Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Health and Wellness Sciences

The Dean's Welcome Message

Welcome to the Faculty of Health and Wellness Sciences for the 2023 academic year. Whether you are commencing with your academic life at CPUT or furthering your studies, be assured that our faculty is with you every step of the way and your journey will be filled with inspiring, challenging, and scholarly opportunities to build and enhance your career.

The Faculty of Health and Wellness Sciences offers a variety of undergraduate and post graduate programmes acknowledged both nationally and internationally as being of a high quality. The faculty consists of seven departments as indicated below and our dedicated academic staff will ensure that you reach your full potential and ultimately, achieve your career goals.

• Department of Biomedical Sciences
• Department of Dental Sciences
• Department of Emergency Medical Sciences
• Department of Medical Imaging & Therapeutic Sciences
• Department of Nursing Science
• Department of Ophthalmic Sciences
• Department of Wellness Sciences

These academic leaders believe that interdisciplinary, diverse, and inclusive education and research are all critical to our success as academics in an ever-changing society. Emphasis is placed on experiential learning prior to graduation and students are provided with real-world training opportunities and professional development through work placements arranged in collaboration with strong partnerships such as the Western Cape Department of Health, National Health Laboratory Service, and numerous private health providers. All students who graduate from this faculty will thus have the knowledge, professional competencies, attributes, and values to enable them to confidently enter professional practice and proudly serve society.

It is the mission of the Faculty of Health and Wellness Sciences to be a proud African technology-driven faculty taking the lead in relevant health and wellness education, research, and innovation in response to provincial, national, and global socio-economic imperatives. We aim to empower agile graduate health care professionals who are ethically responsive to industry and societal needs, through academic excellence and lifelong learning together with the pursuit of relevant, pioneering research and clinical innovation to improve the health of individuals both locally and globally.

The faculty’s research responds to problems and needs relevant to health, wellness, health care and higher education in South Africa, Africa and globally. As a faculty, we exemplify and build on the CPUT vision of being a research led teaching institution, such that our undergraduate students benefit from teaching supported by current research and our postgraduate students have access to supervisors who are active researchers. The faculty is committed to delivering high quality education. We endeavour to achieve this through a learning culture that recognises our expertise and areas of development, respecting the diversity of staff and students by being people centred and inclusive at all levels.

We value student engagement in active, self-directed learning, work integrated learning and community engagement. We encourage our students to assess existing and new practices, and to expand their critical thinking skills to respond to the rapid changes of the 21st-century.

Lastly, we encourage you to seek guidance and assistance from your respective department as early as possible should you find yourself stumbling along the way; there are support structures in place to help you succeed.

Here’s to you and the opportunities that await you at CPUT! Every moment of your time with us contains possibilities that can change your life in every way - stay open to those possibilities!

With warm wishes for a rewarding year,

Dr Nicole Brooks
(Acting Dean)

2023 Faculty Handbook for Health & Wellness Sciences

CPUT is in the process of introducing new qualifications and phasing-out old ones (such as the Diploma is replacing the National Diploma, and the Advanced Diploma replacing the BTech), as required by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training. The new qualifications are introduced to align with the new Higher Education qualification sub-Framework (HEQSF) as Gazetted by the South African Department of Education on 2 August 2013. This is a requirement placed on all Higher Education institutions in an attempt to keep the curriculum relevant.

The last year Universities are allowed to register new students for the old qualifications was 2019, however, students who are currently in the process of completing these non-HEQSF aligned qualifications will be allowed sufficient time to complete in line with the Faculty rules and regulations.

Some qualifications have already been approved, some are in the final stages of approval and some are in the draft stage, and these qualifications will be loaded onto the Applications System as soon as they are fully approved.

The benchmarking process that took place during the development of these new qualifications was to ensure that the curriculum offered at CPUT can be directly compared to that of other institutions; not only nationally, but also internationally.

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