Chancellor's award 2015

CONTENTS PAGE

Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Chancellor’s Welcome

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Special Recognition Award

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Professor Daan Cloete

Special Recognition Award

Professor Jaap Durand

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Award Recipient

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Award Recipient

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Dr Razeena Omar Mr Ashley Uys

Award Recipient

Ms Nargis Gani

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Award Recipient

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Dr Nomafrench Mbombo Award Recipient

Professor Leila Patel Award Recipient

Advocate Hishaam Mohamed Award Recipient

Dr Tanushree Pillay Award Recipient

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Mr Tobias Titus

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Award Recipient

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Professor Nicolette Roman Award Recipient

Extraordinary Professor Praneet Valodia About the award

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Chancellor’s Welcome It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the University of the Western Cape’s second annual Chancellor’s Dinner and Outstanding Alumni Awards Ceremony.

The Chancellor’s Dinner and Alumni Awards Ceremony is one of UWC’s highlights for the year, an auspicious occasion and opportunity to engage with a wide range of UWC stakeholders and celebrate the achievements of the Institution and its alumni.

It is the occasion where we honour the outstanding achievements, leadership and contribution to the nation of the University’s alumni in their professional lives.

The Outstanding Alumni Awards is administered through a nomination-based process by faculty members, alumni and friends of UWC. In the inaugural year and in celebration of 20 years of democracy, the 2014 Awards honoured eight alumni who played a significant role in higher education as ViceChancellors of universities. A special recognition award was also bestowed upon Dr Richard van der Ross for his significant contribution and service to UWC. The 2015 awards honour alumni who have made outstanding contributions in the categories of Women in Leadership; Science and Technology; Law; Sports, Sports Education or Administration; and Health Sciences.

I would like to congratulate all those who were nominated for this year’s Chancellor’s Award, and especially the alumni who are honoured tonight: Ms Nargis Gani, Dr Nomafrench Mbombo and Prof Leila Patel – Women in Leadership; Dr Razeena Omar and Mr Ashley Uys – Science and Technology; Adv Hishaam Mohamed – Law Dr Tanushree Pillay and Mr Tobias Titus – Sports Administration; and Prof Nicolette Roman and Prof Praneet Valodia – Health Sciences.

We thank you all for the contributions you have made to your sector and the society. Our society is in dire need of exemplary leaders and we hope you will be the shining light we need and that you will continue to inspire our alumni and young upcoming stars in our communities. I wish you continued success.

Enjoy the ceremony today. Congratulations, and God bless you all.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Special Recognition Award PROFESSOR GERHARD DANIEL (DAAN) CLOETE Former Vice-Rector Prof Stanley Ridge recalled his first encounter with Prof Daan Cloete when he joined UWC in the early eighties. “My first impression was of his gentleness, courtesy, intellectual rigour and refinement. That impression stands. What I did not see at first in the heated political climate of the time was the steely integrity of the man. As the years have passed, I have appreciated that more and more.

“Daan’s contributions to academic and policy debate were always quietly authoritative. When he became Dean of Theology he was never less quiet, but he had to be a much more prominent figure, articulating positions with a wider authority. He did so with his trademark assurance and modesty. Behind the assurance lay a deep foundation of thought. Again and again as we worked together as deans I was struck by Daan’s depth and human warmth. I have never heard a trivial or uncaring word from him.

“It was UWC’s good fortune that Daan agreed to act as Rector. His meticulousness and quiet authority brought stability, but most of all he left his mark as a remarkable human being,” said Prof Ridge.

other disciplines and contributed to the Faculty elevating theological scholarship to a significant academic engagement beyond mere dogmatic positions.

“This was a passion, applied with fervour, which is still evident in his continued involvement with students and a quality in Daan that most disturbed him when the University and the government of the time decided to close down the Faculty of Theology.

“Prof Cloete played a significant leadership role in University administration and was thus immensely qualified to serve as Acting Vice-Chancellor, during and following the tenure of Jakes Gerwel. His role in this capacity was of great value at times of transition to a new administration and restructuring of the University.

“As a respected and totally committed colleague, Daan Cloete contributed massively to the status UWC enjoys today,” Dr Ellis concluded.

