Ocean sciences first for NMU

THERE is excitement in the air at Nelson Mandela University, in the city and province where the bulk of the institution’s campuses are located.

And so it should be for the rest of the country and the continent, for the launch of a dedicated ocean sciences campus – South Africa’s first and only one – marks a hugely significant milestone.

The ocean sciences campus has been a long time coming. It, like the new, recently launched Nelson Mandela University name, constitutes a trajectory which has its genesis in the institution’s 2020 vision and strategy, birthed in 2010, the vision and strategy whose formulation and execution, led from day one by Vice-Chancellor Professor Derrick Swartz, is about repositioning the university in South Africa, continentally and globally.

It is a repositioning that begins and ends with the reimagining of the academic project. This entails, among others, and as articulated by our VC, the following:

ý Reinvigorating curriculum renewal with a defined set of epistemological and curriculum statements, involving issues of social justice, democracy, equality and sustainability, ecological justice, globalisation, technological change and the changing nature of work;

ý Establishing faculty transformation committees, involving students and staff facilitating co-creation of curricula, teaching and learning, research and engagement and innovations praxis; and

ý Staff orientation workshops of all academics to embrace the new knowledge and curriculum paradigm.

It is a cause endorsed recently by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa when we celebrated the renaming of the university. On the day, he said: “The decision to become Nelson Mandela University is not simply an exercise in corporate re-branding. It is a statement of intent. It is a statement of values.

“It is a validation of the struggles of our people against colonial occupation and apartheid oppression. It is an affirmation of their history and identity, of their dignity and rights.”

The act of renaming of the university “makes a statement about justice, rehabilitation and reconciliation”.

“It starts to reshape our South African identity. It helps us to move forward, together, as a people. That is because Nelson Mandela embodied the best in us”.

And so the launch of our ocean sciences campus on Friday (September 22) needs to be located squarely in this context, as an intellectual and academic proposition that enables the exploration of the frontier of new knowledge, in innovative and trans-disciplinary ways, in ways that help us to take all our people with us and in ways that move us forward, as a people, nation and continent.

The campus is intended, in the words of Professor Swartz, to be a creative hub for pioneering and groundbreaking trans-disciplinary, post-graduate ocean sciences research, teaching, innovation and engagement that should put Nelson Mandela University in a clear position to become the leading ocean sciences university on the African continent.

In establishing and running the ocean sciences campus, the university will work in close collaboration with the public and private sector, with local, continental and overseas universities and institutions; with a core focus on South African oceans, and an interest in extending to East Africa, Indian Ocean Rim countries, the Southern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

The research, teaching and training, innovation and engagement will initially focus on four wide-ranging themes:

ý Marine food security and sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities;

ý Ocean governance and global change;

ý Oceanography and marine biodiversity conservation; and

ý Marine technologies and infrastructure.

As we launch the new ocean sciences campus, our faculty of health sciences is hard at work preparing for the eventual launch of South Africa’s 10th medical school that will be the second in the Eastern Cape – a province with one of the largest rural footprints in dire need of training and development of wide-ranging medical facilities and services.

The orientation and work towards the medical school is equally and intentionally focused not only in training and graduating students and practitioners, and integrating them into the health professions’ workforce, but also on promoting healthier lifestyles, community health and wellbeing, food security and poverty alleviation, and economic development.

The above represents a deliberate institutional strategy aimed at creating, building and enhancing a differentiating and distinctive identity and brand that coheres and remains true to our vision, mission and values, that resonates with what former president Nelson Mandela stood and lived for, which is thankfully embodied in our new name.