91´ó»ÆѼ

University of Missouri South Africa Education Program

South Africa Program Update

University of Missouri System and University of the Western Cape

January 2014

A report from the University of Missouri South African Education Program Committee:

• Dr. Joel Glassman, Chair, 91´ó»ÆѼSL

• Dr. Niyi Coker, 91´ó»ÆѼSL

• Dr. Greg Gelles, Missouri S&T

• Dr. Jeanie Hofer, Missouri S&T

• Dr. Judith McCormick, 91´ó»ÆѼKC

• Mr. Michael Middleton, MU

• Dr. Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe, Missouri S&T

• Dr. Richard Oliver, MU

• Dr. Nicholas Peroff, 91´ó»ÆѼKC

• Dr. Lois Pierce, 91´ó»ÆѼSL

• Dr. Linna Place, 91´ó»ÆѼKC

• Dr. James K. Scott, MU

• Professor Rodney Uphoff, Director, 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP

2013 - A Memorable Year

For many, 2013 will be remembered as the year South Africa and the world lost an icon - Nelson Mandela. Mandela's passing leaves an enormous void, but his death also provided South Africa an opportunity to celebrate his amazing life. Rarely can one person make such a profound difference, but he certainly did. South Africa would not be in the place it is today if it wasn't for him. South Africans - and indeed the world - owe him so much for all that he was able to accomplish. His life should inspire us all to strive to make our universities, our communities, and our world better.

2013 also marked the 27th year of our remarkable UM/UWC partnership. 91´ó»ÆѼ President, Tim Wolfe, traveled to UWC in July to attend a workshop organized by UWC and one of their other longstanding partners, the University of Ghent. Ghent is also one of MU's partners. Earlier in the year a delegation from MU met in Cape Town for trilateral talks with UWC and Ghent.

The July workshop at UWC was entitled "UniversCity Dialogues: The role of universities as place makers." President Wolfe was one of the featured speakers at the event. The workshop included academics, government officials, city officials and business leaders interested in exploring the extent to which universities can play a critical role in helping to stimulate growth and cooperation between various stakeholders. UWC Rector Brian O'Connell and Deputy Vice Chancellor Ramesh Bharuthram were particularly appreciative of President Wolfe's participation in the event. He shared the story of UMKC's involvement in helping the Kansas City community prioritize development and promote urban renewal. He also discussed the efforts made by the 91´ó»ÆѼ System and the leadership of all four 91´ó»ÆѼ campuses to spark innovation, entreprenurship and private/public community development partnerships. President Wolfe's remarks were enthusiastically received by the audience.

In addition, the South African Minister of Home Affairs, the Honorable Naledi Pandor, gave the keynote address at this event. Prior to her speech, President Wolfe and 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP Director Rodney Uphoff had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Pandor. She not only holds the distinction of having held many of the top administrative posts in the South African government, but she also is the granddaughter of Z. K. Matthews, who played a prominent role in the African National Congress (ANC) and who has been described as "South Africa's and perhaps the continent's most distinguished African intellectual." Ms. Pandor is a fascinating, high powered woman who gave a marvelous, entertaining talk at the event.

During his short stay at UWC, President Wolfe also experienced the warmth that visitors from Missouri have enjoyed for many years. For those of you from Missouri who have been fortunate enough to travel to UWC, you understand how it feels to be warmly received by your UWC hosts. So, too, many UWC visitors to Missouri have remarked about how well treated they feel when they visited Columbia, Rolla, St. Louis or Kansas City. Unquestionably, one of the hallmarks of this partnership is the effort made on both sides to ensure that visitors feel welcome.

The year 2013 is also likely to be remembered as the year that UWC, MU and the Robben Island Museum signed a Memorandum of Understanding affirming the desire of the three institutions to secure funds to make the Mayibuye Archive collections more digitally accessible. The Mayibuye Archives currently are housed on UWC's campus in a wing of their library. The collection includes documents, letters, posters, video, photos and even art work related to the struggle against apartheid , including material from those who were imprisoned on Robben Island. The collections are vast, but much of the material is either completely inaccessible or only accessible to someone who physically visits UWC.

The goal of the Mayibuye Archive project is to raise funds to enable the parties to work together to enhance digital accessibility to these collections so that researchers, students and the general public can utilize this historically rich material. In making the material more accessible, the parties also need to preserve the integrity of the material. The parties expect that the project will foster student exchange opportunities for MU and 91´ó»ÆѼ students to work on the project. Additionally, it is hoped that this initiative will foster research projects, opportunities for documentaries and the development of teaching materials utilizing the extensive materials that document the struggle against apartheid. Although this project was initiated by faculty from the MU College of Education and School of Information Service and Learning Technologies and the MU Libraries, it is anticipated that faculty and students from all four campuses will ultimately be involved in projects related to the Mayibuye Archive.

