What are the degree programs offered by the University of Pretoria and what are some of the salient ongoing research projects?
The University of Pretoria (UP) is one of the largest contact and residential universities in South Africa, spread over seven campuses. It has been producing exceptional graduates and research since 1908. UP has nine faculties and a business school and is a leading research intensive university in South Africa.
UP’s engineering programmes are hosted in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT). This is the Faculty of its kind in Africa with more than 11 000 contact students of which 30% are graduate students. EBIT employs future-thinking and problem based learning to all its teaching, learning, research and consulting activities. As a testament to this, the University’s engineering discipline has been ranked among the Top 1% in the world by the Web of Science Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators for research citations.
The EBIT Faculty is organised into four schools: the School of Engineering, the School for the Built Environment, the School of Information Technology and the Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM). These are home to 14 academic departments, through which the Faculty presents 31 undergraduate and 146 postgraduate programmes. Its Engineering departments prepare future engineers for the workplace in chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, electronic engineering, computer engineering, industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, mining engineering and minerals and metallurgical engineering. Thereafter, students are encouraged to pursue specialised postgraduate studies. The GSTM hosts the Faculty’s Department of Engineering Technology Management, which offers internationally recognised programmes to address various needs in the fields of technology and innovation management, project management, engineering management and asset management for which ones needs an appropriate STEM undergraduate degree.
More than 80 of the Faculty’s researchers have been rated by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), and it boasts two A-rated researchers in the area of clean energy efficiency and demand side management. Two of its researcher professors have also been nominated for South Africa’s “Science Oscars” – the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) Awards. These recognise outstanding contributions to science, engineering and technology.
The Faculty’s research strategy focuses on five focus areas of excellence to embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). These cover the themes of Smart Cities and Transportation, Big Data Science, Information and Communication Technology and Technology Innovation Management, Water and Environmental Engineering, Energy, and Minerals and Materials Beneficiation. Its research excellence is recognised by industry and government through the establishment of 19 externally funded research chairs and the faculty hosting 13 Research Institute and Centres.
Research initiatives are aligned with the University of Pretoria’s overall research strategy to address some of the most pressing challenges of the developing world. Some of the salient and ongoing research projects include the following:
- Finding optimal process and design engineering solutions by developing models that are computationally efficient and exploit the right information
- Clean energy – research on the transitional flow regime and heat exchangers, including research into nanofluids, thermal, solar, wind and nuclear energy
- Rock engineering research to improve the safety of underground mines: Innovative methods of layout design and improvements to the support of deep tabular slopes using AI and AR.
- Geotechnical centrifuge engineering, focusing on unsaturated soil mechanics
- Digital forensics, focusing on pioneering intelligent digital forensic investigation principles and techniques across all computing platforms in order to apprehend cyber criminals
- Evolving public space: Constructing a knowledge of place, focusing on the transformation of cities and city spaces in South Africa
- Machine learning for social analytics and consumer behavior
- Data Science in health systems
- Sensor networks and AI in smart transportations systems
The University also launched the Future Africa Campus in March 2019 as a hub for inter- and transdisciplinary research networks within UP and the global research community. In this regard, EBIT plays a significant role in driving 4IR innovation. These efforts are further enhanced by the faculty having developed its latest teaching, research and training Engineering 4.0 facility in 2020. This is a result of public-private co-funded infrastructure partnerships and is a unique model in the South African public university system. This state-of-the-art collaborative hub will not only serve research in the area of Future Smart Cities and Transportation, but will also link the vast resources in technology and data science to other faculties via Future Africa hub. This includes continuous research into phenomena like data analytics, smart materials, artificial intelligence and the internet of things. The research foci will also be closely aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to address South Africa’s economic development and job creation, poverty, inequality, food security, climate change and quality health, while implicitly addressing the global grand challenges.
What is the graduation rate of engineers at the University of Pretoria? What are some programs that may increase the enrollment of young leaders in engineering?
Based on government scarce skills data, The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT) contribute around 28% of the graduate degree engineers in South Africa. All our engineering undergraduate degree programs are accredited by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), which was among the first signatories to the Washington Accord.
The Faculty also realizes the importance of preparing its graduates for the world of work, and as such makes use of its networks and relationship with its industry partners to conduct industry visits and opportunity for our students to undertake vacation training in order to give them an idea of what to expect after they graduate.
