A well-known figure in the South African higher education industry, Professor Irene Moutlana, Vice-Chancellor and Principal at the Vaal University of Technology (VUT) has been widely acknowledged for her business ethos, level-headedness and hands-on leadership.
Today, she speaks with great enthusiasm about her new strategy and vision for the university. Professor Moutlana holds Masters and Doctor of Education degrees from Harvard University under a Fullbright Scholarship. She has passion, dedication and commitment to people development, which is evident in her experiences as a high school teacher and her subsequent upward mobility in the higher education sector from Lecturer to Professor.
At the time of her appointment at VUT, she was an Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Technology at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) post-merger. She had been a Vice-Rector: Academic at Port Elizabeth Technikon prior to the merger. She has been a member and chair of various higher education committees, and has been a community developer through various funded projects.
In recognition of this community work, she was nominated a Business Woman of the Year (2002). She earned teaching and research fellowships at Harvard University through her dedication and commitment to the profession. She has delivered numerous conference papers at both national and international levels, public and keynote addresses, and has a number of publications to her credit.
She has also participated in public radio and television debates on the issue of appropriate language for higher education instruction. Her move to VUT took many in the industry by surprise. VUT was up until then considered a tumultuous university in the South African higher education landscape, plagued by scandals, staff infighting and questionable education standards.
It is VUT’s new mantra to create a meaningful holistic educational impact on its students, local industry and surrounding communities through learning, teaching and research, and it is under Moutlana’s leadership that VUT has radically redefined itself as an institution that is relevant in the 21st century economy. Surrounded by well-established heavy-metal and petro-chemical industries, VUT had to deal with its own internal struggles of complacency and malpractice, having to transform itself from a technical college to a technikon and finally to a fully-fledged university of technology that can stand on its own.
Today, home to more than 17 000 students and the only university in the southern Gauteng region, the university has grown in stature as a higher education institution, drawing learners from all over the continent and making a meaningful contribution to the development of human capital in Africa. The campus boasts refurbished world-class facilities, such as laboratories and lecture halls to enable learning, research, recreation and sport, arts and culture and importantly, community engagement.
Three satellite campuses also extend the reach of the university to Secunda, Kempton Park and Upington. While the revamped institution is gaining credibility through its strong focus on research and innovation, this would not be possible without serious soul-searching and introspection.
The impact of globalisation, the changing world of work, the information era, new modes of knowledge production and the emergence of a new learning industry, has had a major influence on the transformation of the institution itself. Add to that the current economic climate in South Africa, high unemployment, slow economic growth rates and poor student literacy profiles once learners enter the university, have created huge education chasms that had to be properly addressed.
A Mottled Past
Professor Moutlana explains that by not having been affected by the ‘merger processes’ experienced by most higher institutions, was VUT’s greatest drawback. “The years between 2004 to date have affected no other institutions as profoundly as universities, especially universities of technology, who grappled for quite some time with what their identity was within the higher education landscape.
In our case, our untouchable stable had far-reaching implications for all those who worked and lived in the University. “We were comfortably isolated, not threatened by the issues of redundancy, restructuring of curricula, programme alignments, buying into new cultures, ethos and understandings,” says Moutlana. She says the renaming of the faculties was a far cry from instigating change and there was no focus on creating new niches from old programmes.
“We seemed relatively safe, living in a secluded environment, and therein was our greatest inner paralysis as a new type of university and a new scholarly mindset.” VUT had to make a clean and logical break from its past and embrace the future as demonstrated by a developing economy, and not just as a university, but as a cutting-edge university of technology.
“The irony was that pushing VUT within its old context towards a new desired entrepreneurial state resulted in push and pull tensions that were causing great imbalances within the power relations of the organisation, which not only affected the productivity levels and the overall morale of the institution,” she adds.
Additionally, while VUT is well-located within a highly industrial region, a seemingly favourable location for fruitful partnerships and a magnet for attracting the best expertise in science, engineering and technology disciplines, the exodus to industries offering more lucrative salaries had eroded VUT’s human resource base at the expense of its core function – teaching, learning and research.
Entrepreneurial Renaissance
VUT required radical change and a new vision. Moutlana called in strategists to diagnose the situation objectively. It was found that a vision of shared leadership was required, how the team will work together and how strategies were to be implemented. Importantly, it was realised that the university had to focus on the application of technical knowledge through multi-disciplinary subject packages, with a strong focus on applied research, as well as engaging with commerce and industry to ensure that the education material is relevant in today’s work environment.
“The distinction between the university’s old and new vision is that the old vision was ‘just to be a dynamic centre of technology’ whereas the new vision sees it ‘leading in innovative knowledge and quality technology education’. “We need to think and act differently, so as to mould highly intelligent, employable students and to be a university of choice within our region.”
Reaching Milestones
Today, VUT is relatively stable – especially compared to other institutions and given the past of the institution itself. For the past three years, VUT has received first and runner up awards in the higher education sector for financial management and governance and in the management of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funds, a clear indication that the institution is in a healthy state. It has grown its international partnerships in research and student exchange and has also increased its donor base. Through the Engineering Council of South Africa (Ecsa) accreditation, its engineering qualifications now have international status.
By 2012, VUT will have invested R250 million in infrastructure development to meet the needs of students and the requirements of its new status as a University of Technology. Moutlana adds that a concerted effort and clear strategies to address throughput and pass rates are bearing fruit, and research outputs have also increased with a number of its researchers being currently rated.
“Four years of reflection, realigning our institution and recrafting a rigorous policy compliant landscape and strengthening existing industrial linkages, has seen VUT crafting a very positive academic image that has had far-reaching and positive implications. “It appears that VUT can now truly begin to deliver on its mandate of teaching and learning, research and community engagement, by producing students that are on par with the likes of the Massachusettes Institute of Technology ,” she concludes.
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement