Special Projects
Accelerated Academic Mentorship Programme (AAMP): effects changes to the race and gender profile of the academic staff, with a focus on the professional and personal development of academics, enhancing their capacity to establish both national and international networks, develop their research profiles and leadership capacities. AAMP offers support for three groups of academic staff: staff with a Masters but no Doctoral degree; candidates who have a doctorate degrees and are lecturers / senior lecturers; and candidates who are Associate Professors.
Assistant lecturer Programme: The post of Assistant Lecturer (AL) is an initiative to add stature to flagship departments, to accelerate the transformation of the academic cohort in terms of race, and to increase academic capacity in departments with high enrolments and an unfavourable staff/student ratio. In addition, the goal of the Assistant Lecturer programme is gradually to migrate the Assistant Lecturers into permanent posts as these become available as a result of retirements and resignations.
Connect@1: These sessions showcase previous VC Awards winners.
Curriculum Transformation in teaching and learning, decolonisation and the 4IR. Faculties and the College report on and track developments in areas, demonstrating a wide range of initiatives. Decolonisation and 4IR are given expression in the curriculum, pedagogy, research, and other academic and community engagement. Consolidated report are presented across a variety of the University’s governance structures.
New Generation Academic Programme (nGAP): The New Generation Academic Programme (nGAP) programme is a DHET initiative that provides universities with opportunities to grow a new cohort of academics, with particular attention paid to transformation in terms of race and gender. The funding provides for all remuneration and candidate development costs for the first three years and partial funding for remuneration and development costs for a further three years. After this period, the position is fully funded by the University. Each nGAP scholar has a mentor and is allocated a reduced teaching load to allow them to achieve higher degrees, produce research outputs, and pursue development opportunities in teaching and learning and research.
Master Classes: These sessions were designed to provide academics with a platform for discussions and engagements, with the view of modelling and sharing insights on different strategies that could improve teaching and learning, particularly as we continue to engage in remote teaching.
Teaching Innovation Fund (TIF): The Teaching Innovation Fund (TIF) was set up to support staff to become more innovative in their teaching, to engage in research in teaching and learning and to contribute to field of teaching and learning in higher education. This initiative is aligned with the University’s strategic goals to support, through the provision of funding and expertise, the development of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The field of SoTL provides academic staff with the opportunity to research and reflect on how their teaching practice can become more responsive to the changing needs of society. In 2021, the Division launched an annual, online publication showcasing teaching and learning innovations from the University:
Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century: A collection of UJ Teaching and Learning Vignettes 2020
Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century: Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Vice-Chancellor’s (VC) awards to recognise, support, and celebrate outstanding academics for teaching and Learning, Research, Book of the year, Innovation, Global Excellence and Stature 4.0 and Service Beyond the normal call of duty. Award winners are achieving great success and are innovative in the work that they are doing.
2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards Ceremony │ 2021 VC Awards Programme
2020 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards Ceremony│ 2020 VC Awards Programme
Future Professors Programme: the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) selected the University of Johannes-burg as the lead implementer of the national Future Professors (FPP) Phase 2 Programme. The FPP is a competitive and selective programme of the DHET to prepare to promise academics to become a new cohort of South African professors across disciplines. The programme seeks to identify a group of the country’s most talented academics to benefit from a structured and intense programme aimed at accelerating their readiness for the professoriate. The programme comprises 3 cohorts to be trained over a period of 5 years, with each cohort undergoing an intense 2-year developmental programme to achieve the outcomes of the programme.
