Dear Staff and Students,

Warm greetings to you all as we begin the second quarter of 2025.

This communication serves to inform you of the forthcoming series of open invitations that will be extended to the campus community to participate in a series of dialogues over the course of 2025.  As a leadership we are committed to engaging in a broad-based consultative process as we rethink and refine our strategic direction. To achieve this, we are launching a series of dialogues designed to spark creative thinking, collaboration, and innovativeness around key topics that will shape our future.

I would like to encourage you all to make time to participate in the dialogues to ensure you contribute to the shaping of our future directions.  I also  recognize the realities of your schedules and therefore, where possible, we will also provide for online participation, share recordings, and allow for written contributions.

Background to the Dialogues

Following stakeholder engagements during my onboarding process at the end of last year and the themes raised in my Inaugural Address in February this year, we want to create spaces for open discussions and reflection that will, amongst others: support us in finding new and better ideas for working together; provide strategic input into the Institutional Operating Plan (IOP) 2026–2030; and  assist us to improve the alignment between our operational efforts and our vision and values.

This year, the dialogues will be intertwined with the process of the development of the IOP (2026-2030).  This will allow for the dialogues to influence the direction of the University in the next five years, and how we leverage, deploy, utilise and account for the resources available to us. All of the dialogues are very significant, because they are likely to present opportunities to support strategic drivers and to strengthen our efforts in remaining fit for purpose.

We have to continue to actively search for solutions to improve efficiencies and the ways in which we work together within our university which is a large and complex organisation. In all of these efforts we have to remain committed to being a university where excellence in every aspect of our core academic mandate remains top of mind, where research impact matters, where the values underpinning our identity informs how we work both together and with partners to make a difference in the lives of our students, in the different communities in which we work, and in addressing the global challenges of our time.

1. Dialogues to inform overarching strategic direction of the IOP

We envisage three dialogues in 2025 which are intended to have a bearing on the high-level framing of the IOP (2026-2030).   These dialogues are intended to influence the overarching spirit and ethos of our forward-looking strategy.  A more detailed framing of each dialogue will be shared as part of the invitations to participate which will include dates and venues details.

Dialogue 1: Revitalising the Intellectual Agenda of the Left (May 2025) – This dialogue will seek to consider the fundamental shifts in our midst that necessitate a re-thinking of UWC in terms of a leftist intellectual tradition. This dialogue is intended as a call to us to refocus our attention on the historical legacy of the university, not just as an artefact of the past, but as a set of commonly shared values forming the basis of a socially-informed agenda for research and academic pursuit.

Dialogue 2: Universities as Place, Space & Circumstance (June 2025) – This dialogue is intended to probe the notions of place, space and circumstance in relation to the academic project. It will serve to assess how we inculcate a sense of belonging as well as how we develop new lenses for locating community within intellectual work.

Dialogue 3: The UWC Way (August 2025) – The UWC Way might be thought of as values and ideals that are inherent to the fabric and culture of UWC.  This dialogue thus seeks to examine our unique value proposition and how this has, or ideally should have, more bearing on how we operationalise our strategic goals.

Given the overarching nature of the themes of these three dialogues above, they are not associated with any specific IOP Goal Area.

2. Dialogues aligned to specific IOP Goal Areas

I will be communicating more details about the IOP process and the envisaged Goal Areas soon. For now, it is worthwhile to take note that we are reorganising our traditional approach to the IOP Goal Areas to have fewer Goal Areas which have a more thematic approach to our strategic focus areas.  Therefore, in addition to the above three, we plan to host a number of dialogues which are directly associated with the planned IOP goal areas.  

The dialogues listed below, are intended  to enrich the work that the different IOP Task Teams will undertake. As such they do not represent the full ambit of each Goal Area and will serve to complement other work that the respective Task Teams will undertake.

Goal Area focusing on the Academic Project

• Unpacking the understanding and implications of a shift from being Research-Led to being a Leading Research University
• The responsiveness of programmes and curricula to 21st-century needs
• UWC’s postgraduate student value proposition
• Fostering interdisciplinary and collaborative teaching
• The conduciveness of the various physical environments in relation to academic success

Goal Area focusing on People (students and staff) & Institutional Culture

• Unpacking the notions of Equality and Belonging for all. This is inclusive of persons from our most marginal constituencies such as LGBTIQ+ persons and persons living with disabilities;
• The potential role of an Inclusion Index at UWC as a means of ascertaining with confidence that the impact of initiatives, interventions and approaches designed to deepen our commitment to inclusion, can be measured.

Goal Area focusing on Strategic Resource Planning and Sustainability

• Strategies for building and supporting a transformative financial capacity of the University that supports our ideals and related plans;
• Approaches for deepening and investing more in our approaches to entrepreneurship, commercialization, and other fundraising approaches within the University system. 

Moving from words to action

All of the planned dialogues will serve to inform the development of UWC’s IOP (2026-2030).    In addition, there will be other outcomes that are anticipated , which may include the development of new policy, amendments of existing ones, the design of interventions, among others.  Thus, while the dialogues will inform the new IOP, they should also provide direction in terms of actions that are needed. Therefore, the approach is that after every dialogue there will be a report that will:

• Summarise key issues and insights;
• List the identified follow-up actions. Depending on the nature of the dialogue and of the suggested actions, some of these will be included in the IOP, others might require attention from executive management or faculty leadership, or a dedicated Task Team to further explore and advise on an issue(s);
• Be shared with the appropriate governance structures.

Beyond 2025

The intention is to continue with these Dialogues beyond 2025 to support a campus culture of open engagement around issues that matter to us. We will also identify other dialogues for 2026 and these too will be  will be mapped out in due course.

Yours sincerely
Professor Robert Balfour
Rector and Vice-Chancellor

Should you have any clarification questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to be in touch with Prof Shaun Pather (Advisor to the Rector and Vice-Chancellor at spather@uwc.ac.za) and Ms Lois Dippenaar (Institutional Planner at ldippenaar@uwc.ac.za).