SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 Our Mission UCT Aspires to Become a Premier Academic Meeting Point Between South Africa, the Rest of Africa and the World
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SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 Our mission UCT aspires to become a premier academic meeting point between South Africa, the rest of Africa and the world. Taking advantage of expanding global networks and our distinct vantage point in Africa, we are committed, through innovative research and scholarship, to grapple with the key issues of our natural and social worlds. We aim to produce graduates whose qualifications are internationally recognised and locally applicable, underpinned by values of engaged citizenship and social justice. UCT will promote diversity and transformation within our institution and beyond, including growing the next generation of academics. CONTENTS FOREWORD 3 PREFACE 4 INTRODUCTION 6 CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON INSTITUTION-WIDE STRATEGIC INITIATIVES 8 Introduction 9 Schools Improvement Initiative 11 African Climate and Development Initiative 19 Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI): a reflection 27 Poverty and Inequality Initiative 39 UCT Knowledge Co-op 47 Global Citizenship Initiative 50 REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE CAPE HIGHER EDUCATION CONSORTIUM (CHEC) 53 Partnerships with the Western Cape Government (WCG) 54 City of Cape Town 57 Going Global Conference of the British Council 59 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges 59 REPORT ON INITIATIVES FUNDED THROUGH NRF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT GRANTS 61 FACULTY REPORTS 70 Introduction 71 Faculty of Science 75 Faculty of Health Sciences 87 Faculty of Law 148 Faculty of Commerce 158 Graduate School of Business 186 Engineering and the Built Environment 195 Humanities 208 CHED 230 2 UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 FOREWORD The challenges that confront our country, Africa and the world enjoin universities to begin to think differently about how they bring to bear their resources to engage with these challenges. Due to the complexity of the challenges, there is more that is demanded of universities’ research, teaching and learning. The four strategic initiatives, African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI), Poverty and Inequality Initiative (PII), Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI), and School Improvement Initiative (SII) are examples of how researchers from various disciplines are coming together to draw from different disciplinary expertise to grapple with the complexity of socio-economic issues a manner that enriches knowledge production. and how they impact on developing nations and poor people. The report provides a critical Finally, the Report contains a progress report on reflection on these initiatives using a framework partnerships with the Western Cape (Provincial) which foregrounds the impact of the initiatives Government (WCG) and the City of Cape Town on the University and for external partners. UCT, (CCT) illustrating how government is drawing on as a research-led university, can justly pride our researchers to assist with policy development. itself for having invested resources in these initiatives because the impact of this work will Reading the activities one can conclude that the be felt in poor and not so poor communities. traditional role of universities as society`s primary generators and transmitters of knowledge is Following the decision of the Senate Executive changing. Academic institutions form an important Committee in 2015, this report also contains part of a highly complex learning society where information on a cross section of university wide discovery, learning and engagement are integrated initiatives and faculty initiatives that reflect UCT’s activities that involve many sources of knowledge, commitment and efforts to engage with the generated in diverse settings by a variety of challenges that affect our country’s development. contributors. The Report highlights how knowledge is being produced in the context of application, The Report contains brief descriptions of activities in addition to the more controlled context of that have been funded through the National an academic discipline and its paradigms. Research Foundation’s Community Engagement Fund. This funding instrument provides the The 2015-2016 SR Report recognises the space for research that contributes to knowledge important work which many academics do production about community engagement. UCT’s and it helps to present the University of funded activities provide a rich account of how Cape Town in all its wonderful variety. the terrain of knowledge production is a site of multiple processes and relations, involving not only Vice-Chancellor academics but practitioners as well. Other activities Dr Max Price interrogate the ways in which tacit knowledge is surfaced through the process of engagement in UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 3 PREFACE Higher education (HE) is under increasing pressure to develop solutions to major social and economic problems affecting society. Critics contend that HE has drifted too far from its historical commitment to help meet the diverse needs of society. Public universities such as UCT, according to Hall (2006:4), should take as their primary object of transformation the cluster of issues that can be expected to have the greatest impact on the society in which they are situated. In South Africa – and sub- Saharan Africa- today, all key societal issues track back in one way or another to a foundational challenge, which is poverty. Hall points out that poverty is a trap of self-reinforcing vortex of circumstances that requires application of advanced knowledge to break. By producing these annual Social Responsiveness . Secondly, by systematically distilling the (SR) reports we are showing how UCT as a public information on SR activities, we are able to answer university is engaging with a cluster of issues the questions above and, subsequently, grow a rich that may impact on addressing the scourge of body of knowledge on Engaged Scholarship (ES). poverty. The reports have never presented a comprehensive overview of the SR work of the The report on initiatives funded through NRF University. This is not for lack of trying. Over the Community Engagement Grant is important years there have been on-going efforts to build a in, firstly, interrogating the ways in which tacit profile of engaged scholarship but in the absence knowledge is surfaced in the complex process of incentives to report on these activities, or a of engagement with external constituencies. research portal from which information could be Secondly, to facilitate the development of sourced, the task has proved to be a big challenge. robust theoretical and conceptual positions on engagement in the South African context, and The 2015-2016 SR builds on UCT’s previous thereby stimulate and contribute to contemporary efforts to create a comprehensive inventory of debates on the scholarship of engagement. SR activities. The inventory is significant in many At UCT, the fund has been used to contribute ways. Firstly it reveals the nature and scope of to producing new ES scholars, and generating UCT’s SR activities. What types of activities are knowledge about practices of engagement. In faculty members involved in as publicly engaged particular, the funding has helped support two scholarship? What type of SR outputs could be postdoctoral fellows, three PhD students, five considered sufficiently robust to be recognised as Master’s students and one Honours student. part of the standard assessments of the academics’ The funding has also helped generate new performance or ad hominem applications. knowledge in the form of peer- reviewed articles 4 UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 and conference papers. Knowledge in the service challenges, the Report also contains a progress of society requires the very best in advance report on partnerships with the Western Cape scholarship, validated through peer-reviewed Government (WCG) and the City of Cape Town publication in credible journals and books. (CCT), which summarises research that has been undertaken in support of government priorities. Using the theme of ‘building knowledge of the field of engaged scholarship’ the Report contains critical The information in the report is important not reflections on progress made by the four Pro Vice only in respect of its alignment with UCT’s Chancellor (PVC) initiatives, and the UCT Knowledge mission but also with regard to growing the Co-op – a fifth strategic initiative, funded through body of knowledge about ES. In the current the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Fund. Through this and contested discourse on transformation report we hope the reflections on the four PVC and ‘decolonisation’ it is important to view initiatives and the Knowledge Co-op, as well as engaged scholarship as another dimension the brief extracts on assessment of impact in the of transformation whose primary object is to faculty reports, will be used to generate discussion grapple with SA’s foundational challenge. about different approaches to undertaking impact assessments of engaged scholarship. Acting Deputy Vice-chancellor Professor Anwar Mall True to UCT’s commitment to engage with local UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN SOCIAL RESPONSIVENESS REPORT 2015-2016 5 INTRODUCTION Since 2005, the Social Responsiveness (SR) Reports have largely used case studies to profile the rich array of engaged scholarship initiatives at the University. Periodically, the University Social Responsiveness Committee (USRC) has attempted to compile an institutional picture of the scale and form of social responsiveness across the University.