TheCATHARTIC Centenary issue ALUMNI MAGAZINE FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN 2012/2013 RATING amongst health sciences faculties worldwide: TOP 50 Happy 100th birthday, FHS! highlights Hot on the heels of celebrating our 100th birthday came the news of the Faculty 4 ranking among the top 50 worldwide! Alumnus Dr Riaad Moosa keeps Reflecting on the past Celebrating the present Building the future us in stiches to raise money for the 27 Faculty. In this issue FEATURES FACULTY NEWS University’s role when well-prepared students fail 10 Health Sciences in top 50 in world by subject 4 Intervention Programme 11 Dean of Health Sciences says ADIEU 5 Riyaad Moosa keeps us in stitches! 27 Faculty welcomes new Health Sciences Dean 6 Heather Zar newest UCT A-rated Academic 8 2012 birthday milestones in the Faculty 6 New Forensics Institute to enhance fight Baxter concert supports Professor Cyril Karabus 7 against crime 30 Reaching for a dream 7 Centenary Caring for `mothers 29 Centenary Debate 9 North American gala dinner, New York 12 STUDENTS Tears and cheers at final year results bash 23 Going back to our roots 13 The dead teach the living 24 The Solomon family–3 generations of graduates 14 Postgraduate Doctoral Cocktails 24 Centenary film launched 15 Students-in-Distress Fund 25 Faculty of Health Sciences turns 100 15 A gratitude that runs deep 26 Renaming of rooms 18 Centenary extravaganza at the Baxter Theatre 19 OBITUARIES Heritage Society centenary Dinners 19 Emeritus Professor Israel Nathan Marks 36 Bodyworlds’ exhibition Waterfront 22 Professor Rodney Hewitson 36 INAUGURAL LECTURES Professor Mervyn Berman 37 Professor Anthony Figaji 21 Associate Professor Paddy Harrison 37 Professor Clive Gray 21 Professor Valerie Mizrahi 21 WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Carolyn Williamson 21 Your fellow classmates 38 REUNIONS & ALUMNI NEWS UK Alumni celebrate in London 20 2012 Reunion roundup 31 Grandmasters World Cup Tournament 34 The call of the creative arts 34 Alumnus receives a European Business Award 35 2 123 ...our footprint of excellence CENTENARY WELCOME traverses the globe from the former Dean Greetings, Fellow Alumni! the greatest medical advances to come out opportunity to recognise the impact of the of Africa. Faculty’s past, celebrate our impressive Welcome to our 2012/2013 centenary achievements, and most importantly, edition of Cathartic. I’m sure you are Over the years, the Faculty has grown strategise to build our future and take our aware by now that this is a special significantly, modernising its curriculum, Faculty to new heights and with renewed year for all of us associated with the transforming its demographics and vigour. Challenges include increasing our Faculty of Health Sciences, as we have substantially increasing its admissions. We student intake, expanding our teaching been celebrating our 100th birthday. play a vital role in appropriately preparing platform to district and rural sites, and the country’s future health practitioners and I feel privileged to have been both an upgrading our physical infrastructure. This will medical researchers to address the alumnus and the Dean of the oldest require mobilising sufficient resources to country’s health needs. We now educate medical school in Sub-Saharan Africa realise this. We are engaging with our around 4 000 students each year across during its centenary year, and the one stakeholders to contribute to this, and invite multiple disciplines, with excellent results. This in which it has been rated among the our alumni to partner with us in creative year, amongst our final years, we had 100% top 50 health sciences’ faculties in the ways. pass rate in the MBChB, and close to 100% world! for the Health and Rehabilitation, As alumni, our responsibility is to be Discussions at the close of the 19th programmes. ambassadors for the UCT Faculty of Health century about the feasibility of Sciences and to support efforts to contribute We also have a strong reputation for establishing a medical school on the to building it into the next century. Thank you research excellence, producing an average tip of Africa - far from the hallowed to the many alumni for your ongoing of three new research publications every halls of our northern medical schools - support, financial and otherwise. We feature day. Research remains high on our agenda, raised many questions: Did we have an article on financial support for a student- and we are committed to cultivating a new the capacity to teach? Would we be in-need, as one such example. generation of scientists, under the able to produce doctors of quality? mentorship of some of the world’s top Thank you also to many of you for keeping And could the medical school fulfil all researchers. Our post-graduate numbers are us abreast of your special achievements the requirements of a credible now higher than our undergraduate. and