EDITORIAL DESIGN
This book is about Rhodes University’s (RU) social commitment and institutional engagement. It presents opportunities for strategic collaborations for corporates, trusts, foundations, government and individuals with a cutting-edge scholarship to strengthen a progressive social compact and shared social purposes. Among them is an ambitious project to build a world-class Centre for Postgraduate Studies. One in three students at RU is a postgraduate student. A centre like this would be a crowning jewel for the only research-intensive university outside of a metropolitan area in South Africa. With the highest proportion of doctoral academic staff per student and a cohort of high-calibre scholar-practitioners overseeing their research, they are not about satisfying ‘credentialing’ demands. Their scholarship is a model of excellence. Another social investment project aims to house their decorated, world-renowned Institute for Nanotechnology Innovation. The spectacular success of this Institute in international research belies the infrastructural challenges it faces. Under Distinguished Professor Tebello Nyokong, Rhodes University Fundraising Priorities Director: Communications and Advancement Division Luzuko Jacobs an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute is at the heart of a global network of researchers and product developers. It is a hub for international collaborations involving leading institutes and universities in Africa, America, Europe, and China. In a locality, province and country facing water shortages threatening development, the case for water research addresses pioneering work taking place in the field of hydrology. RU’s Institute for Water Research is the standard bearer for the University’s commitment to the continent through the African Research University’s Alliance. The Institute champions big-picture solutions. This requires scholars to operate across disciplines and with communities to integrate context-specific knowledge to produce solutions that can be implemented at scale. They also share information about opportunities for partnerships in the transformation space. Their thinking characteristically reaches beyond campus. They believe that an Indigenous Languages Centre could broadly respond to relevant concerns in the complex African context and the Global South. The vision to elevate the unique scholarly pedigree of RU even higher, cannot happen without wholesome on-campus life experience. Sports and wellness are key. The University’s location “at the centre” of the Eastern Cape holds numerous additional advantages for integrated regional sports development in a province renowned for producing many of South Africa’s rugby greats. State-of-the-art facilities in a safe, secure and accessible environment hold incalculable benefits for the region. Their value proposition for an exclusive yet accessible, educational centre of excellence in the south of the continent lies in the vision represented in this book.
