Universities South Africa’s second Student Affairs and Student Success cohort begins their leadership programme

Wednesday, 14 August saw the Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) programme launching its second intake of the Student Affairs and Student Success (SASS) programme, online.

• Leadership and management;  
• Understanding the higher education sector context; 
• Student development — theory and practice; and 
• Acceleration of the transformation agenda. 

“This is a good opportunity to enrich ourselves,” Professor Schreiber told the Class of 2024 at the inaugural webinar. “From this intervention, we will get insights and obtain key competencies that enable us, as professionals, to do our work better than we’re already doing, and assist the student and institutions to accelerate success.”

In the context of South Africa’s triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment, Dr Matutu said the higher education sector had a responsibility to produce knowledge for economic and societal benefit and “to ensure improved economic participation and social involvement of our youth and adults.” She thus acknowledged the relatively new entrepreneurship programme running at universities as “a game changer in molding our graduates into employers, as opposed to job seekers.” She called this programme the universities’ response to the triple challenge.

The USAf CEO then referred to The State of Transformation of South Africa’s Public Universities Research Report (2023), that recognises Student Affairs and associated portfolios among vital functions that must play a key role in mainstreaming transformation at their institutions. In that context, she said by providing specialised skills development across the system, the SASS programme carries material benefit to the higher education transformation agenda, especially if the participants, representing their diverse interests, find convergence. “Without collaboration among institutions, the change in institutional cultures will not occur. Difficult as it may be to change set cultures, it gets easier to come up with solutions when diverse minds converge on a common goal.” 

On that note, Dr Matutu wished the SASS participants success and expressed confidence “that the knowledge you will derive from here will assist in changing student experiences in the system.” 

At the opening session, the University of the Free State, at which SASS is now registered and will be certified as a short learning programme, was represented by Dr Dhaya Naidoo (below), Senior Director: Institutional Research and Academic Planning. He congratulated the SASS team for putting this programme together, which, he said, “catalyses Student Affairs and Student Success to new heights.”   

Dr Naidoo said the post-covid era had opened a pandora box of possibilities in teaching and learning, and what could be done in mediating teaching and learning, on or off-campus. “How do we explore and engage those possibilities, moving beyond the simple and binary methods and approaches that we were exposed to, before?  As we deepen our understanding of our roles at the nexus of student engagement and success, we must use our discussions in this programme to understand how the changes, post-covid, have changed student expectations of us as institutions, and the way in which we respond to them…  We look forward to a critique of current practices for a more sustained future.” 

Professor Schreiber gave a SASS overview, starting with how during programme conceptualisation in 2022, the HELM team had consulted experts in Student Affairs in South Africa and beyond.

Unpacking the priority focus areas, she said the course would facilitate an understanding in the participants, on how to lead and manage their teams in their respective work environments. In enabling an understanding of the sector, facilitators would identify “what to be on the lookout for; what worries us; how to respond to current challenges and shape the sector into what we desire of it.” The course would unpack the theory of Student Affairs; good practice models, theories, and how those inform candidates’ practice. Participants would also be exposed to the most influential scholars in the field. In transformation, the course would explore how Student Affairs, Student Development and Student Support structures contribute to transforming the system in sustainable ways.

The Programme Leader said the HELM team had benchmarked this programme against what was happening in the European Union, specifically in France, Germany, Turkey, and various other countries. They had also looked at Botswana and discovered, while at it, an excellent norms and standards document that Botswana had published. The team had also brought in insights from student affairs programmes in China and in India.

Professor Schreiber said in designing this leadership programme, Professor Denise Zinn and the HELM team had considered the best leadership programme attributes and incorporated them into the SASS programme.  Key pillars identified from the best Leadership Development Programme (Harvard Business Review, 2023) were: 

• Whole person growth: a programme that develops and empowers the whole person; 
• Reflection: a programme that enables reflection on the knowledge being acquired;
• Meaning making: enabling candidates to make sense of the newly acquired knowledge and an analysis of the SA SASS programme; 
• Stress and copying: a programme empowering practitioners to cope in their unique environments – recognising that candidates bring their lived experience; are the experts of the environments they work in, and seeking to empower them in those unique environments; 
• Networks: programmes that allow candidates to network and learn from one another, recognising the uniqueness they each bring to the programme.

From the leading Student Affairs programmes in Europe and the United States, the HELM team had identified these key attributes:

• Theory and Practice
• Relevance: the team was intentional about shaping a programme that was unique to the South African sector, recognising that SA was playing a role in Africa, and that the SA voice mattered. “How do we bring that voice to the world and how do we manage the local and global tensions?”
• Research Training Needs Analysis: a responsive programme to expressed needs of SA practitioners and set out to empower them in their desired focus areas;
• Contextualised learner and situated facilitator: “As a situated facilitator, I bring my background with me. I see the programme through my lens and experience but recognise that you, as a practitioner, bring your own lived experience. You are the expert within your own environment,” said Professor Schreiber.
• Embedded in social justice philosophy – a programme that affords equal chances of participation for everyone. 

Offered completely online, the course is made up of 10 modules, offered two weeks apart in two-hour webinars, each.  Beyond the Introductory and Orientation session, other modules will cover topics including Leadership, Contexts and Complexity; Higher Education Teams and Finance; Local and Global Higher Education and SASS; SASS Scholarship; SASS Theory; SASS Practice; Transformation and Social Justice; Digital Transformation, and Leadership and Closure. The programme will culminate in an in-person colloquium, in Johannesburg, at which the candidates will present their group assignments, report on learning outcomes and hopefully develop their research projects for publishing in relevant journals. Certification of completion will take place in early 2015.

Dr Tebogo Tsebe, the SASS Senior Manager, assured the 46 candidates of a very fruitful time in the SASS programme. Himself an alumnus of SASS 2023, he said he had learnt enormously from this programme and found it a “highly fulfilling experience.” 

‘Mateboho Green is Universities SA’s Manager: Corporate Communication.