Diary of a fab academic - Day 4 in Malawi I woke up at 6:00 after three hours of sleep. I was tired, but the alarm rang and I jumped out of bed to get ready. I have always understood mascara but I have only recently discovered the power of lipstick so I made sure that I put my pink lipstick on with my current favorite African dress and my over-worn functional Nine West platform high heels. I looked myself in the mirror and thought I looked fierce enough to face the big hall with all the delegates attending to hear my keynote. This is not a mathematics or science education conference - so it is an unknown audience to me. When I arrived here I only recognized five people: Prof Thoko Mayekiso (DVC research at NMMU), Dr Chris Nhlapo (DVC Research at CPUT), Prof Cheryl Potgieter (DVC humanities at UKZN) and Prof Brian OConnell VC of UWC). These are the people I recognize and am not friends with them, so all I could do was to go and say hello to them. Nothing much.preparing a keynote for an unknown audience is not trivial. It was good that my keynote was scheduled for the third day because that gave me an opportunity to attend all the sessions before then and get a sense of the Organisation (SANORD) and the audience. By now I realized that this is an audience that is interested in issues of higher education - the future of higher education, research on higher education as well as research undertaken in higher education. This time I waited for the chauffeur because I realized with my platform high heels I might just need some help to cross the busy road. I got to the hall at 8:00 this is 30 min before the start of the session to familiarize myself with the podium, set up my technology and make sure it works fine. At this time there were only two other people in the hall. Everything set up, I waited and the professor from Aarhus university in Denmark who was scheduled to chair the session arrived. Very friendly guy and we sat together at breakfast in the morning, so there was some familiarity. He asked me what he should sa to introduce me? I told him not to read the profile written in the Programme but only to tell the audience that I am a full professor of mathematics and Vice Principal of research and innovation at UNISA. Then I continued, You can also tell them that sometimes she is full of piss and vinegar but she promised to behave this morning. And is said, I wont let you down. I promise to behave! We laughed out loud and when the time came for him to introduce me he ignored everything I told him and read the outdated chatty resume published in the conference Programme. I smiled and went to the podium to make my presentation. They had asked me to speak on the topic, The relevance of research in higher education. I decided to interpret it in two different ways: 1. Is it relevant for higher education to do research? Here I considered the role of higher education and emphasized that teaching and research are not unique to higher education - private business, NGOs and government also engage in these two activities. 2. How relevant is the research done by higher education? Here I considered why the question about relevance is asked so often. Different stakeholders expect universities to attend to their challenges because of the resources that government invests in them. In many countries there are calls for universities to become more and more self sufficient. I obviously cannot share my whole presentation here but I argued that what gives universities the edge is scholarship and not research. I emphasized the difference between scholarship and research and argued that whatever happens, universities should make sure that they dont lose a focus on scholarship because if they do then they will be no different from other entities that do teaching and/or research. My second argument was that universities should pursue scholarship of influence rather than just productivity. Here I shared a model/framework that I developed this year to refine Unisas research agenda and shared it with management from colleges at our 2013 Research and innovation Indaba. Through this model I argue that focusing in the production of outputs alone is the lowest form of scholarship and while it my earn us revenue in the short term, it is not sustainable. If you want to know more then you must wait for the paper to be published. Anyway,in a nutshell these are arguments I advanced. Of course I had a section where I focussed on the African university - I drew much on the work of Zeleza, Olukoshi and Mamdani. I felt good at the end of it. This is one of those presentations that even I know it went well. I was passionate, thoughtful, sincere and authentic. My presentations work only when I am confident otherwise without it, things dont always work even when I know what I am talking about. Its amazing what confidence can do! This is the reason why I recommend faking it all the way! I sat down and it was question time. The first person who spoke congratulated me on the presentation and called it excellent. At the end of the session I was swamped by people. Prof Thoko Mayekiso was the first to come and gave me a hug and she said, you made us very proud. Prof Chris Nhlapo did the same as did many black people and they gave me lots of hugs. This is when I realized that my people are happy and that is important. The white people also came, they had all kinds of proposals - to visit their universities, to write a chapter for their book, to speak at their conference. A professor from Norway paid me the most wonderful complement I have ever heard! he said, this is what happens when form and function meet with excellent content. Thank you for the great presentation! I said to him, what he has just said must be written down and sent to my mother Yes I meant both my moms - my biological mother and my. Jewish mother (story for another day). For two hours after the presentation I could not be alone, young black academics asked how I did it (I realized that they thought I am their age), black grown ups kept telling me how proud they are and white people told me about the work they are doing and explored ways of collaboration. Fascinating! #TheRevengeofTheBoringChick The once boring chick is now hot! Can someone pease tell all the ghetto boys and girls that there is hope for all of them! Spread the word!
Posted on: Thu, 05 Dec 2013 06:06:08 +0000
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