Message from UJ’s Vice-Chancellor: Professor Ihron Rensburg
I was privileged to recently address a group of the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ’s) top academic achievers – these are graduates from our Summer and Winter 2011 graduation series’ and who were top of their respective faculties. It was a wonderful occasion shared with the graduates, their families and their loves ones. This function signals again our intent to work closely with our alumni to nurture them and in turn our institution.
Our alumni are critically important to us and we are proactively addressing the sense of alienation that inevitably results from a merged institution such as ours. When you have a new name and you are developing new traditions then concerted efforts are required to mobilise the more than 100,000 graduates from our legacy institutions – Witwatersrand Technikon, Rand Afrikaans University and Vista University. Although our efforts during the first five years were focused on achieving a successful merger, we are now giving such dedicated effort to engaging all of our alumni.
In this regard, we plan to build on the successful work undertaken last year in developing alumni affinity groups when we established the Mining Affinity Group - more than 150 mining engineers participated in a two-day professional development programme. Over the next 12-18 months we will establish several alumni affinity groups – for chartered accountants, sports achievers, top academic achievers, and student residences.
UJ in the media
As you are probably already aware, UJ received varying reaction to its Senate decision to end the formal institutional agreement with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University (BGU) - ranging from outrage to strong support for the University’s decision. Since the Senate decision we have been in discussion with our colleagues at BGU to ensure that our academics can continue with their joint research – we will shortly be issuing a joint statement in this regard.
The University has also been in the news about the question of the number of Afrikaans speaking students who choose UJ versus other South African universities. This is a matter that we introduced into the public domain for debate and reflection because we are concerned to have a diverse student body since Afrikaans students are better served in diverse communities rather than in mono-lingual ones. Of 50,000 students enrolled at UJ this year, only 1,500 students have indicated that they would wish to be taught in Afrikaans – compare this to the 15,000 or so Afrikaans students enrolled at each of the Universities of Pretoria, North West and Stellenbosch. It is interesting to note that a healthy 8,000 white students are enrolled at UJ this year.
In this regard, we will be holding an important debate in our Senate later this year which will review our experience of the last three years and consider remedies in this regard.
New dawn for Doornfontein campus
The redevelopment of our Doornfontein campus is another very exciting and challenging project for us at UJ. Following the successful redevelopment and expansion of our Soweto Campus, it is now the time for our Doornfontein campus - we plan to invest R450 million over two phases.
Our objective with this redevelopment is to provide a single, world-class academic hub for our staff and students of the faculties of Engineering and the Built Environment, and Health Sciences. We will in the process revise selected technology programmes – raising science and mathematics content and rigour, and building into these programmes innovation, design and technology transfer. To support such programme revision, our plans include establishing a Workplace Training Centre, and a Design and Industrialisation Centre.
We expect work to begin on this campus early next year for completion well in time for the transfer of our staff, students, programmes and laboratories from our Auckland Park campus in January 2014.
UJ still a favourite brand
UJ has for the third year in a row now won second spot for ‘coolest University’ in the Sunday Times Generation Next brand survey – this is an outstanding achievement which should not be taken for granted given that UJ is less than ten years and is going up against well-established universities and their brands. The survey puts the University of Cape Town first (for the third year in a row) and the University of the Witwatersrand third.
I would like to therefore congratulate all of the colleagues concerned – our fine teachers and scholars, our Advancement Division, and our professional and support who make an outstanding contribution to Brand UJ.