Please see Columbia Daily Tribune article dated December 9, 2013: "MU partners with South African school to preserve Robben Island Documents."

Study Abroad Programs

Last year's newsletter featured an article about various 91´ó»ÆѼ study abroad programs that took 91´ó»ÆѼ faculty and students to Cape Town. The MU School of Law study abroad program administered with UWC's law faculty was offered for the tenth year in a row. So too the MU College of Engineering took students to UWC in January and in July. Several new programs are expected to be launched this year. Dr. Scott Helm, executive director of the 91´ó»ÆѼKC's Executive Master of Public Administration program and his collegue Dr. David Renz, Public Affairs department chair, are designing a South African immersion course to increase the intercultural communication skills of their EMPA students. They hope to be able to take their first group of students to Cape Town this summer. Mike Pullis and Ricki Orford from MU's College of Education visited UWC in May to meet with faculty and teachers in nearby primary schools to discuss a joint practice teaching program. The program would pair a MU student with a UWC student in a local school and give them the opportunity to teach together for a month. Details of the program are still being fleshed out, but the program is slated to start this July. It is hoped that after the program is successfully launched, students and faculty from other 91´ó»ÆѼ campuses might also become involved.

In addition, this summer, Professors Jenny Bossaller and Heather Moulaison of MU's School of Information Service & Learning Technologies plan to take a group of their students to UWC. Their study abroad experience will focus on the Mayibuye Archive and give their students an opportunity to work with this rich material. Again, details are yet to be finalized, but it is expected that the group will travel to Cape Town in July.

Newsmakers

In addition to losing Nelson Mandela in 2013, UWC lost a member of their senior management team, Ingrid Miller, their outstanding registrar who died just before Christmas at the early age of 51. On October 19, Professor Ratie Mpofu, who had been dean of UWC's faculty of Community and Health Sciences, passed away. She had worked with many 91´ó»ÆѼ faculty over the years. So, too, 2013 saw MU Chancellor Brady Deaton and MU Provost Brian Foster step down. Both men were strong supporters of the 91´ó»ÆѼ/UWC partnership during their tenure at MU. Newly appointed MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin will take office on February Ist.

Many 91´ó»ÆѼ faculty have been involved in significant research collaborations with their UWC colleagues over the past 27 years. Such research collaborations have produced articles and led to sizeable research grants. 91´ó»ÆѼ and UWC faculty have been recognized in various ways for their outstanding efforts. This past year 91´ó»ÆѼKC Professor Carole McArthur received such recognition as the following story describes:

Professor Carole McArthur Received Prestigious TWAS Award

Published in 91´ó»ÆѼatters, April 8, 2013

[The following was provided by the School of Dentistry]

Professor of Dentistry Carole McArthur recently received the TWAS award from the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. Funded by the United Nations  Educational.  Scientific, and Cultural Organization, the prestigious TWAS award is given to internationally renowned scientists for capacitance building, especially for diagnostic technology, in the developing world.

In this case, it was given in recognition of McArthur' s translational research at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. McArthur initiated two research sites in Cape Town several years ago supported by a collaboration by the University of Missouri and a grant from Thermo-Fisher Scientific. One site is at the University of Western Cape studying oral and vaginal flora in HIV patients, and the other at Stellenbosch University studying drug resistance in HIV patients co-infected with tuberculosis. These projects are linked to long term HIV research at her clinical site in Cameroon.

2013 Faculty Exchanges

In 2013, as in prior years, 91´ó»ÆѼ and UWC faculty members participated in a number of productive exchanges. The following example highlights the kind of collaborations that have been the hallmark of this partnership:

By: Niyi Coker

The E. Desmond Lee Africa World Documentary Film Festival at the University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa. 2013

Accomplishments:

The University of the Western Cape was established under the apartheid regime in South Africa, and thus it was not allowed to offer courses and training in the Performing or Media Arts. Today, the institution is actively engaged in an effort to establish a Performing arts culture on its campus. The English Department is creating a Media Studies component to its graduate degree program, and there is now a small Performing Arts Centre with a charismatic and energetic director who is enthused about offering other aspects of the Performing Arts beyond the study of Music. To this end, the Africa World Documentary Film Festival (AWDFF) achieved its goals and objectives.

This first-rate award winning documentary film festival was introduced and offered on the UWC campus for free to both students and public. It exposed the community to the recent work of reputable documentary filmmakers whose works AWDFF has previewed at other festival locations in Jamaica, Barbados, St Louis, Philadelphia and London.

