Engaged!

This word usually creates excitement as two people publicly commit to a future life together. It’s called an engagement.

At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University we have engagements too – but they have nothing to do with betrothal. Partnerships, however, are still key as is excitement.

Engagement at NMMU refers to community, industry and other outreach initiatives that integrate teaching, learning and research and also have scholarly outputs.

I am thrilled to share – especially in light of the many negative media reports in recent months – that the good news far outweighs the bad.

Anyone fortunate enough to attend the university’s first engagement colloquium at NMMU will agree. The breadth and depth of NMMU’s engagement initiatives has a great feel-good factor – and in some instances, even the wow factor.

InnoVenton's Prof Ben Zeelie is leading one the university's most exciting engagement projects by cultivating algae.

Staff were buoyed to hear about:

• Human Movement Science (HMS) Students creating make-shift gymnasiums in derelict buildings by welding old desks and turning them into sporting equipment as part of their experiential learning.
• Arts and Engineering presently doing the best in terms of a new engagement measurement tool.
• The Advanced Mechatronic Training Centre’s multitude of initiatives that stemmed from their initial need to buy equipment from overseas in 2001.
• The various projects run by our Industrial Engineering go-getters – from short-course programmes to a fully-fledged support platform for women in engineering via its Women in Engineering Leadership Association (Wela) programme.
• The Govan Mbeki Maths Development Unit’s vast range of projects aimed at raising the standard of maths within in the province and beyond.
• The “white gold” cultivation of algae to produce fossil biobrick briquettes invented by InnoVenton that has the capacity to create thousands of jobs through recycling. This engagement project is one to watch and has the wow factor.
• How technology is improving and changing lives, particularly in the city’s Northern Areas, thanks to a myriad of interventions by NMMU’s Centre of Community Technologies. This is another one to watch.
• George Campus’s fundraising efforts for less privileged students via various engagement events.
• 70 student societies at NMMU each having a corporate social responsibility goal.
• Vegetable gardens by Agricultural students in assisting the university’s nutrition programme to ensure that NMMU students do not go hungry.
• The work of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training (CIPSET), of the Centre for the Advancement of Non-racialism and Demoracy (CANRAD) and the Centre for Academic Engagement and Collaboration (CAEC) to make, in the simplest of terms, the world a better a place in connecting people with one another to the benefit of all.

Oh, I could go on and on. But you have the links to their presentations to give you a better idea as to how each is engaged in making things better – and also producing the academic papers in support of their findings.

So take a bow those who have reached out beyond teaching, learning and research to become engaged and benefit others.

You inspire us.

Kudos too to Prof George de Lange and his team for bringing the many engagement projects together in this format. We’re buoyed, enthused, encouraged and proud of all the goodwill, great research and care that is happening at NMMU!

For access to all the reports go to: http://caec.nmmu.ac.za/