Page 67 - Transformation Indaba Report

a culture will emerge. • Students with special needs must feel they belong to the
• With regards to values – Some postgraduate students are university and not only to a particular unit.
excluded from Mandela University due to a perceived lack • How responsive are our core curricular programmes?
of supervisors – we have inclusivity and diversity as values. Responsive to the needs of our students.
We may have the expertise elsewhere in the institution. • Need to empower ourselves to better respond to the
Need to deliberately search within the whole institution changing student profile. Staff need to be sufficiently
for the relevant expertise. Gatekeeping problem? - super- sensitive to students’ social dynamics. Can’t we interpret
vision of postgraduate students. Develop a Database of the new student using old systems?
colleagues who possess supervision-related skills but don’t • Need to continually remind our students of institutional
necessarily sit in the relevant faculty. values; and show the link between values and our pro-
• Integrate staff and their capabilities to aid the student grammes. Are we doing enough to highlight the values?
within the academic environment. Support Services can Especially, on social media. Show module content and the
tap into the capacity of academic staff. link to the values. Citizenship is often misunderstood.
• What does it mean to be student-centered? Mandela • Big gap between when the student graduates and when
(graduate) attributes must influence curriculum. Curri- they enter the work environment. Creating “Future
culum content to embrace the value system. Forward” – to prepare senior students who will enter
• How to renew ourselves as staff/have stewardship over world of work. To help them take the values of Mandela
the ‘discomforts’ our students face. University into their work environment. Tracking progress.
• Standardisation/consistency across all faculties for post- • Cultivation of student leadership development should be
graduate support lacking. Students should enjoy the same responsibility of all sections of the university business.
experiences, and experiences of Mandela University • Cultural transformation – need a university-wide focus/
values. An example: the proposal defense process. Some deliberate programme.
students defend their own proposals, and some students • Need to concretise/action collaboration and integration
are excluded from the defense process. Leads to conflict within the institution, rather than keep talking about it or
in the student space and between supervisor and student. starting it but there’s no sustainability. Example: bring
At least unified at policy and principles baseline. sporting events together with entrepreneurial studies.
• How relevant are Mandela University’s programmes (offer- • Curriculum development to include all the values? Could it
ings), given our student profile? Is there a way to track the be formalised, for FY level?
relevancy, after student leaves Mandela University? • Cultivate African values in our residences. To transform our
• Collaboration culture between academic and support staff: residences into African student communities. This is being
devise strategic ways of collaborating fully to assist/ formalised.
support our students. Not have an us-them attitude.

NelsoN MaNdela UNiversity • traNsforMatioN iNdaba • 2022 61