Message from the Head of School
- Professor David Everatt
Halfway through 2018, and the Wits School of Governance is bursting at the seams.
Students are writing exams, others studying, multiple short courses taking place here and across the country, PhD and Masters by Dissertation short proposal panels, new cohorts starting, while others as we see below have completed their long PhD journey and graduated at the Wits PhD graduation a few weeks back.
On the research front, our large projects are moving ahead very successfully, with a recent visit to China for the team involved in the GCRF Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC) project; and the first round of reports on all 16 Afro-Asian cities due at the end of July. The GLOBUS project met recently in Brussels, and speaking of social justice in the midst of a turbulent Europe seems a very apt place for staff from a School of Governance.
On the staffing side we are close to our full complement, having been joined by Associate Professor Erin McCandless. The final space that will be filled from 1 August is Professor Robbie van Niekerk, the Chair in Public Governance, whose arrival will see us armed with a really powerful and exciting team of teachers, supervisors and researchers, at every level.
The School is also full because we have exceeded our intake target in every category, and are having to defer students to 2019. The good thing for them is that when 2019 comes, WSG will be rolling out the new Masters of Management in the field of Governance, with a range of specialisations, and with electives, putting the needs of students high by allowing them to chart their own intellectual path to a specific specialisation, or to get a general Masters in Management with multiple inputs (from security to public policy to M&E and so on).
Others who join us in 2019 will do so at distance – our Diploma in Public Management will be live online from January 2019, and students will be able to sign up at any time and complete the course online, with live interaction with teaching assistants and academics, and a host of multi-media options. In this way, a Diploma can be done on your own time, and a 65%+ pass sees a seamless move into the Master's programme. Learning the pedagogic challenges of teaching online – which is a major step away from classroom teaching – has been a terrific learning curve for all involved at WSG.
Some of this is covered in the following pages, and more will follow in subsequent newsletters.