A number of problem based projects are also specifically focused on preparing graduates for an actual real-world problem.
- Informatics students learn about critical thinking and problem solving by taking an actual industry problem for a real client and developing a solution.
- Mining engineering students follow the program of the Mining Engineering Leadership Academy as part of their curriculum to enable them to transition seamlessly into the world of work.
- The faculty through Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has launched the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program to encourage students to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems in a multidisciplinary, vertically integrated and long-term project-based learning environment. This has cascaded across the various research groups in the different engineering departments.
Considering the history of South Africa and the disparity in our society at large, the faculty introduced some 15 years ago a further unique offering in our curriculum called the Community-based Project (JCP) module. This is a compulsory module in all the Faculty’s undergraduate degree programs. It entails students work in diverse groups (gender, race, degree registered for) on a community identified project for at least 40 hours spread over a semester. Students are encouraged to use the skills they obtain through undertaking a community project in their future careers and become more socially and environmental conscious citizens. Our faculty undertakes on average around 550 different community project per annum and over the past 15 years have done more than 7000 projects and our students have spent more than 1 million hours in total.
What are some of the overall challenges that your institution faces?
The challenges the University of Pretoria (UP) faces are not unique to the institution, but are experienced by the broader university sector in South Africa and to some extent by all universities globally. These include declining public funding for public/state universities and for us in South Africa the poor performance and growth of the economy, where unemployment amongst the youth is high. However, the challenges have not deterred UP’s commitment to teaching, learning and research excellence, student success, transformation and the quality of academic programs. With the Covid-19 pandemic, the disruption in our teaching and learning delivery mode demanded our academics to do things differently. Fortunately, the University of Pretoria has been the leading adopter of online blended teaching and management technology since the 1990s and can be considered a leader in this area on the African continent. Hence, for our lecturers to make the transition to fully online was not an insurmountable task. However the biggest challenge was not to leave any student behind in terms of access to online teaching and learning as almost 10-15% of our students either live in poor living conditions, no access to electricity, no network coverage or do not possess a laptop or smart device. In this area, UP made significant strides in fundraising to provide loan laptops to the students and also providing free data to students that are financially challenged. Those few students that could not access online materials, the university arranged for the material to be printed and delivered to them and our Faculty provided telephonic academic/tutor support to those students. This is the magnitude of caring for its students the University of Pretoria leadership went in order to assist its students during this Covid-19 lockdown.
“I believe that each one of us has a unique talent, opportunity and responsibility to meet the critical challenges of our time post Covid-19.”
How would you characterize the current relations between the University of Pretoria and the corporate world and industry? What are some of the projects that you are implementing in local companies?
The University of Pretoria has an excellent relationship with industry and the corporate sector, and the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology is no exception. Through our industry partnerships, networks and relationships built over the years, particularly through our alumni, we have 19 externally supported and funded Research Chairs in our Faculty, which we think is unique in South Africa.
An important strategy in this regard is to conduct focused, yet academically rigorous, research in these chairs to benefit industry partners.
Does University of Pretoria have any international branches?
No. However, the University of Pretoria (UP) strongly supports the internationalisation of knowledge in order to elevate its own teaching, learning and research initiative, and build on the areas of expertise of global leaders. The University’s multifaceted international programmes are coordinated by the International Cooperation Division, which offers substantial support for international students, postgraduates and academics. These individuals add to UP’s diversity and social cohesion, and bring different views, experiences and ways of doing things. The University hosts over 4,000 international students annually.
Are there any international partnerships between University of Pretoria and other schools in Europe, Africa, and other regions of the world?
In line with the recognised trend towards globalisation, the University of Pretoria (UP) continues to enhance its international presence by cultivating, sustaining and expanding strategic international partnerships. International students are central to internationalisation programmes, and student exchange activities contribute to the internationalisation of academic programmes, collaborative research projects and the diversification of cultures at the University. International research partnerships, academic development programmes and memoranda of understanding are used to encourage research collaborations, teaching and learning, student and staff mobility, between international universities. The University has many partnerships across the globe.
