University of the Western Cape Joins Siyaphumelela 3.0 with Kresge Foundation Grant

UWC received its Siyaphumelela 3.0 Partnership award at the annual Siyaphumelela 2024 conference, held from 25 to 28 June 2024 at The Wanderers Club in Johannesburg.

The announcement was made by William (Bill) F. L. Moses, who serves as managing director for The Kresge Foundation’s Education Program, that supports postsecondary access and success.

The award was received by Prof Subethra Pather, the institutional Siyaphumelela lead, and was joined by Prof Matete Madiba, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Student Development and Support, who is the co-owner of the Siyaphumelela project at UWC. Also on stage to receive the award was Jenny Glennie, the executive director of SAIDE and Dr Alan Amory, the Siyaphumelela Network project lead also in SAIDE.

UWC is excited to be part of Siyaphumelela 3.0. The three-year Grant Agreement is scheduled to commence on 31 July 2024.

The funds received will allow UWC to continue the work done in Siyaphumelela 2.0, which was to strengthen its data analytics capacity, including enhancing the understanding of academic and support staff on the role of data analytics in driving student success. In this cycle (2024 – 2027) we will focus on the following four areas:

UWC has a vantage position as far as data analytics is concerned. Ms Elizabeth Booi, who is a Siyaphumelala data analytics coach, is working within UWC Business Intelligence to entrench data-driven decision making into all university systems.

We look forward to working with UWC staff in the above initiatives aimed at increasing the use of evidence-based approaches to enhance student retention and success.

The Siyaphumelela initiative (which means “we succeed” in isiXhosa) helped all partner institution to foster a student success culture, identify data and tools to improve student success, strengthen institutional capacity, and develop practices for long-term student success.