IEASA is a non-profit organisation that serves as a platform to support and promote the internationalisation of South African higher education institutions, allowing them to respond to global education trends. One way of achieving this is through a series of workshops held annually in the margins of their conference. This year, SU was the proud host of the workshops, which were tailored around the conference theme, “The internationalisation of higher education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Innovation, diversity, inequality and inclusion”.
In her welcoming address, Prof Klopper shared some thoughts on how the higher education sector and practitioners could best prepare for the digital age. “"I am convinced that through efforts such as this conference and our commitment to redesign our ways of teaching and learning, we are laying the firm foundation in higher education to equip students with all the competencies to realign their careers seamlessly when required.”
The workshops that followed were presented by a variety of partners from South Africa and further afield, including from Germany, Sweden and Belgium. Highlights included an interactive train-the-trainer session facilitated by Dr Darla Deardorff from the Association of International Education Administrators, who elaborated on the process of developing intercultural competency through storytelling. Equally informative was the workshop on immigration in the higher education sector presented by the Department of Home Affairs, and a session co-hosted by SU and the British Council on writing content for social media.
According to IEASA president and director of the Rhodes University International Office, Orla Quinlan, while IEASA is “the smallest international education association, it is impactful. IEASA needs to refresh, renew and reinvent itself, and what better way to open up our thinking than to have leaders from other associations share their perspectives and engage with us”.
Having celebrated 25 years of internationalisation as well as its first century as a university in 2018, SU is more inspired than ever to further global learning and citizenship among its students, and to harness the opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the process. Therefore, the institution was proud to be part of this year’s IEASA proceedings. The University also formed part of the main conference, where Prof Wim Delva, head of SU’s recently launched School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, delivered a keynote address.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on all of us. South Africa entered a national lockdown on 26 March 2020, and since then we at Stellenbosch University (SU) have worked tirelessly to find innovative ways of dealing with the impact of the pandemic and continuing our work in the new reality of business unusual.
read moreAs COVID-19 intensified its grip on the global community from January 2020 onwards, many meetings were cancelled due to international travel restrictions.
read moreFrench business school SKEMA and Stellenbosch University (SU) have joined forces to open a SKEMA campus in Stellenbosch. This will be SKEMA’s seventh campus globally. The partnership, which was officially launched on 31 January 2020, is set to significantly contribute to achieving the objectives of SU’s internationalisation strategy.
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