EBIT Faculty under my leadership has 17 international agreements with institutions in China, Russia, Italy, the USA, UK, Germany, France, Kenya, Austria and Switzerland, among others, and the Faculty currently has over 800 international students with more than 90% of them being graduate students. The Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering has a student exchange programme with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than 10 years. Students have the opportunity to study at MIT from their third year onwards and spend a semester or two and then return to Pretoria to complete their degree. Our students have been very successful and have done extremely well at MIT with two of our students topping their class at MIT over the years.
What are some of the cutting-edge engineering education advancements at the University of Pretoria during the last few years under your leadership?
In recognition of the importance of teaching and learning to ensure student success and increased graduation rates, the Faculty has developed a separate portfolio for Teaching and Learning, with its own Deputy Dean, alongside that of Research. The development of a hybrid model of teaching and learning is one of the disruptive innovations that form part of this initiative.
This focus has enabled the Faculty to develop a progressive Teaching and Learning strategy with the objective of enabling it to rank among the world leaders with respect to the University’s five strategic goals:
- Enhancing access and successful student learning through excellent teaching and relevant curricula
- Strengthening the University’s research and international profile
- Strengthening the University’s social responsiveness and making an impact on society
- Fostering and sustaining a diverse, inclusive and equitable University community
- Optimising the University’s resources and enhancing institutional sustainability
Each department within the Faculty drafts teaching and learning plans that are aligned with these goals to enhance access and ensure successful student learning in line with the following priorities:
- Increasing overall module success rates and significantly decreasing modules with low success rates
- Increasing minimum-time-completion rates
- Transformation of and through the curriculum
- Systematic monitoring of the implementation of the hybrid model of teaching and learning, and providing support where needed
- Improving the Faculty’s international ranking through teaching and learning practices, innovation and success
A number of the Faculty’s teaching and learning initiatives are based on inquiry-based learning, hybrid learning and community-based learning, and include the following:
- Robot Race Day: The practical assessment of the embedded controllers in electronic engineering after just 5 semesters of education, which requires student teams to develop autonomous robots that compete against each other in a professionally organised event.
- Mining Blast Wall: Teaching students to implement safe and efficient blasting practices in an underground mine environment by making use of virtual reality.
- Gaming simulation: Enabling interactive learning through gaming simulation in a cross-disciplinary course in civil engineering and other multimedia learning platforms for student success in engineering.
- The development of Africa’s first fully integrated VR Design Centre for industrial research, training and education.
The major activities under my leadership as Dean are as follows:
- Growth of graduate students where 30% of our student cohort are graduate students
- Increase the research productivity of the Faculty lecturers and we are the 2nd largest producer of journal and conference papers in the University of Pretoria.
- Be the largest producer of graduate engineers in South Africa that can qualify as professional engineers.
- From not being ranked, UP Engineering and Technology is now ranked 364 in the 2020 worldwide QS subject rankings
- Taking our Engineering to be ranked in the Top 1% in the world for research citations in Web of Science
- Having 4 of our departments in the worldwide 2020 QS subject rankings and our Electrical and Electronic Engineering being ranked number 1 in South Africa in the 2020 QS rankings
- In the 2019 Times Higher Education World University Impact Rankings, our faculty led the SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and has been ranked 94th in the world
- In order to create an environment for innovation and business startups amongst our students, I led the creation of a non-profit company (NPC) fully owned by the university called, TuksNovation NPC. This is a hi-tech incubator and accelerator for UP graduates where I Chair the Board of Directors.
Can you share with us some of the approaches that the University of Pretoria is implementing in order to sustain growth in its School of Engineering and retain a constant growth in its student body in addition to ethnic and gender diversity?
Extensive and cutting-edge teaching, learning and laboratory facilities are integrated into the Faculty’s excellent campus-wide suite of facilities. At the start of Prof Maharaj’s term of office, these facilities were expanded through the completion of the state-of-the-art Engineering III Building, which enabled it to increase the number of students that it could accommodate. Today we are the largest engineering school in South Africa and probably on the African continent.
The Faculty’s latest intervention is the establishment of the Engineering 4.0 initiative, which is a unique outward-looking approach to create a research platform of opportunities. Through the partnership with and investment by the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL), this unique world-class African facility will be a place where novel ideas, scientific research, global expertise, students, academics, entrepreneurs and industry partners can converge to generate new thought leadership, innovation and training opportunities through collaborative partnerships.