Former senior lecturer at UWC, Dr Jimmy Ellis, lauded Prof Cloete’s considerable contribution to UWC. “Daan Cloete joined UWC after completing his doctorate with distinction in the Netherlands. A very popular minister of the church known for his calm and principled demeanour, his appointment as professor in the Faculty of Theology was regarded as a significant step in elevating the status of the Faculty and scholarship at UWC in general.

“He contributed to the intellectual process that emphasised theological reflection as worthy of holding its own against

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Special Recognition Award PROFESSOR JAAP DURAND Professor Johannes Jacobus Fourie (Jaap) Durand stands out among the academics who made a massive contribution to the development of the University of the Western Cape during the 1970s and 1980s. Prof Durand’s colleague, Prof Stanley Ridge, recalls how in the late1970s UWC was finding its way from being a bush college to being a university critically engaged with the realities of apartheid South Africa.

“The circumstances caused frustration, but UWC was fortunate in having emerging leaders, Jaap Durand prominent among them, who were able to keep the real challenges in focus. At the beginning of 1980 Jaap became UWC’s first ever Vice-Rector. With the warm support of Rector Richard van der Ross, he began the process of reconceptualising the intellectual vision, drawing the deans and other leaders together around the process, and unleashing exciting intellectual vitality in a university in the thick of political upheaval.

“Jaap Durand’s achievement was exceptional in building communal confidence in political and academic responsibility.

He led public demonstrations and faced the rubber bullets and teargas. But through it all, he was uncompromising on academic excellence. Jaap was in charge of academic and physical planning. Leading meticulous teamwork, carefully allocating resources, guiding new appointments, and working with some of South Africa’s best architects, he saw UWC transformed into one of South Africa’s best universities.

Bravo Jaap!”

Dr Jimmy Ellis, another colleague, recalls Prof Jaap Durand’s rise to prominence as a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa and his joining UWC.

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“At the point when he came to UWC we were interrogating and challenging the role of apartheid in shaping the intellectual life of people of colour, and we were doing so from a declared black consciousness orientation. Jaap’s earlier experience in the black church stood him in good stead in joining this critical engagement and he was readily accepted into this progressive involvement by mainly black University staff members, when the bona fides of many other whites were under severe scrutiny.

“Joining the Faculty of Theology during the period of critical student involvement, particularly of theological students, in university and national issues, Jaap Durand’s intellectual contribution clearly made an impact on this engagement. His academic input at a time of intellectual transformation and deepening of the curricula of this faculty, and the University more generally, was of immense value.

“Jaap should perhaps best be remembered for the manner in which he, as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, supported Jakes Gerwel in steering UWC through extremely troubled and treacherous waters. His contribution to making the University financially viable on a severely strained budget deserves special recognition.”

The author of several books and more than 60 academic articles, Prof Durand has been honoured many times for his profound intellectual contribution to the church and to the birth of a democratic South Africa. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of the Western Cape, Cape Town, Free State and Stellenbosch.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient DR RAZEENA OMAR Dr Razeena Omar is a leading figure in conservation in South Africa. She is a former director of South African National Parks and is the co-chair of the Earth Charter International Council. She has served as the Executive Director: People and Conservation at SANParks and as a member of the Council of the Botanical and Wildlife and Environment Societies of South Africa. She has been the Chief Executive Officer of CapeNature, the public institution tasked with overseeing biodiversity conservation as part of a sustainable economy in the Western Cape, since January 2014.

Dr Omar led the South African delegation to the London Convention and Protocol (originally adopted in 1972 with the purpose of regulating the disposal of waste at sea). Along with the Nairobi and Abidjan Conventions, South Africa is a signatory to all these agreements .

Dr Omar received the Gold Medal Award from the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (WESSA) in 2003 for her contribution to the environment and education over the past 20 years.

Dr Omar obtained her BSc (1979), BSc Honours in Zoology (1980), Higher Diploma in Education (1982) and MPhil degrees at UWC and also holds a Bachelor of Education degree from UCT and a PhD from Rhodes University.

