University of the Witswatersrand
By Caryn McNamara
THE UNIVERSITY
The University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg,
affectionately known as "Wits" was formally established as a
University in 1922, developed from what was previously the South African School
of Mines (est. 1896). It is spread over 400 acres of Braamfontein and Parktown
in Gauteng province. The University also owns the Sterkfontein Cave in the
Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, the Wits Rural Facility in Mpumalanga,
Pullen Farm which is located 35km south-east of Nelspruit, and half of a
private teaching hospital, the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre.
Wits has a student population of >40,000(2020) accommodated
in 18 halls of residence and provides academic support in 11 libraries and
>1,100 full-time academic staff. Academics are structured into 5 Faculties,
comprising of 36 Schools and >30 service departments offering >3,400
courses. More than 36%(2019) of the institution are postgraduate students with
the aim to achieve 45% by 2025.
Wits is positioned 54th among the world’s Top 100 Universities from which Fortune 500 CEOs graduated, the only African university in the Alma Mater Index ranking. Wits is the Alma Mater of 4 Nobel Prize winners, and houses one of the largest fossil collections in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Figure 1. The University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, South Africa (Photo credit: Shivan Prasnath) THE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH OFFICE Wits is a research-intensive University. The University Research Office (URO) is comprised of four functional groups, (i) Postgraduate (PG) Affairs, (ii) Research Development, (iii) Research Support, and (iv) Strategic Partnerships. The URO’s mission is to “create an environment conducive to elevating the standard and impact of research”, according to the Wits Vision 2022 Strategic Framework.
The URO is involved in the following stewardship
functions: finding new sources of funding, preparing and/or submission of grant
applications (pre-award), and also award acceptance, financial control,
compliance and reporting, and closeout (post-award). |
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2: Six major duties of the Wits URO DECENTRALISED INSTITUTES, CENTRES AND RESEARCH UNITS
In addition to the central URO, some research project
management functions for various entities within the Institution are
decentralized to the most appropriate level where the research is carried out
(e.g. Faculty/School/Unit-level, on a programme/project basis, as appropriate).
This allows for the functions of specialist research project management and administration
at the level where the research is actively taking place.
The Centre that I work in is the nationally-funded
DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
(CoE-MaSS). The admin hub of this Centre is based at Wits, however, the Centre
itself currently services 19 institutions in South Africa as part of this
national programme. The Centre provides funding and additional support in the
MaSS fields, as per its mandate, towards: Research, Education & training,
Information brokerage, Service rendering, and Networking. This Centre operates
at the Faculty level for its Finance and HR functions, however, all other
compliance related matters, such as Research Legal and Audit Compliance
functions, are carried out by the URO’s centralized resources. This can
sometimes seem like a complicated model, but one of the key tenets of Research
Management and Administration (RMA) is to provide that enabling research
environment to your active researchers so that the administrative support
offered by your RMA staff is seamless, and as such, knowing who the key RMA
staff are in one’s organization is critical.
MY ROLE
As the Manager of the CoE-MaSS, the operational responsibility
and success of the Centre lies with a team of RMA colleagues, who report to me.
The Centre has 3 research admin support staff who hold the following
portfolios: Administrator (AD11; full-time), Finance Officer (AD09; part-time
60% FTE), and a Research Administrator responsible for events and digital media
(AD09; part-time 60% FTE). The Centre also encourages all of its staff to take
part in on-going vocational learning.
As a Research Manager, I have found links with
professional RMA Associations (such as SARIMA, ARMS, and ARMA-UK) invaluable in
my personal RMA development and journey. I would encourage all early-career
RMAs to find a regional RMA professional association to affiliate with, and for
you to actively grasp their opportunities with both hands. The networking
opportunities that these entities have afforded me over more than a decade have
certainly made all the difference in my ability to offer an enabling research
support service to our researchers, postdocs and postgraduate students that is
aligned to my Centre’s name: Excellence. I could certainly not have achieved
what I have done thus far without learning from the research enablers that have
gone before me, nor those that surround me and keep pursuing research
excellence for all of our/their stakeholders. I encourage you to go forth and
find those other like-minded “enablers” and to keep them near at all times
through your RMA career, and beyond.
HELPFUL LINKS Research Support: https://www.wits.ac.za/research/ RO Staff: https://www.wits.ac.za/research/staff/
CoE-MaSS: https://www.wits.ac.za/coe-mass/
SARIMA: https://www.sarima.co.za/
ARMS: https://www.researchmanagement.org.au/
ARMA-UK: https://arma.ac.uk/
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Excerpts of this blog have been extracted from either:
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