The University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg has released its Annual Review for 2012 which reflects on the School’s strategic plan and sets out 10 goals for the five year period 2010 – 2014, under Prof Fred Cawood’s tenure, and the progress being made annually in meeting these objectives. The plan for this period is to be student-centred, academically relevant and to deliver excellence and are stated as:
- Reduce student to staff ratios
- Always have a grant-funded associate lecturer in the School, over and above the MQA Scheme
- Increase the percentage of fully-sponsored students in the School
- Manage student and staff populations towards acceptable demographic ratios
- Review, on a five-yearly basis, undergraduate, postgraduate and certificate programmes for relevance
- Build strong partnerships (internal and external)
- Retain ECSA accreditation of the undergraduate programme
- Improve student throughput in all programmes
- Improve research output through research degrees and publications; and
- Increase the number of NRF-Rated staff.
From the previous five year plan, the School of Mining has made progress in reaching the 10 goals set out. The success in attracting and retaining high-calibre staff is an example of this along with development of young staff to academic positions and registration for PhDs.
There is now a higher student-intake and improved throughput with class sizes growing to a graduating class of about 100 in 2014. Graduates forms the postgraduate program is also increasing, despite the much smaller student body. Investment has also continued in laboratories, ensuring students receive practical and industry-relevant input in a range of areas.
Research output is also increasing due to higher entry requirements for the postgraduate program and the phasing out of the coursework MEng and its replacement with a combination of coursework and research MSc is leading to greater specialisation and staff publications.
