University of Tennessee, Knoxville, representatives led by Gretchen Neisler, Vice Provost for International Affairs, and Tyvi Small, Vice Chancellor for Access and Engagement, visited five South African Universities across three regions of the country in July to expand ties with UT in the areas of programming, research and student mobility.
The goal for the visit was to deepen UT’s links with South African universities in areas like animal sciences, electrical and civil engineering, the humanities and social sciences, as well expand opportunities for UT students in South Africa.
Vice Chancellor Small last visited South Africa as part of a Haslam College of Business program on “Nonprofit, Social and Microenterprises” which sponsored a competition for South African entrepreneurs that is still bearing positive results today. Small’s efforts focused on finding new avenues for student programming and faculty development which would offer programming to link UT and South African students so they could better understand the common challenges in both countries and opportunities that can come from viewing the world through a new lens.
The trip was the vision of CGE’s Associate Vice Provost of Global Learning and Impact and team participant, Will Jennings, who has been involved with South Africa dating back to his experiences there as an undergraduate in 1996.
Jennings’ interest in the continent, “comes from a deep recognition of the similarities between the US and South Africa.”
“We are both at different stages of recognizing a deep history of racial inequality, we are both sports obsessed countries, and we both have vibrant and multi-layered cultures that have a lot to teach one another,” Jennings said. “I have always pushed UT to deepen our engagement with South Africa because there are a wide variety of ways to tie together our students and faculty with their counterparts in South Africa.”
The trip began in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital and home to the University of Pretoria, where UT representatives discussed opportunities in food security, using AI for social impact, and expanding cooperation in areas of soil science and veterinary medicine. The University of Pretoria is home to a cutting-edge campus called Future Africa that serves as a conduit for connecting scholars from across the continent in interdisciplinary research and new scholarship.
Next, the team visited Rhodes University in the interior of the Eastern Cape Province. New opportunities in physics, political science and water research were discussed as well as ways to bring UT students to explore service opportunities at “The Hub,” a key location for the acquisition of job and life skills for residents of the local Joza township near Rhodes.
In Gqeberha, previously known as Port Elizabeth, UT leadership toured the electrical engineering lab at Nelson Mandela University where uYilo is doing research to change the direction of e-mobility in South Africa. Nelson Mandela University partners with UT in the Great Challenges University Alliance where both universities are tasked with finding sustainable solutions to some of the planet’s biggest challenges.
At Stellenbosch University outside Cape Town, the group met with leaders in animal sciences, political science, and at the Center for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest. The mission of the center is to find ways to rebuild societal trust while also analyzing the lingering effects of apartheid and discrimination on South African society.
Lastly, the Volunteers met with officials from the University of the Western Cape, touring the university’s humanities center and seeing how puppets and engineers together produce the fantastical creatures used in the Broadway musical “Warhorse.” They also visited the Desmond Tutu Center for the Study of Religion and Social Justice. A past chair of Religious Studies at UT, Rosalind Hackett, serves as an Extraordinary Professor at the center and a Chancellor Professor Emeritus at UT.
The visit to South Africa is already bearing dividends for UT students with renowned Forensic Linguist, Russell Kaschula, set to visit UT during the 2024-2025 academic year and discuss his quest for linguistic equality in the South African judicial system. Hopes are for UT students to visit South Africa as soon as the summer of 2025 thanks to the groundwork laid during the visit for deeper engagement with the scholars, students and civic leaders in South Africa.