Max Price

Some key achievements as Vice-Chancellor of UCT

• Enhancing UCT’s position as a globally competitive research university through strategies around internationalisation – developing new institutional linkages and research collaborations.

• Concerted focus on developing UCT’s networks and partnerships on the African continent, as one way for UCT to differentiate itself amongst top universities globally, conceptualised as a vision to be an ‘Afropolitan’ university.

• Accelerating and expanding efforts to deal with histories of racialised educational disadvantage  – with respect to student admissions, staffing demography, institutional culture and curricula, including a new financial aid system that enables needs-blind admission, and promoted interventions to increase success rates.  

• Moving UCT from ‘research-led’ to ‘research-intensive’ through facilitating development of research management systems, training and support for emerging researchers, policy and projects promoting open access and discoverability, financial and organisational investment in post-doctoral programmes, growth of post-graduate numbers and quality, and creating interdisciplinary programmes.

• Promoting the valorisation of teaching and elevating its status in order to raise the commitment to, and quality of, teaching. 

• Promotion of engaged socially responsive scholarship through: revision of policy; introduction of annual report and awards to match those in teaching and research; introduction of Knowledge Partners programme through which post-grads undertake research for community based projects; the institution of ‘UCT Plus’ – formal recognition on the graduate’s degree transcript of social responsiveness activities; the introduction of an optional course available to all students covering global issues and social justice.

• Driving the strategic considerations around MOOCs and on-line qualifications –enabling the first MOOCs at a South African university. In 2016 the University of Cape Town (UCT) was ranked as the second best institution globally creating MOOCs. Generally moving the university and faculty to consider more seriously the use of educational technologies in learning and teaching.

• Established four flagship Vice-Chancellor Strategic Initiatives which are university-wide trans-disciplinary research initiatives to address key national challenges:

• African Climate and Development Initiative

• Safety and Violence Initiative

• Poverty and Inequality Initiative

• Schools Improvement Initiative (watch video)

• Established the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice (now called the Nelson Mandela School of Governance)

• Established School of Design Thinking

• Achieved record levels of fund raising