Page 45 - VC 5 Year Review Report 2022

studies conducted on institutional culture, as well institutional culture, including devoting ongoing
as from programmatic culture change interventions attention to the symbolic value of arts, culture,
implemented at the University over the past heritage and naming of spaces and places on
decade (2010 to 2021). This qualitative study all campuses.
aimed to determine the extent to which efforts to • Promote parity of esteem in a multi-campus
foster a values-driven, transformative institutional context by identifying distinctive strategy-aligned
culture at Nelson Mandela University have been academic niches for each campus and promoting
yielding the desired results. This analysis, and the equivalence of service delivery and vibrancy of
recommendations flowing from it, are intended to campus life on all campuses.
create a baseline assessment of institutional culture • Invest resources in advancing digital transformation
at Nelson Mandela University to identify areas of in pursuit of academic and operational excellence,
concern and opportunities that need attention in the including addressing the digital divide, broadening
immediate, medium- and long-term. access to mobile devices and data connectivity,
and intensifying humanising capacity development
The report identified the following recurring themes interventions to equip students and employees
as requiring attention in deepening a transformative to meaningfully engage in flexible modes of
institutional culture, namely: learning and work.
• Promote a culture of engagement and
• Conduct advocacy, sensitisation, induction, and responsiveness in addressing issues and concerns
training programmes to ensure that students and raised by students, employees, and other
employees consistently live the core values of the stakeholders, including providing transparent
University. feedback on progress or lack thereof.
• Actively promote social justice, respect for diversity
and equality by decisively eradicating all forms of Our vision, mission, values, and statement of
discrimination and exclusion. commitment to an inclusive institutional culture are
• Design and implement holistic, integrated talent the foundations on which Nelson Mandela University
stewardship strategies to recruit, retain and develop cultivates graduates who are known for their
talented, socially diverse students and employees social and environmental consciousness, visionary
who are committed to accelerating and deepening leadership, innovative and pioneering search for
transformation within and beyond the classroom. solutions to complex challenges, and the ability to
• Promote employee morale through open adapt their knowledge and expertise in multiple
engagement and communication, attending to settings through embracing lifelong learning.
high workloads, implementing holistic wellbeing
interventions, and promoting talent continuity 5. Desired Graduate Attributes
by filling vacancies timeously with qualified, high
performing employees. Graduate attributes are the high-level knowledge,
• Develop leadership skills at all levels to empower skills, qualities, and understandings that a
line managers to cultivate affirming, inclusive student should gain as a result of the learning
learning and work environments that liberate the and experiences they engage with while at the
full potential of all students and employees. university. These attributes equip graduates for
• Conclude the development of an institutional lifelong personal development, learning and to be
language policy that aligns with the Language Policy successful in society and shape the contribution they
Framework for Higher Education (2020) and seeks can make to their profession and as citizens. Within
to promote multilingualism as a strategy across all a rapidly changing global context, graduates need
functional domains including scholarship, teaching, to be flexible and adaptive to manage uncertainty,
learning, and wider communication. Conditions ambiguity, and unpredictability, as opposed to only
must also be created for the development and acquiring a fixed set of skills that prepare them
strengthening of indigenous languages as forms of narrowly for the world of work.
meaningful academic discourse, as well as sources
of knowledge in different disciplines. The Vision 2030 Strategy makes provision for
• Embrace the African identity of the University as generic, cross-cutting graduate attributes that
an integral dimension of fostering a transformative can be developed in numerous ways within and

45