FUTURE PROFESSORS’ PROGRAM TO DEVELOP NEW COHORT OF HIGH-ACHIEVING SCHOLARS IN WSU

The Future Professor’s Program (FPP) is a competitive and selective programme of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) to prepare promising early career academics to become a new cohort of South African professors across their disciplines.

At WSU, FPP is an imperative for enhancing capacity for impactful and relevant research, accelerated growth in research output, and enhanced postgraduate development.

The WSU Future Professors Programme is led by the Senior Director of Learning and Teaching (DLT), Prof Clever Ndebele, who emphasised that the programme is aligned to the university’s Research and Innovation Strategic plan and Vision 2030 Institutional strategic Plan.

Ndebele said, “The Future Professors Programme fits well into the existing basket of catalytic initiatives. It also relates to both the institutional research and innovation strategy, and Vision 2030 Institutional Strategic Plan in that it not only sees the professoriate as a mechanism for advancing scholarly excellence, but as a mechanism for producing high-end human capital through consistent and well-structured mentorship, preparation and commitment.”

FPP was initiated in 2020 by DHET. It targets talented young - particularly black and female – academics, providing structured support to these academics so as to prepare them to function effectively as professors.

“The programme has three core components: a residential series of seminars; a baseline evaluation which helps each scholar understand their standing in the discipline and propose trajectories for future development; and international engagement appropriate to the scholar’s particular intellectual project,” said the Professor.

Senior Director  of Research and Innovation , Prof Wilson Akpan, said the programme is a great investment for sustainability, especially for a university that is repositioning itself for growth, excellence and impact.

He said, “Besides benefiting from specific development initiatives that are unique to the Programme, colleagues in the Future Professors Programme will have access to the fullest range of cutting-edge research and innovation mentoring initiatives that the Research Directorate has created, supported through both institutional funds and the University Capacity Development Programme (UCDP)”.

“We will resource them as best we can, to put them in good stead to be able to resource others”, Akpan added.

One of the programme’s most notable participants is Medical Scientist and senior lecturer, Dr Yandiswa Yako from the Medical Biology department, in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

“This is an all-round programme that provides tools to equip us in preparation for professorship. So far we’ve attended seminars conducted by experienced scholars who are experts in various fields and workshops that are based on various skills that we need to have as scholars, and these include developing online portfolios as researchers and teachers.”

She added, “We also went through an exercise for applying for NRF rating and were advised on research aspects we need to work on to prepare for a specific NRF rating application. We will also be getting mentors that will help us to achieve our individual goals as scholars. In addition to this, we are provided counselling to help us deal with work-related and personal challenges as scholars.”

Interested parties can enquire and/or apply through Prof Ndebele before 28 February 2022.

By Ongezwa Sigodi