Message from the Head of School
- Professor David Everatt
Welcome to our newly designed newsletter, which aims to keep you up to date with developments at the School.
The newsletter will also provide some insights into our research projects, findings and readings.
The School went through our 5-yearly Quinquennial Review in 2017, which recommended some important curriculum re-design work, which is close to complete. In future, we will be able to offer a Masters in Governance, with specialisations in our particular fields – M&E, security, social policy, and so on. These will all be a mix of modules and electives, and with the new staff that have joined us over the last 18 months, the electives will really provide a rich set of offerings from a really exciting group of academics. Our PhD and Masters by research programme has grown in strength and numbers, and we now have two intakes a year, with scaffolding provided by a 6-month ‘pre-PhD’ phase, followed by entry into the programme for the successful candidates.
At the same time, WSG is preparing to go online. We have done this already, for specific clients such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (whose MPs from all over the Commonwealth will be joining us for face-to-face teaching in late 2018, after the online phase is complete). But now the School is putting our most popular diplomas online, as part of a broader Wits move to try and provide cost-effective, high-quality mechanisms to reach students all over Africa (or anywhere else in the world) without them having to bear the cost of travelling to Johannesburg. The pilot – four modules – begins in July, and by 2019, the full suite should be on offer. And as online takes up more diploma students, staff will now be freed up to supervise more Masters and Doctoral students.
Our Executive Education Unit is also now under new leadership, with Trevor Fowler taking over from Dr Manamela Matshabaphala, and WSG now also offers the Certificate in Municipal Finance on top of our existing (and ever-expanding) suite of offerings.
The last two years have been very busy here, with new staff, the new curriculum, the online design and a major shake-up all round. WSG is now settling down, with all our key elements in place, and we believe the School is exceptionally well-positioned to impact the public, NGO and other sectors across Africa. Welcome to WSG!