She was a schoolteacher for a few years before joining Hewat College as a lecturer in 1987. After ten years at Hewat, she began to assume a larger role in conservation and was an Environmental Advisor to the then National Minister of Education, Professor Kader Asmal.

In 2008, she was appointed as Chief Director: Integrated Coastal Management in the Department of Environmental Affairs (Oceans and Coasts). Here she had to oversee the development of legislation to protect the country’s 3 000km coastline, until then poorly managed and often unregulated.

In the course of pursuing matters related to the protection of the terrestrial, marine and coastal environments, she acquired valuable management experience in the environmental conservation sector as well as exposure to a variety of key global conservation issues.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient MR ASHLEY UYS Mr Ashley Uys started his first business at the age of 24 and has since garnered many accolades for his entrepreneurial prowess.

In 2008 – aged just 26 – he won the South African Breweries (SAB) Kick Start National Business of the Year Award. In 2010, he was named the Western Cape Business Opportunity Forum (WECBOF) Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He made Forbes Magazine’s ‘30 Under 30: Africa’s Best Young Entrepreneurs’ list in 2012. He was selected as the Endeavour SA Entrepreneur for 2013 and was listed among Forbes ‘Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs’ in 2014.

Uys started Real World Diagnostics.

Mr Uys’s business ventures have allowed him to achieve two objectives: to be his own boss and to work in science. It was his studies in biotechnology that first alerted him to the opportunities to develop his own products.

In addition to contributing to scientific innovation and healthcare, Mr Uys’s companies have also created muchneeded jobs in Cape Town. Rather than automate production of his high-tech products, Mr Uys chose to incorporate unskilled manual labour in his production process, in order to create employment opportunities.

To date, Mr Uys has started three companies – Real World Diagnostics in 2006, Medical Diagnostech in 2010, and OculusID in 2013. Medical Diagnostech specialises in the development and manufacture of lateral flow rapid diagnostic kits used to test for drugs, HIV and pregnancy, among other applications (‘lateral flow’ refers to lateral flow immunoassays, the laboratory technique that is at the heart of the development of the test kits). Medical Diagnostech’s low-cost malaria test kit earned Mr Uys the SAB Annual Social Innovation Award in 2012.

Mr Uys’ taste for business was sparked soon after completing his BSc in 2002 and, a year later, his BSc (Honours) in biotechnology, both at UWC. He had just wrapped up his honours studies when he enrolled in a two-year incubation internship run by Wits University, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Acorn Technologies, a Cape Town-based incubator. As a follow-up to that programme he joined Vision Biotech as a research and development assistant in 2005. The following year, while still with Vision Biotech, Mr

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient MS NARGIS GANI Ms Nargis Gani completed a BA (Honours) in psychology at UWC in 1993 and a Higher Diploma in Education in 1994. Instead of teaching however, she chose to enrol for a diploma in human resource management at Damelin in 1995. She worked as a human resources and training officer at the SA Post Office from 1995 to 1998, and then joined Siemens as a training manager for two years while also doing a Programme in Business Leadership at UNISA. She spent a year, from 2001 to 2002, at Momentum as human resources manager.

It was then that circumstances persuaded her to go the entrepreneurial route. Ms Gani was pregnant with her third child at the time, and putting in long days at work. Unwilling

to spend too much time away from her children, she founded Future Africa Consulting and Training (FACT) as a means to earn an income from home.

The company – a specialised resource management business – has since far exceeded that humble expectation. From its head office in Pretoria, FACT now generates a turnover of over R50 million and employs 150 people in South Africa, Angola, Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania. The company’s clients – many in the telecommunications field – include Siemens, Altech, Aviat Networks, Cell C, Dark Fibre Africa, Cell C, Nokia and Samsung, as well as the Office of the Auditor-General and SARS. As founder and managing director, Ms Gani chose to harness FACT as a tool for empowerment and transformation. In helping companies source staff, she promotes professionals of diversity to clients, while also integrating people with disabilities into the workplace. In addition, the company’s goal is to put economic development at the forefront of achieving gender equality in Africa.