Part of AWDFF's goal was to encourage and attract filmmakers to the UWC campus to participate in the festival with the community, but at the filmmakers' expense. AWDFF succeeded in getting commitments from three filmmakers, to attend previews at UWC. Two of film makers (Mr. Joachim Landau - director of "Voices"} arrived from France and (Mr. Ashley Morrison - director of "Standing at the touchlines") from Australia, with 3 members of his film crew. They came at their own expense to attend the preview of their films at this AWDFF-UWC event, and to speak to the community about filmmaking. This afforded students and the community, first-rate access and opportunity for networking with professional filmmakers. A third filmmaker, Tariq Richards, director of "The Drum", was unable to make his flight from London to attend the preview of his film as planned at the closing session.

A second objective was to expose students to the craft of filmmaking. I conducted 14 hours of workshop over a 3-day period for 12 students on "Basic Film making". I provided three High Definition Cameras, Lighting equipment, and all editing of projects was accomplished on a Mac laptop I brought with the film equipment. All completed projects were burned to DVD disks for each student in the workshop. None of the students attending the session has worked on a HD camera previously, but by the end of the session they had become familiar with using the equipment along with basic dynamics involved in the making of a documentary film.

This workshop session combined with participation at the festival has created the ambition to produce short documentary films by students at UWC for submission to AWDFF's 2015 festival.

Eight days of Africa-related Documentary Films, Seminars and Workshops

Programme for Prof Niyi Coker, University of Missouri, St Louis

Hosts:

Dr Roger Field, English Department Mr Mark Espin, English Department

Mr Leolyn Jackson, International Relalions & SANORD

Guest:

Prof Niyi Coker, African/African-American Theatre, Cinema, Directing, Playwriting, & Acting, Center for International Studies Fellow

©2013 by Africa World Documentary Film Festival

News in Brief

Linkage Awards

The 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP Committee convened in Columbia on September 6, 2013 and met via video conference with UWC Deputy Vice-Chancellor Ramesh Bharuthram and UWC International Director Leolyn Jackson to select particpants for the 2014 faculty exchange. The committee authorized 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP awards to seven UWC faculty members and four 91´ó»ÆѼ faculty members.

UWC faculty receiving 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP awards (91´ó»ÆѼ hosts in parentheses)

• Sahar Abdul-Rasool (Jane Armer, MU)

• Christopher Joseph Arendse (Paul Miceli, Peter Pfeifer, MU)

• Subelia Botha (Tommi White, MU)

• Franscious Cummings (Tommi White, MU)

• Ntombizodwa Cynthia Dlayedwa (Stephen Dilks, 91´ó»ÆѼKC)

• Okobi Ekpo (Zezong Gu, MU)

• Ndiko Ludidi (Robert Sharp, Mel Oliver, Zhanyuan Zhang (MU) 91´ó»ÆѼ faculty receiving 91´ó»ÆѼSAEP awards (UWC hosts in parentheses):

• Scott Brooks-MU (Marion Keim Lees)

• Vicki Carstens-MU (Loyiso Mletshe)

• Wilma King-MU (Lindsay Clowes)

• Kwame Awuah-Offei-Missouri S&T (Leslie Patrik)

In addition, the committee also awarded a 2014 South African Partnership grant to Mary Simon Leuci-MU, UWC and MU Extension in partnership with South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO)

91´ó»ÆѼ and UWC Visitors

2013 91´ó»ÆѼ visitors to South Africa include the following: Rodney Uphoff, Julie and Mike Middleton, Jim and Elizabeth Cogswell, Peter Pfeifer, Angela Speck, George Justice, Kris Hagglund, Fritz Cropp, Natalie Bolton, Patricia Kelly, Lenny Sanchez, Scott Brooks, Kattesh Katti, Jere Gilles, Paul Miceli,Thomas Kochtanek, Anselm Huelsbergen, Nancy Shields, Mike Pullis, Ricki Orford, Rebecca Dingo, Enid Schatz, Lise Saffran, Nicholas Watanabe, Kenneth Thomas, Angela Coker, Niyi Coker, William Meyers, Kenneth Schneeberger and the Arianna String Quartet (Joanna Mendoza, John McGrosso, Julia Sakharova, Kurt Baldwin).

2013 UWC visitors include the following: Hazel Bradley, Ojo Fatoba, Gail Hughes, Mike Davies-Coleman, Ephias Makaudze, Tarryn Prinsloo and Shireen Mentor.

91´ó»ÆѼ/UWC Faculty Exchange Summary Update:

Mitchell Scholarship Application Deadlines Announced

Daniel Luttig (UWC), Rebecca Lissette Higueros (91´ó»ÆѼKC) and Curry Lawrence Spray (Missouri S&T) were selected as Henry Mitchell Scholars this past year.