milestones. We are always proud to academic institution? share these with the rest of our alumni During 2012, for the first time, we had more Here we are, 100 years later, having community. post- than undergraduate students just been ranked at 50th place of all graduating. This is also a poignant time for me, as it is the faculties of health sciences in the world last Cathartic for which I will write the – and there are almost 2 500 of them! Our new research strategy will frame our foreword during my tenure as Dean, as I We could not have wished for a better drive for further excellence in this area. In retire at the end of 2012. I will, as I’m sure birthday present than such 2012, we added another to our list of you do, hold special memories of my time acknowledgement from our A+ rated researchers, bringing the Faculty’s here. international peers. total to nine. Also during 2012, many of our academics continued to earn prestigious Enjoy the read! As an alumnus, I am so proud to have accolades globally, through awards, been part of a Faculty that has Professor Marian Jacobs (MBChB, 1971, UCT) positions and results. educated some of the finest minds in the country and produced some of The centenary has given us the ideal 3 123 FACULTY NEWS Health Sciences in TOP 50 World University Rankings Hot on the heels of the Faculty’s international peers of phenomenal and can be attributed to celebrating our 100th our outstanding performance in the hard work and dedication of so many terms of teaching, international of our current and former colleagues and birthday came the news outlook, industry income, research students. We are privileged to have some that the Faculty is ranked and citations. of the world’s leading scientists and among the top 50 academics work amongst us. The ranking also places for the first worldwide. time an African University amongst the top 50 health sciences faculties The 2012 The Times Higher in the world, signalling an Education (THE) World University opportunity to further advance our Rankings rated us 50th amongst teaching and research agenda to We are privileged outstanding universities offering respond appropriately to the to have some of clinical and health subjects. health needs of the continent and the world’s leading This affirms the Faculty’s prominent the rest of the developing world. global standing, and comes in the scientists and A few years ago, the Faculty set midst of our celebrating 100 years itself the goal of being ranked academics work of excellence in health research, among the top 50 by 2020. That we among us teaching and education. This is an achieved this in 5 years is enormous acknowledgement by 4 12 FACULTY NEWS Dean of Health says ADIEU Outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences , Prof Marian Jacobs thanked those who'd shaped her UCT career. Her valedictory lecture, titled Of Care and the Unconventional: The Retiree's Oath, gave retiring Professor Marian Jacobs an opportunity to thank the many people Professor Marian Jacobs, who has been at and institutions who'd shaped her career and life. the helm of the Faculty for 7 years, retires at These include, she listed, her family, her patients, her the end of 2012, after being in the Faculty students, her academic and clinical teachers, her parents (her mother was one of her teachers, her father the school for over 40 years. Known for her feisty principal), writer Richard Rive (who was another of her school teachers), the unsung nurses she studied under at advocacy for social justice in health, her Somerset Hospital, countless community, health and passion for the young, a great sense of political organisations, and a whole school of "informal teachers". humour and her love of fun, she leaves "All these informal teachers - outside the wall of the behind legendary memories for many in the academy - taught me life lessons that have been Faculty, and will be sorely missed. A Monday foundational in my understanding of the world, education, and the political economy of health - an understanding Paper article on her Valedictory speech is that has also supported my own practice as a teacher and doctor." repeated here. It framed her work at UCT, where she had to negotiate the middle ground between the values of the oath taken in the faculty's graduating year, "as a community of colleagues, teachers and students", and the system of direct accounting used in performance management at the university. In establishing the master's programme in maternal and child health, for example, the faculty adopted some very unconventional practices ('students' became teachers, and teachers became learners), Jacobs recounted. Similarly, the Children's Institute, which she had a key role in setting up as director, had purposely aimed to produce research not just accessible to fellow academics, but Appointment of Interim Dean specifically to policymakers and the public.