Guests to the Internationalisation Awards event held in early May were welcomed by the uplifting sounds of a Rhodes University ensemble from the International Library of African Music (ILAM), led by Mr Elijah Madiba.
Well-known journalist Ms Thandeka Gqubule-Mbeki, currently lecturing in the School of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS), MC for the evening, immediately called on Professor Jo Dames, interim DVC of Research and Innovation to welcome the attendees, on behalf of the Office of the Vice Chancellor. Prof Sizwe Mabizela, the Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, joined the evening’s celebration, following another pressing commitment in time to hear the keynote speaker, Professor Sunitha Srinivas.
Currently based in India, Professor Sunitha Srinivas is now a Visiting Professor at Rhodes University, having previously served for 14 years as a Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy. An Adjunct Professor at the University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy in St. Louis, USA. Professor Srinivas is also currently the Vice-President- Public Health at 3 Analytics, an Integrated, State-of-the-art AI-based Safety Analytics & Compliance Automation Platform.
Professor Srinivas shared that for her, Rhodes University and Makhanda were her “Sthana Bala”, which is a Sanskrit word to describe “a place that gives you strength and purpose”.
“It is very special to have the opportunity to return and engage with students, colleagues and friends, with whom I stayed in touch since moving back to India,” Professor Srinivas said before sharing her moving and personal journey titled: Internationalisation: my serendipitous journey. While her international awareness began with her health-focused work in India, prior to joining Rhodes University, she spoke about how the process leading up to the Award helped to crystallize and then expand her thinking:
“I Africanised my curriculum by firstly identifying all the countries that students in my class came from. Secondly, I took the time to learn about those health systems across Africa. Thirdly, I included teaching about those systems, as well as the South African Health system, ensuring that everyone in the class learned comparative perspectives,” Prof Srinivas shared.
While still a Professor at Rhodes University, Prof Srinivas was awarded the Talloires Network University Education for Transformative Leadership in Africa grant for community-engaged teaching, research and scholarship. Her community-engaged research was featured as a case study in UNESCO's e-book on community-university research partnership. As well as earning the Rhodes University’s inaugural 2014 Internationalization Award, she also received the 2014 National Excellence in Teaching and Learning Awards, presented by the Council on Higher Education and the Higher Education Learning & Teaching Association of Southern Africa.
The Director of Internationalisation at Rhodes University, Ms Orla Quinlan, who initiated the Internationalisation Awards in 2014, with the approval of the Internationalisation Committee, spoke about the strategic intention of the Awards. Referring to the work of Broadwell and Birch, in relation to knowledge and skills acquisition, the four stages being conscious competence; unconscious competence; conscious incompetence and unconscious incompetence, Ms Quinlan shared that “Several of our most excellent academics shared that the criteria for the Awards have assisted with articulating thinking and practices already unconsciously well-incorporated into their approach. Others shared that reading the criteria alone had already expanded their thinking on internationalisation and had prompted fresh ideas about how they approach their teaching”. The Awards event provided a platform to increase awareness of the extensive internationalisation work with other colleagues.
To be eligible for the award, you may include aspects of Internationalisation at Home, as well as abroad. “By being creative in your teaching and learning and inviting people online into your classroom or involving yourself in Collaborative Ongoing International Learning (COIL) programmes, you can infuse many aspects of Internationalisation into all your endeavours without ever leaving the campus. We want to shape graduates, who are ready to be conscientious local and global citizens,” Quinlan elaborated.
Not only did the Awards event celebrate and share the citation of the most recent recipient of the 2022 Individual Internationalisation Award, Professor Sioux McKenna, but this special occasion also included four individual and four group Internationalisation Awardees from previous years who missed out on face-to-face celebrations, due to a variety of mitigating circumstances, including the pandemic and its aftermath.
“The citations illustrated that internationalisation at Rhodes University is appropriate, locally and globally relevant, accessible, and rooted in the context of Rhodes University, Makhanda, Eastern Cape, perhaps most aptly represented by the extensive international relationships of RUCE, the Rhodes University Community Engagement, who were the 2020 collective winners,” reflected Quinlan.
Having appreciated all that transpired in the course of the evening, Prof Sandile Khamanga, the Dean of Pharmacy, commented that “This event will inspire innovation”.
Peers offered a hearty congratulation to the 2022 winner Prof Sioux McKenna, Centre for Postgraduate Studies (CPGS), who shared a message that “We are truly a global village, and each one of us now needs to think about how we engage with that reality.”
Prof McKenna joins active alumni who, since receiving their awards, have continued to expand the horizons of their academic work. The Individual Internationalisation Award winners to date are as follows:
2021 Prof M Hill, Centre for Biological Control
2020 Prof C Jones, Ichthyology and Fisheries Science
2019 Prof L Louw, Management Department
2018 Prof O Tastan Bishop, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology
2017 Prof W Sauer, Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science (DIFS)
2016 Prof L Dalvit, Faculty of Education
2015 Prof H Tsikos, Geology Department
2014 Prof S Srinivas, Faculty of Pharmacy
2014 Prof Roddy Fox, Geography Department
The Collective Internationalisation Award winners to date are as follows:
2021 Institute for Water Research (IWR)
2020 Rhodes University Community Engagement (RUCE)
2019 Rhodes Business School
2018 Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC)