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Major Boost to DUT’s Community Engagement Agenda

Major Boost to DUT’s Community Engagement Agenda

DUT’s Professor Raisuyah Bhagwan, a Professor in the University’s Child and Youth Care Programme, has secured research funding to the tune of over R3million that will be used towards strengthening the University’s strategic plan, community engagement in particular.

The funding was awarded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and will be granted over a three year period beginning next year (2015).

Named the Community Engagement Funding Instrument, the grant is described as a competitive funding instrument providing space for research that contributes to knowledge production within community engagement and research on the processes and dynamics of engagement from the perspective of higher education.

Key features of the programme are:

– Research which contributes to deeper theoretical, philosophical and conceptual
orientations of community engagement from a higher education perspective;
– Research which interrogates the complex interplay and processes of engagement; that is,
the various ways in which knowledge is produced, assimilated and utilised through
interactions and relationships with communities;
– Case studies, typologies, appreciative inquiry about community engagement and
community assessments.

At DUT, the project supported by the grant makes space for 10 Master’s, 5 Doctoral and one post-doctoral student.
Community engagement and student centeredness are the two major threads in the DUT strategic plan, with this component also weaving through DUT’s two main proposes, namely research and teaching and learning.

“I am delighted to have received this grant from the NRF. Community development is an important part of my heart and stems from my passion for social justice and development. The grant will be used to embed community development and community engagement as a core pillar alongside teaching and learning and research at DUT. During the planning phase, the projects that will be identified and nurtured will be those that will undoubtedly strengthen the strategic plan. The grant will certainly be used to align itself with the DUT strategic plan,” said Prof Bhagwan.

With the formalisation of community engagement in SA, universities are expected to contribute towards social and economic development, epistemic justice and the holistic development of students that will produce well-rounded graduates with a strong sense of social responsibility. Prof Bhagwan said the university-community engagement imperative has resulted in an array of projects being initiated at universities in South Africa.

“This study seeks to explore the philosophical and theoretical approaches underpinning these initiatives with a view to developing a framework to further strengthen community engagement in higher education in SA. Moreover, it will create rich opportunities for select DUT students to identify salient socio-economic community issues and develop projects related to a range of heath, women and gender issues, children’s well-being, youth enterprise development and volunteerism in communities,” said Prof Bhagwan.

– Sinegugu Ndlovu

Pictured: Professor Raisuyah Bhagwan, from the University’s Child and Youth Care Programme, who has secured research funding of over R3million that will be used towards strengthening the University’s strategic plan, particularly community engagement.

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