Geology rocks, and we’ve got the mountains to prove it
● The University of Mpumalanga plans to encourage more students to study geology after the Makhonjwa mountains in Barberton were declared a world heritage site this month.
The university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Thoko Mayekiso, confirmed the course would be offered as a major in the BSc degree from next year.
Unesco’s world heritage committee decided to officially add the mountains to its list at its meeting in Bahrain this month.
The fledgling university, which had only 167 students when it opened in 2014, now has 2 473 students. Its enrolment target for next year is 3 220. It has two campuses, one in Mbombela and the other in Siyabuswa.
Almost 81% of its students are from Mpumalanga, while just over 7% are from Limpopo and 5% from Gauteng. There are also 27 students from Swaziland, 10 from Zimbabwe and two from Nigeria.
Initially, it offered only three qualifications: degrees in education and agriculture, and a diploma in hospitality management.
This year it is offering 12 qualifications, including a BCom, a BA and an advanced diploma in hospitality management for the first time.
Mayekiso, who has a doctorate from the Free University of Berlin, in Germany, said it was expecting to offer a degree in hospitality management from 2020.
“We have a partnership with the University of Central Florida in the US, which has assisted us in developing the curriculum.
“Our students will spend some time at their institution because the qualification is going to be quite comparable.”
She said the degree would help students find jobs as Mpumalanga was a tourism destination.
The limited size of the university has not stopped Mayekiso from setting her sights on offering health sciences programmes.
She said her staff would meet the dean of health sciences at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth next month “because it’s always good when you are starting something new to work with people who have been in that field for quite some time”.
The proposed courses they expect to offer, some of them from 2020, are dietetics, pharmacy, biokinetics, emergency medical care and clinical psychology. She is expecting to offer medicine in the future.
So far, a total of 237 students have graduated, including 100 with a bachelor of education degree, 59 with a diploma in agriculture and 35 with a bachelor of agriculture degree in agricultural extension and rural resource development.
Mayekiso said it was “a very exciting experience to start a university from scratch. I take it as a privilege as very few people have that opportunity.”
One of her biggest challenges was the construction of buildings to house the various faculties.
The university has been allocated R600million a year for construction projects. Buildings completed last year include executive offices, a library, a 150-bed residence and a multipurpose hall and administration building.
The construction of a hospitality and tourism building and a multipurpose teaching building is under way.
Mayekiso, a clinical psychologist and a Crated researcher by the National Research Foundation, said: “It’s a challenge to make students understand that you don’t have [much infrastructure] now because this is a new university.
“They will go to other institutions and they see student centres and you have to make people understand this is where we are going in five years; this place will be different.”
The academic staff comprises 104 members, including three professors and five associate professors. A third of the academic staff have doctoral degrees.
“We have been very strict with the requirements. If you’re appointed as a senior lecturer, you must have a doctorate,” said Mayekiso.