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Afromontane Research Unit to host first-ever Southern African mountain conference

11 March 2022 | Story NONSINDISO QWABE | Photo Supplied

Dr Ralph Clarke — Dr Ralph Clark, Director of the Afromontane Research Unit.

The African Mountain Research Foundation (AMRF), in association with the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU) of the University of the Free State (UFS), and the Global Mountain Safeguard Research Programme (GLOMOS), is hosting the first-ever Southern African Mountain Conference (SAMC2022). The theme of the conference is Southern African Mountains – their value and vulnerabilities.

The conference will bring relevant people together into one space for networking and information sharing, leading to more robust regional and international collaborations and comparative mountain studies with an increase in research activities, student capacity, researcher capacity and academic outputs that feed into policy and action.

The conference will take place from 14 to 17 March 2022 in the majestic Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa and Lesotho.

According to the SAMC2022 website, this is a truly Southern African regional mountain conference, targeting the African region south of the Congo rainforest (DRC) and Lake Rukwa (Tanzania), but including Madagascar, the Comoros and the Mascarenes (i.e., Angola, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo [southern mountains], Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, La Réunion, South Africa, southern Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe).

Dr Ralph Clark, ARU Director, said the conference would be a high-level international event with UNESCO patronage and very valuable sponsors.

“The programme will have six parallel tracks (one being dedicated to postgraduate students), with about 200 papers being delivered. In addition, we have some very high-profile special sessions, such as an MRI special session on long-term monitoring activities and associated data availability for climate change-related applications across Africa’s mountains, as well as a UNESCO special session on regional collaboration. We also have Prof Julian Bayliss, described as the man who discovered an unseen world, as the guest speaker at the closing event.”

The conference will bring together relevant people in one space for networking and information sharing, leading to more robust regional and international collaborations and comparative mountain studies, with an increase in research activities, student capacity, researcher capacity, and academic outputs that feed into policy and action.

The GLOMOS team, one of the long-term partners of the ARU, spent the week of 8 to 11 March 2022 on the Qwaqwa Campus to strengthen collaboration and pave the way for new research opportunities in Phuthaditjhaba and the Maloti-Drakensberg.

GLOMOS represents an interface between the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and Eurac Research. Postdoctoral fellow, Dr Stefano Terzi, said: “It’s very interesting for us to look at the Maloti-Drakensberg area because of its diversity. We are in the process of really exciting collaborations.”

Their projects include an understanding of the root causes of land degradation and improving decision-making processes for current water management within the context of water scarcity in the Maloti-Drakensberg.

• For more information on the speakers and the programme, click here

News Archive

UFS sets trend for higher education institutions

2005-09-21

The University of the Free State (UFS) offers more service-learning courses than any other higher education institution in the country and has the highest number of students enrolled for these service-learning courses.

This was the research findings on higher education institutions conducted between 2001 and 2004 by the Joint Education Trust (JET) into service-learning courses. These are courses which seek to integrate service to the community into the academic core of higher education institutions.

The results of this research indicated that the UFS is one of the few higher education institutions in South Africa that have made progress in integrating community engagement into the mainstream academy.

According to the findings 2 233 students at the UFS participated in service-learning courses supported by JET, while 858 students at the University of Transkei (UNITRA), 636 students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and only 600 students at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) participated in service-learning courses.

In total there were 6 930 students participating in service learning courses supported by the JET at 10 institutions throughout the country.

The research also found that out of a total of 182 service-learning courses supported by JET countrywide, the UFS had the highest number of such courses at 42, followed by WITS with 28, the University of Kwazulu Natal with 26, UWC 24 and UNITRA with 22.

Nationally, most of the service-learning courses at higher education institutions are offered in the human sciences (62), followed by health sciences (37), education (26), agriculture (14), and economic sciences (11).

According to leading academics, service-learning is a credit-bearing, educational exercise in which students participate in an organised service activity that meets identified community needs and helps the student to gain a deeper understanding of course content and a sense of civic responsibility.

Reacting to the research findings, the Rector and Vice-chancellor of the UFS, Prof Frederick Fourie, said the university feels strongly that there should be integration of service-learning into the academic core of the institution.

“Through service-learning modules the UFS can give expression to its role of service to the community as an institution of higher learning, producing quality graduates who understand the communities in which they will have to function for the rest of their lives,” Prof Fourie said.

According to Mr Jo Lazarus, the project manager of the Community-Higher Education – Service Partnership (CHESP), which falls under the JET, a number of institutions have identified community engagement as a strategic priority and have allocated significant resources from their central budget towards its implementation.

Mr Lazarus said most students have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards service learning.

“A large percentage of students surveyed indicated that their service-learning course helped to improve their relationship skills, leadership skills and project planning abilities. As significant is the fact that these courses also benefited them in terms of their awareness of cultural differences and opened their eyes about their own cultural stereotypes,” said Mr Lazarus.

“The key challenge still hampering the integration of service-learning as a core function of academic activity is that some institutions still see service-learning as an add-on, and nice-to-have activity,” he said.

According to Mr Lazarus higher education must demonstrate social responsibility and commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for service-learning as a form of community engagement.

Media release
Issued by:  Lacea Loader
   Media Representative
   Tel: (051) 401-2584
   Cell: 083 645 2454
   E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
   20 September 2005

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