Office of the Vice-Chancellor and SIP track Swiss footprint

The Executive Director in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Driekie Hay-Swemmer, and Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships Directorate recently hosted Anja Bouron, Head of Corporate and International Relations & Career Services, Fernfachhochschule Schweiz, Zürich, Switzerland.

Manager: International Relations, Dr Tasmeera Singh, said since CPUT does not have active partnerships with universities in Switzerland, the meeting with Fernfachhochschule (FFHS) was “greatly welcomed”. Singh said the focus areas of the FFHS such as virtual exchanges, Collaborative Online International Learning and the discourse on intercultural competence are aligned to CPUT's internationalisation goals.

“[This] can be achieved in a mutually beneficial way with the proposed partner institution.”

The meeting started with a formal welcoming and introductions by Prof Dina Burger, Director of the Research Development Directorate, who said: “We are indeed very delighted that you chose to come to CPUT, and we are very keen to have conversations with you. We are also very honoured today because we are joined by our Executive Director in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Hay-Swemmer…

“The objective of our discussion is actually quite simple and exciting and that is to discuss academic synergies between the two institutions, and we believe there is quite a number of synergies, the distance education component on the one hand, which presents us with perhaps something to consider in terms of new business development as the university because we are not a traditional distance education institution here.

“And then of course, the whole notion of undertaking our learning and teaching, and our research towards high impact, in other words, it’s a research that has relevance for society and business and financially can be applied.”

Hay-Swemmer acknowledged her excitement and honour to host the international guests. She also boasted that CPUT has been recently listed as the highest ranked university of technology in Africa.

Singh was also impressed with the common actionable academic synergies and areas of collaboration which were identified in the meeting to initiate the process of partnership development. A template of the memorandum of understanding was also presented to the FFHS for further engagement and “hopefully, we will be able to sign a MOU in the near future,” said the manager of international relations at CPUT.

The CPUT delegation also included Dr Elma Maleka, Manager: Research Uptake and Dingaan Booi, International Relations Officer both from SIP Directorate.

Written by Aphiwe Boyce
Email: boyceap@cput.ac.za