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22 October 2021 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Charl Devenish
UFS staff and students who attended the Talloires Network Leaders Conference, were from the left: Rina Widd, Occupational Therapy Student Association; Lyshea Mapaike, Social Work Student Association; Gernus Terblanche, SRC member for Civic and Social Responsibility; Relebohile Sebetoane, Eco-alliance Association; and Karen Venter.

The University of the Free State (UFS) Directorate Community Engagement was recently (30 September to 3 October 2021) among the 419 institutions and 79 countries that participated in the (virtual) Talloires Network Leaders Conference (TNLC2021).

The conference, which was a global gathering of higher education leaders and students from all regions of the world, focused on Global Institutions, Local Impact: Power and Responsibility of Engaged Universities. 

Some of the highlights of the conference were the sessions titled: Global Universities, Local Impact: Roles and Responsibilities of Universities with Philip Cotton, Head of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Programme; and the keynote address by Secretary John Kerry, US Special Envoy on Climate, titled What can we learn from the pandemic that helps (or hinders) addressing climate change? 

Cotton, believing in the power of compassion in the transformation of young people, said: “It is possible that the more you become the kind of university that matters to our young people, because you connect with the poorest and the hardest to reach, and those most harshly oppressed by climate change, then the more serving, humane, engaged and compassionate you become. 

He added: “Listen to the young people, they are telling us what is wrong with our systems, and the solutions are in their hands.”

Addressing global challenges

According to Karen Venter, Head of the Service-Learning Division in the UFS Directorate of Community Engagement, the event provided the opportunity to critically reflect on the power and responsibility of engaged universities, to collaborate and connect in partnership with communities, and to address local and global challenges. 

“Participants shared knowledge, ideas, case studies, and built collaborations for action on important and interrelated issues, including pandemic recovery and resilience; conflict and inequality; climate justice; assessing engagement; and community engagement futures,” she says.

Some of the UFS attendees remarked that they were amazed by the work being done worldwide. They were spurred on and inspired to not only improve their modules, but also their work in the community.

Besides being exposed to world-class leaders on issues that matter, the conference also maximised engagement and forged connections on a local level. The UFS hosted a delegation of 19 academics, students, and community members from Rhodes University (RU), who not only attended the conference with them, but also an additional pre-conference digital storytelling knowledge-sharing workshop, and a mini-Engaged Learning Festival.

RU also won the McJanet Prize for Global Citizenship, following a review of 28 nominations from 15 countries and 10 finalists from 8 countries.

Sharing best practices

The digital storytelling workshop (where information about projects and people are communicated in short, multimedia tales, told from the heart), according to Venter, rekindled the UFS-RU partnership for sharing local social innovation stories globally through digital storytelling, which was born from the Common Good First EU Erasmus +-funded project.

During the learning festival, the two universities shared best practices on some of the community programmes in which they are involved, including UFS presentations from Enactus for social entrepreneurship, and the No Hungry Student initiative, which involves student residences’ community food gardens. RU reported on their active citizenship (Nine Tenths mentor mentee schools programme) and community-based research projects.

Better together

Besides international conferences such as TNLC2021, and other local engagements to always stay on top of the latest community engagement practices, the UFS and RU are both members of the South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum (SAHECEF). According to Venter, the UFS-RU partnership showcased how different regional chapters of SAHECEF collaborated as communities of practice to advance the praxis of an engaged scholarship. 

Both the institutions are also involved in the South African Knowledge for Change (K4C) Hub within a K4C Consortium of the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility towards training for community-based researchers in the context of community university research partnerships.

News Archive

Inaugural lecture: Prof. Annette Wilkinson
2008-04-16

A strong plea for a pursuit of “scholarship” in higher education

Prof. Annette Wilkinson of the Centre for Higher Education Studies and Development in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS) made as strong plea for a pursuit of “scholarship” in higher education.

She said in her inaugural lecture that higher education has to deal with changes and demands that necessitate innovative approaches and creative thinking when it concerns effective teaching and learning in a challenging and demanding higher education environment. She referred to a recent research report prepared for the Council for Higher Education (CHE) which spells out the alarming situation regarding attrition rates and graduation output in South African higher education and emphasises factors leading to the situation. These factors include socio-economic conditions and shortcomings in the school and the subsequent under preparedness of a very large proportion of the current student population. However, what is regarded as one of the key factors within the sector’s control is the implementation of strategies for improving graduate output.

She said: “The CHE report expresses concern about academics’ adherence to traditional teaching practices at institutions, which have not changed significantly to make provision for the dramatic increase in diversity since the 1980s.

“Raising the profile of teaching and learning in terms of accountability, recognition and scholarship is essential for successful capacity-building,” she said. “The notion of scholarship, however, brings to the minds of many academics the burden of ‘publish or perish’. In many instances, the pressures to be research-active are draining the value put on teaching. Institutions demand that staff produce research outputs in order to qualify for any of the so-called three Rs – resources, rewards and recognition.

“These have been abundant for research, but scarce when it comes to teaching – with the status of the latter just not on the same level as that of research. From within their demanding teaching environments many lecturers just feel they do not have the time to spend on research because of heavy workloads, that their efforts are under-valued and that they have to strive on the basis of intrinsic rewards.”

She said: “It is an unfortunate situation that educational expertise, in particular on disciplinary level, is not valued, even though in most courses, as in the Programme in Higher Education Studies at the UFS, all applications, whether in assignments, projects or learning material design, are directly applied to the disciplinary context. We work in a challenging environment where the important task of preparing students for tomorrow requires advanced disciplinary together with pedagogical knowledge.”

Prof. Wilkinson argued that a pursuit of the scholarship of teaching and learning holds the potential of not only improving teaching and learning and consequently success rates of students, but also of raising the status of teaching and recognising the immense inputs of lecturers who excel in a very demanding environment. She emphasised that not all teaching staff will progress to the scholarship level or are interested in such an endeavour. She therefore suggested a model in which performance in the area of teaching and learning can be recognised, rewarded and equally valued on three distinct levels, namely the levels of excellence, expertise and scholarship. An important feature of the model is that staff in managerial, administrative and support posts can also be rewarded for their contributions on the different levels for all teaching related work.

Prof. Wilkinson also emphasised the responsibility or rather, accountability, of institutions as a whole, as well as individual staff members, in providing an environment and infrastructure where students can develop to their full potential. She said that in this environment the development of the proficiency of staff members towards the levels of excellence, expertise and scholarship must be regarded as a priority.

“If we want to improve students’ success rates the institution should not be satisfied with the involvement in professional development opportunities by a small minority, but should set it as a requirement for all teaching staff, in particular on entry into the profession and for promotion purposes. An innovative approach towards a system of continuous professional development, valued and sought after, should be considered and built into the institutional performance management system.”

As an example of what can be achieved, Prof. Wilkinson highlighted the work of one of the most successful student support programmes at the UFS, namely the Career Preparation Programme (CPP), implemented fourteen years ago, bringing opportunities to thousands of students without matric exemption. The programme is characterised by dedicated staff, a challenging resource-based approach and foundational courses addressing various forms of under preparedness. Since 1993 3 422 students gained entry into UFS degree programmes after successfully completing the CPP; since 1996 1 014 of these students obtained their degrees, 95 got their honours degrees, 18 their master’s degrees and six successfully completed their studies as medical doctors.

Prof. Wilkinson said: “I believe we have the structures and the potential to become a leading teaching-learning university and region, where excellence, expertise and scholarship are recognised, honoured and rewarded.”

 

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