes could be considered modest, because they were driven in collaboration with industry, and by a department needing particular outcomes.

However, given the persistent challenges in the South African university landscape, the experience of UCT's chemical engineering department deserves attention.

 

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September 2015 edition.