WSU ACADEMICS GET TOP HONOURS FOR RESEARCH INNOVATION

WSU’s office of the Vice-Chancellor had handsomely rewarded three of the institution’s most exceptional academics in the areas of Research, Teaching and Learning as well as Community Engagement at the annual Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award is an annual award bestowed by the Vice-Chancellor to a staff member to recognise exceptional and proven achievements in innovative approaches that demonstrate impact on the community, students, and the university.

Awarded the two top honours for the Research & Community Engagement category was Professor Adebola Oyedeji for her contribution to research in Organic Chemistry -Natural Product Chemistry. Her focus is on terpenoid studies from medicinal plants for economic and medicinal value chain.

“Hard work – You must create time to be a successful academic. This is giving extra time outside normal working hours to your academic passion. To success in academia your leisure time will be encroached into.” “All my students have always come from disadvantaged background! Exposure is the key – expose them to what I am doing and how I am doing it, exposing them to know how to handle rejections of proposal and manuscript without giving up,” said Oyedeji.

Also a C-Rated scientist, Oyedeji has produced over 100 peer-reviewed articles, 98 conferences papers and seven book chapters. She has also successfully supervised 32 doctoral and Master’s candidates.

Trailblazing in the Senior/Distinguished Teacher Category was Professor Alex Jogymol Kalariparampil for her dedication and innovation in teaching of Mathematics to poor performing students in the Eastern Cape Province.

Prof. Jogymol founded a Mathematics Education Centre on the Mthatha campus to capacitate and train teachers in order to improve the performance of mathematics education in the country by introducing the Gamma Tutor Device in collaboration with the Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Centre (GMMDC). The Gamma Tutor device is a flexible plug-and-play Android mini-PC device which can be used with any data-projector, digital screen or smart TV. It comes pre-installed with software that includes the complete TouchTutor® Maths and Science interactive digital package for learner support (from Gr8-12).

“I feel so excited and humbled by this accolade. Being recognised gives me motivation and momentum to establish and explore further possibilities. I changed my problems in to projects: studied it, researched on it and came up with solutions. I am very eager to learn and work towards making a difference,” said Jogymol. Last, but not by any means the least was Jafta Malakhiwe who was recognized for his involvement in professional academic development and the use of scholarly work to articulate and complement the teaching philosophy in the Emerging Teacher category

Jafta was unreservedly lauded for showing exceptional interest in developing himself professionally as a distinguished academic. He has already participated in credit bearing short courses in the following areas: Mentoring and Coaching, E-teacher training, Development and Implementation of Assessment of Learning in Higher Education; Facilitation of learning using a variety of given methodologies, On-going Wise-Up refresher training.

“We then need to keep our benchmarking above par, however do better in understanding our student profiling, in order to continue with flexible, effective and impactful teaching and learning in our spaces within the growing 4IR,” he said.

The Excellence Awards were handed over during the University’s summer graduation ceremony on 22 Dec, 2020.

by Sinawo Hermans