EBIT also supports the University’s transformation mandate to promote women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The Faculty works with industry partners to offer sponsorships toward the Faculty’s EBIT Week for high school female learners, as well as underprivileged learners from rural areas who wish to study towards engineering degree programs. This 4-day immersion program, which the faculty has been offering for the past 20 years, gives these high school learners the opportunity to experience university life and what engineering is about. A mentorship program has developed as a result of EBIT Week. Senior students identify potentially academically strong candidates who also reside in close proximity to them to guide them to achieve good results in their schoolwork and look at engineering as a career and hopefully take them out of the poverty levels they experience, as many of them are first time university entrants in their family. This has been a successful program for us as almost 80% of our students that enroll as first time engineering students (freshmen) have been through our Faculty’s Engineering Week program.
With South Africa having a population of around 55 million and only 26 public universities with are funded by the state, the demand for university type education is great and not all can be accommodated. Hence, our Faculty from the almost 5000 applications we admit around 3500 students and register approximately 2000 new first year students (freshmen) while the University registers approximately 10 000 new first year students.
What are some of the initiatives that you have undertaken to promote diversity in engineering education?
The Faculty offers a five-year Engineering Augmented Degree Program (ENGAGE) in all engineering disciplines. It provides a carefully structured curriculum that helps students adjust to university life and cope with the academic demands of engineering studies. This is aimed primarily at students from disadvantaged backgrounds that due to poor socio economic conditions and poverty could not get the required grades to study engineering.
Guided by the University’s values of diversity, inclusivity, equity and integrity, its transformation mandate includes, among other things, the production of a skilled workforce that will make a meaningful contribution to the national, continental and global economy. The Faculty facilitates equity of access and provide a fair chance of success to all our hard-working students, recruited from different social and economic backgrounds. Transformation is at the heart of all its ongoing strategic initiatives. The University has an institutional Transformation Office and an institutional Transformation Committee, whose main task is to promote the transformation of institutional culture. The EBIT Faculty also has a transformation committee that engages staff and academics on transformation in the broader context.
In your opinion, what are some of the significant issues/topics that need to be addressed by the global engineering community and particularly by engineering deans, in order to further strengthen inter-regional communication and continue to globalize this field of study?
There needs to be more collaboration between countries and institutions across the globe. GEDC can play a significant role here to facilitate global collaborative projects which not only will build capacity but also better understanding of cultures and living in harmony and peace with each other.
With there being a major issue regarding climate change and the sustainability of our planet, there needs to be more engagement on the global front by the engineering leadership. Engineers have been largely responsible for the innovation and development of the various technologies and perhaps sometimes innocently not understanding all the implications thereof, such as pollution.
How has the GEDC helped your university achieve the goal of making your institution a more global environment?
Through my attendance of WEEF and GEDC conferences and meetings, I had the honour and privilege to meet many great leaders from whom I was able to learn from and share experiences and ideas as Engineering Deans. These events also assisted to develop networks and meet many captains of industry benefit from their innovation and vision on the future of education and engineering education in particular.
What are your top five priorities as a dean and where do you plan to take the Faculty of Engineering five years from now?
Firstly, my second term as Dean would be done in 2022 and would have served as Dean for eight years.
However, my vision for the faculty has always been to take it to the next higher level from where I was given the reins.
My vision for the EBIT Faculty is essential built on the 4 pillars as outlined in the UP 2025 plan, viz. student access and success, quality, relevance, diversity and sustainability.
These above pillars are articulated into my 5 point Vision that I hope to further build on and strengthen during my term as Dean, viz:
- Enhancing the quality of the programs as required for professional and international accreditation and continuous improvement of facilities so that we offer outstanding teaching and learning (T&L) and research experience to our graduates employing best T&L practices and technology as a tool.
- The hiring, developing, growing and creating opportunities for our talent so that we develop a pipeline of outstanding future academics/professors reflective of our diverse racial, gender and cultural background.
- Position EBIT as the Faculty of choice among school pupils, graduate students, parents, funders and industry so that we attract and retain the top achievers and be the preferred partner by industry in research and human capital development.
- Increase international collaborative projects and appropriate quality high impact research outputs reflective of our geographic location, which would eventually strengthen our position in the research rankings and attract leading researchers and industry to partner with our Professors.
- Improve and integrate the culture of ‘technopreneurship’ in the Faculty so that we can have a greater impact on society and industry competitiveness through hi-tech business start-ups and job creation.