Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Tshwane University of Technology, Professor Lourens van Staden, has committed to making TUT a People’s University.
Closing the
two-day TUT Transformation Summit 2017 held at the University on 12 & 13
September, Van Staden said the time for talking was over and he wanted to see
transformative progress across the University for the rest of the year and in
2018. He said the whole TUT community should embrace transformation in
solidarity with higher education in South Africa and the broader community.
He said the
university was very aware that the majority of its students were from poor and
rural backgrounds and that it existed for the good of society.
“As a
university, we should also bring the Sustainable Development Goals into our University
and domesticate the 17 SDGs at TUT,” said Van Staden. Referring to the Social Progress
Index released during the UN General Assembly at its 72nd regular
session this week, he said 795 million wake up hungry in the morning, 1.8
billion people globally drink contaminated water 1.2 billion people still do
not have electricity, over 150 million of them in urban areas.
This, he said,
should inform how TUT understood its task as a university. It should work
together with communities to resolve national and local challenges and
problems. “We should strive to become the custodian of the society where it
exists.”
As a University
it had to acknowledge the vacuum in global leadership that allows the
perpetuation of such material deprivation and in the context of climate change
the statistics could worsen even further. “In the context of this question, we
should ask ourselves how we as a university can salvage the declining state of
leadership in our society,” he said.
The issues if
sustainability and resilience were looming large, said Van Staden and last week
one of SA’s leading climate change experts, Prof Mary Scholes, said SA is
getting warmer at twice the global average. This demanded that TUT increases
its efforts in better analysing the environment and providing dependable,
reliable and trustworthy responses to the fast approaching crisis.
Van Staden said
TUT must maintain scientific integrity and nurture knowledge creation,
validation and diffusion responsibilities, and must respond to the emerging alternate-fact
thinking that was dominating locally and globally. Going forward, he said the university needed
to focus on the continuum of knowledge from solving basic logic problems to
engaging in deeper global issues.
As the
university transformed, it had to take the Future of Work seriously in the face
of digitisation, robotisation and artificial intelligence. The Institute for
Economic Research and Innovation, in its role as chair of the Millennium
Project of Southern Africa, is engaged in scenario work with both public and
private sector role-players. “As a people’s university we will refocus and
ensure that we contribute thought leadership based on our scientific and
technological capabilities. We need to help our people in navigating this
world-wide transition,” said the Vice-Chancellor.
During the
summit various conversations were held with guest speakers and presentations
held in parallel sessions, giving staff and students an opportunity to talk
about transformation at the institution.
Students said
they were major stakeholders and needed to be included in the various aspects
and levels of transformation. Van Staden said he had heard their concerns and would
work hard to enhance engagement with students to resolve ongoing challenges.
For more information on the Tshwane
University of Technology, please contact Willa de Ruyter on tel: 012 382
5352 or send an email to deruyterw@tut.ac.za