New appointments: DVCs and deans

11 December 2017 | From the VC’s Desk

Dear colleagues and students

I am writing to inform you about the following appointments:

DVC: Teaching and Learning

I am delighted to report that Council has approved the appointment of Professor Lis Lange as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC): Teaching and Learning at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her term of office will begin on 1 February 2018.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Daya Reddy for the important part that he has played as acting DVC in this post since the beginning of January 2017, and for agreeing to extend his term of office until the end of January 2018.

The position of DVC: Teaching and Learning has always been critical at UCT, but especially so in this season of change when we are interrogating the meaning of a decolonised curriculum. As members of the executive, all DVCs actively support the Vice-Chancellor in the strategic leadership and management of the university and in supervising academic and administrative functions through line reports.

Specific responsibilities of the DVC: Teaching and Learning include:

developing, implementing and monitoring programmes and progress towards the teaching and learning goals in the university’s strategic plan and the national plan for higher education with the aim of enhancing the quality and success rate of UCT’s graduates
line function management and support for the six faculty deans, the dean of the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), the director of the Graduate School of Business, the director of the Institutional Planning Department (IPD) and the executive director of UCT Libraries
promoting the use of technology in education and the advancement of online learning
oversight of academic planning, including the future size and shape of the university
oversight of quality assurance and quality promotion by the IPD of all university departments
developing, supporting and monitoring progress of curriculum initiatives which respond to transformation imperatives in the university and wider society
developing, implementing and monitoring initiatives to promote the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Professor Lange will join us from the University of the Free State (UFS), where she has held the same position for three and a half years. Before that she headed UFS’s Institutional and Academic Planning and Research Department from 2011 to 2014. She was an executive director for the Higher Education Quality Committee in the Council on Higher Education (CHE) from 2006 to 2010 and was acting CEO of the CHE from 2007 to 2008. During her service in the CHE, she secured funding for research projects on higher education from the following international funders: Fulbright, Nuffic, Carnegie Corporation and Ford Foundation.

Professor Lange was born in Argentina and is a permanent resident in South Africa. She earned a BA(Hons) in history from the University of Buenos Aires in 1984, an MA in African studies from El Colegio de Mexico in 1988, and a PhD in history from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1998.

Professor Lange’s research interests focus on the philosophy and politics of education. She has done research on change in higher education as well as on the meanings and possibilities of the notion of transformation, especially at curricular level. Her current work is on higher education curriculum and pedagogy in the context of the call for decolonisation of the curriculum.

She has participated on a number of national task teams of higher education, including University Fees, Council on Higher Education, 2016; Transfer of the Colleges of Agriculture from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to the Department of Higher Education and Training, 2016; Funding of Higher Education, Department of Higher Education and Training, 2012; Consensus Group on the Humanities, South African Academy of Science, 2009–2010; and Quality of Academic Journals, South African Academy of Sciences, 2006–2008.

Professor Lange is the author of White, Poor and Angry: White working class families in Johannesburg (Ashgate, UK, 2003) and co-editor with Leonhard Praeg of #MustFall: Understanding the moment (UKZN University Press, forthcoming 2018). A small sampling of the policy research she has conducted on South African higher education includes, among other reports, “Teaching and learning beyond formal access: Assessment through the looking glass” (Higher Education Monitor No 10, 2010), “Access and throughput in South Africa: Three case studies, 2006–2008” (Higher Education Monitor No 9, 2010) and “Postgraduate studies in South Africa: A statistical profile” (Higher Education Monitor No 7, 2009).

Read Professor Lange’s CV...

DVC: Institutional Innovation

Professor Hugh Corder will complete his term as acting DVC: Institutional Innovation on 31 January 2018. I would like to thank Professor Corder for taking up this role during 2017.

Professor Anton Le Roex has been appointed as acting DVC from 1 February 2018. Professor Le Roex will complete his seven-year tenure as Dean of Science at the end of December. I once again thank Professor Le Roex for the sterling role that he played as dean.

Read Professor Le Roex’s abridged CV...

Interim Dean: Science

As announced late last month, Professor Susan Bourne has been appointed as the interim Dean of Science from 1 January 2018 until 30 June 2019. Professor Bourne has been head of the Department of Chemistry since 2012 and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science from 2013 to 2016.

Read Professor Bourne’s abridged CV...

Acting Dean: Humanities

Professor David Wardle has been appointed acting Dean of Humanities with effect from 7 December 2017 until 31 December 2018. Professor Wardle has over 14 years of experience as Deputy Dean (Finance and Space) in the faculty. He takes over from Professor Harry Garuba, who has been serving as acting dean since the departure of Professor Sakhela Buhlungu to the University of Fort Hare at the end of January this year.