Her success in advancing these goals has been rewarded with many accolades. In 2010 FACT was listed in the Top 30 Legatum Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship. Impumelelo, the national empowerment initiative, recognised it as a ‘Leading Transformation Company in Africa’ for 2014. Ms Gani herself was a finalist in the Top Female Entrepreneur category of the 2015 Annual Standard Bank Top Women Awards and was named the Top Empowered Entrepreneur for 2015 at the prestigious Oliver Empowerment Awards – which recognise leadership and innovation in empowerment and transformation in South Africa.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient DR NOMAFRENCH MBOMBO Dr Nomafrench Mbombo became the first woman to be appointed as MEC for Health in the Western Cape at the beginning of 2015. She is the first black woman to hold a post as Provincial Cabinet Minister in the province and the first nursing professional to be appointed to the position.

Dr Mbombo completed her undergraduate studies in nursing science at the University of the Free State and received her Master’s in Maternal and Child Health from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She was awarded a PhD in nursing science at UWC, where she served as lecturer, senior lecturer and associate professor in the School of Nursing.

As MEC for Health, Dr Mbombo will play a key role in moving the healthcare system from providing curative, reactive healthcare to providing preventative, primary healthcare and contributing to providing greater access to appropriate quality healthcare for the whole of the Western Cape community.

This will involve prioritising the implementation of the person-centred approach to healthcare; creating awareness around healthy lifestyles and behavioural changes; and care for the carers.

Dr Mbombo previously worked in provincial and local government health departments in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Dr Mbombo has worked with local, provincial, national and international stakeholders, with a particular interest in engagement with the populations most at risk, including pregnant and rural women and minorities. While at UWC, she held positions in, or consulted with a number of organisations and entities, including serving on the National Committee for Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Death.

Dr Mbombo has been a visiting fellow and research associate with several international universities and organisations, including NEPAD and the UN Office of Human Rights: Women & Gender Directorate and Special Rapporteur on Health.

She entered the Western Cape political arena in May 2014, when Premier Helen Zille appointed her as Minister of Cultural Affairs and Sport.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient PROFESSOR LEILA PATEL Professor Leila Patel is Professor of Social Development Studies and a former chairperson of the Department of Social Work at the University of Johannesburg, as well as director of the university’s Centre for Social Development in Africa. She was a non-executive director of Liberty Group Limited from 2004 to 2012.

A journalist and editor at the Grassroots Community Paper in the early 1980s, Prof Patel has since forged a formidable reputation as a scholar. She completed a Diploma in Social Work (cum laude) and a Higher Diploma in Social Work in the 1970s at UWC. She did a Master of Social Work degree at West Michigan University in the USA and obtained her PhD at Wits University. She served Wits as a lecturer for some years before returning to take up the post of Deputy ViceChancellor and Vice-Principal.

Prof Patel has spent time as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, a research fellow at the Centre for Social Development, Washington University and Yale University; a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and a Fulbright Scholar at West Michigan University.

Between academic pursuits she served as the first DirectorGeneral of Social Welfare in post-apartheid South Africa from 1996 to 1998, where she played a key role in the development of the South African White Paper for Social Welfare, one of the early policy initiatives of the democratic government that set the framework for social welfare policy in post-apartheid South Africa. Prof Patel has continued to play a leading role in the development of social welfare policy in South Africa, having contributed numerous articles and book chapters on subjects as diverse as social welfare, social work, social policy, gender, social protection and social development. She is the author of the books Restructuring social welfare: options for South Africa (1992) and Social Welfare and Social Development in South Africa (2005; second edition 2015).

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient ADVOCATE HISHAAM MOHAMED Advocate Hishaam Mohamed has been the Provincial Head of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in the Western Cape since 1997. He holds a B.Iuris, LLB and a Master’s in Public Administration (cum laude) from UWC, and completed a senior executive management course at Harvard Business School in Boston, USA. As Provincial Head of the Department of Justice in the Western Cape, Adv Mohamed focuses on providing access to justice and improved services and promoting community participation in the criminal justice system, particularly at courts serving rural and township areas. He steered the establishment of the first Family Courts, Tax Court, Environmental Court and Mobile Courts and the development of Community Safety Forums.

