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Mellon Mays Programme helps good students become great scholars
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Programme held a celebratory gathering at the Life Sciences Building on Friday 4 May. The Fellows gathered to say farewell to the 2012 Fellows, who left South Africa for Atlanta in June. They will be spending four weeks at Emory University in Atlanta and will visit New York for a weekend of sightseeing. The five 2012 Fellows are all third year students: Siphathise Dyongo (Geography), Nonhlanhla Khumalo (Psychology), Ryan Loubser (History), Rhulani Maluleke (Social Development) and Chanel van der Merwe (English). Sitembiso Siwawa, a 2009 Fellow, shared her MMUF experience with the new cohort, urging them to make the most of their situation. “We will all be presented with opportunities” she said. “It is entirely up to us to what we do with them.” The MMUF programme aims to provide exceptionally promising students with the financial support and mentoring needed to help them become exceptional scholars in their fields in South Africa.
Multiple cohorts of Mellon Mays Foundation Fellows at the Life Sciences Building.
UWC and HNU give HOPE an eLearning environment
Students and professors from UWC joined forces with their colleagues from Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU) in Germany to develop an eLearning framework for community health workers (CHWs) of the HOPE Cape Town Association, a non-profit organisation that is active in HIV/AIDS treatment. From 21 to 25 May, a total of 26 delegates (6 students and 2 professors from UWC's Economic and Management Sciences Faculty and 14 students and 4 professors from HNU) formed several joint project groups to research and design a Moodle-based mobile course framework for CHWs that could help them train for real-life situations. Attendants were impressed by the comprehensive scientific approach the joint teams applied, and the results achieved. Prof Louis Fourie, Chair of UWC's Department of Information Systems, said that seeing the results of these young and promising students' efforts to improve the quality of life of the poor gives him confidence for South Africa, and for the world.
UWC AIMS graduates praised (and rewarded)
Students from more than 20 countries graduated from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) on Wednesday 20 June 2012, in a ceremony held at the Muizenberg Pavilion. Eighteen of the 52 students who were capped at the graduation ceremony hailed from UWC, with the rest coming from the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University. Several scholarships were awarded to deserving students, including the Victor Rothschild Scholarship, presented to two students each year and worth R80 000 each. One of those students this time around was UWC’s Tesfalem Abate Tegegn.
The AIMS graduates enjoying a sunny academic procession.
UWC’s Dean of Natural Sciences, Prof Davies-Coleman, helped to officiate at the ceremony. He discussed how learners must be encouraged to study maths and science to make Africa a better continent. “Infrastructure is one thing, but in science, people are important. Buildings don’t change the world,” he said. “People do.”