Organisational development in universities; A case study on CUT’s repositioning of its Welkom campus provides invaluable lessons

The Central University of Technology (CUT) in the Free State is changing the perceived stepchild status of its Welkom campus to an integral part of the institution’s strategic plan, Dr Gary Paul, CUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Resources and Operations, recently told a higher education audience.

The University is now “re-imagining this campus into what it could be, so that it can become what it should be”. And that’s about enhancing its infrastructure, staffing and resources.

He was presenting CUT’s repositioning of its Welkom campus as a case study in a session on Leading and Managing Change in Universities at the three-day Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) Virtual Summit that ended on17 November.

HELM is one of universities’ support programmes at Universities South Africa (USAf), founded in 2002 to develop leadership and management capacity in universities’ middle managers. The programme is mainly funded from the Department of Higher Education and Training’s University Capacity Development Programme.