When Rosemary Visser heard that the University of Pretoria (UP) would be offering Spanish from March this year, she signed up immediately to secure one of the 40 available places.
As the personal assistant of A-rated scientist Professor Mike Wingfield, director of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), Visser has often been lost in translation. Wingfield’s work reaches across the world and Visser often has to field inquiries in Spanish, in parti- cular from South American countries such as Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
”One day, after I had to battle again to finalise travel arrangements for Professor Wingfield, I decided the time had come to learn Spanish,” Visser said.
This was made possible after the university hooked up with the Spanish embassy to fund the initiative. Other Spanish-speaking missions in Pretoria joined in and the outgoing Mexican ambassador donated all his Spanish books to the UP.
The UP’s drive to internationalise, which includes its foreign language offerings to equip staff and students to operate globally, has become quite evident lately.
Earlier this year UP hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao, who announced an exchange programme with the university and, a few days ago, outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair was on campus to discuss the effects of climate change on food security in Africa.
But, in announcing internationalisation as a part of the UP’s new strategic plan for 2007 to 2011, vice- chancellor Professor Calie Pistorius was quick to point out that the institution is equally concerned about making a greater local impact.
In terms of multilingualism, local impact has been expressed by the inclusion of Pedi as a communication language at UP. And by adding Yunibesithi ya Pretoria to its logo, the university has gone further than most institutions to commit itself to promoting local languages.
The university will continue to teach in English and Afrikaans, but UP would like to develop Pedi as a language of learning, Pistorius said.
He said the other strategic drivers included excellence in research, teaching and support services, people-centredness to attract and retain the best students and excellent members of staff, transformation and sustainability by maintaining its facilities and implementing a responsible growth strategy.
”Our vision remains the same,” Pistorius pointed out, ”but the environment in which we find ourselves is different. We need a new plan [following on the previous five-year plan] to guide us through a different time”.
Pistorius emphasised that the vision and mission of the plan is to strive towards UP becoming ”an internationally recognised South African teaching and research university”.
With up to 21 000 applicants for first-year places every year and 30% of those accepted having six or more matric distinctions, it is attracting the human capital to make this happen.
It is leading the pack already in terms of accredited research output; it has submitted the largest number of applications to the National Research Foundation to rate its academics and has the highest number of PhDs enrolled.
To sustain the momentum, UP commits itself to a ”quality environment and infrastructure”. The institution is channelling R300-million of its own resources into new facilities and expansions, with R90-million going to the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Johannesburg.