Page 69 - Transformation Indaba Report

entities – 41% are female-headed. Inadequate succes- introducing innovation postdoc fellowships. Postdocs will
sion planning. be placed in both academia and industry. Could provide a
- Supporting digital scholarship – many frustrations. The co-funding opportunity.
digitisation project is urgent. • A transformation strategy: internationalisation approach
- Our libraries remain outdated. We must keep pace with adopted by Mandela University in response to vision
open science/data initiative. and mission. Located within the need to transform
- A national conversation is needed around research academy broadly and to produce graduate attributes.
impact and the measuring of research impact. • Need to re-engineer and lift up the University’s research
- Create and sustain enabling innovation eco-systems. themes. Partnerships must reflect those themes.
- Staff and students co-create pioneering discoveries. • We must address the issue of ‘star’ academics – expand
Mandela University has been successful. Approx. 200 IP the support and elasticity of the area of work the ‘star’
rights. We have living examples of success, for example, is located in. Improve inter-disciplinary approach. Acade-
the Makhosa brand. mics must understand research agreements – it is instead
• Digital scholarship: We urgently need to pursue DS, an institutional partnership and should accommodate
especially from a research perspective. If we want to multidisciplinary approach.
enhance our research agenda in an international space, • 52 incoming West/European students vs 2 local students
we urgently need to address it. The digital project is going abroad. We focus more on the commercialisation
enjoying a lot of attention within the institution. Digital aspect of receiving students as it constitutes business for
Scholarship is more than just ICT tools. We must look at the university. This must be matched – our students going
different types of techniques we use in data analysis/ abroad (vs incoming student numbers).
visualisation, data mining, big data. Including all areas • Promote intra-Africa mobility. Create mutual learning
that need to be explored far more. In the University’s spaces for Africans (from whole continent).
‘basket of offerings’, Digital Scholarship doesn’t feature. • We must uphold Mandela values in whatever we do (our
We need to onboard Humanities, Health Sciences support spaces, our managerial spaces and so forth). How
(traditionally non digital) as well. to monitor and evaluate this?
• What would be our view of internationalisation in terms • Research impact: supporting students on entrepreneur-
of the interplay between Mandela as ‘giver’ and Mandela ship – initiatives like this needs to be marketed/profiled
as ‘receiver’ of internationalisation. Gauge internation- better. Share success stories. Mandela University hosts the
alisation – through using matrices? Cultural Observatory – can build on this work for research
• Post COVID – our way of working has changed. How open impact.
are we to enhancing research capacity through using • Explore further, the areas where we could have impact.
digital tools? Should we reimagine our policies? Are Need to reimagine those areas as well. Look beyond
we being innovative enough – to enhance our capacity in traditional areas.
a remote fashion? How to include our communities in our • Impact in terms social, cultural, arts, digital. We still think
transformation journey? I.e., a marriage between the in silos in terms of impact. Digitisation project could be
research agenda and engagement agenda needed. the glue that brings everything together. Bring together
There is scope to bring R and E together and to look at it unusual unique spaces.
in a very different manner. • Define impact differently to previous.
• Understand the transformation vision for internationa- • Idea of a research week – impact will be high on the
lisation. agenda.
• Reimagine models for enhancing research capacity:

NelsoN MaNdela UNiversity • traNsforMatioN iNdaba • 2022 63