He chairs the Provincial Development Committee responsible for integrating the business processes of the departments within the Justice and Security Cluster. He also chairs several forums in the criminal and civil justice system at provincial level.

As a high school student he joined the United Democratic Front (UDF) as an activist in 1985 and was detained for leading school marches and protesting against the arrests of UDF leaders. In 1987 he began attending the University of the Western Cape to study law and continued his involvement in UDF activities both on and off campus. After qualifying, he demonstrated his dedication to human rights advocacy and justice through his participation in a number of human rights structures and professional bodies.

Having served as a Public Prosecutor at the Mitchell’s Plain Magistrates Office from 1993 to 1994, he was appointed as a Senior Family Advocate in the Office of the Family

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Advocate in Cape Town in 1995. During this period, he was also elected as the ANC’s first Chairperson of its Southern Suburbs Region.

Since his admission as an advocate in the Western Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa in 1995, he has served on a number of structures and professional bodies in the area of human rights education and constitutional law. He also represents government on a number of national regulatory bodies, forums and task teams, including the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster Committee (JCPS), the National Child Maintenance Task Team, the National Task Team on the Transformation of the Judicial System and the South African Liquor Board.

He is the deputy chair of the SA Sheriff Board and a founding member and Chairperson of the Southern Suburbs Legal Advice Centre (a registered and operating trust). Adv Mohamed has been the recipient of numerous community and public awards. In 2008, he was conferred an award by the City of Cape Town as the best public service manager promoting community relations. In 2011, he achieved a joint Impumelelo Award in recognition of his significant contributions to improving service delivery to the public service.

Advocate Mohamed is a regular commentator on constitutional and human rights law and the justice system in the electronic and print media and has authored several public interest articles on the development of our constitutional law, family law and the transformation of our criminal justice system.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient DR TANUSHREE PILLAY Sport medical teams often labour in anonymity, but their part in modern elite sports – be it in injury prevention, recovery, rehabilitation or education – cannot be overestimated.

Dr Tanushree Pillay has done her fair share of behind-thescenes work in these areas.

She started modestly, as a student physiotherapist assisting the UWC Rugby Club. By 2005 she was doing duty with the Silvertree and Tygerberg Rugby Clubs. Just a year later she was at her first international sports event, as head

physiotherapist at the All Africa Gymnastics Championships, which took place in Cape Town. In 2007, she was named head physiotherapist for the Western Cape Sport School in Kuilsriver.

Also in 2007, SA Rugby appointed her as the physiotherapist of the Springboks women’s sevens, the under-20 women’s and senior women’s rugby teams. In 2008, she travelled to China for the Beijing Paralympics; was in San Diego, California, for the IRB Sevens Series; joined the SA women’s rugby team for their two games against the touring Nomads team; and accompanied the national netball team for their tours of Barbados and Jamaica.

Since then she has been with the SA teams at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010 and the 2011 All Africa Games in Mozambique. She also worked with the men’s volleyball team and did a stint at the Shanghai PGA Golf championships in 2011.

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She was then appointed to the medical team that looked after Team SA at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. In 2013 she was named manager of the Springbok Women’s Sevens team – a position she still holds – and, in her latest achievement, assisted the Springboks in their preparation for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Despite the demands of her burgeoning career, Dr Pillay continued her scholarly interests. Building on her foundation at UWC (a BSc in physiotherapy in 2003 and master’s degree in 2006), she received her PhD from UWC in 2014 for a thesis that investigated protocols for rehabilitative injury prevention among netball players.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient MR TOBIAS TITUS Mr Tobias (Tobie) Titus was the first black president of the Western Province Rugby Football Union (WPRFU) and is the longest serving rugby administrator since unification in 1994.

He was a member of the executive committee of Western Province Rugby from 1994 to 2012.

Mr Titus joined UWC in the mid-1960s and tried his hand at playing rugby, but soon decided his natural ability lay in sports administration.

He was the youngest president of the UWC Rugby Club, served as president of Tygerberg Rugby Union (UWC was a member of the union) and represented the Tygerberg Rugby Union in the Western Province unification talks in the early 1990s. He also represented the South African Student Sports Union (SASSU, now named USSA), of which he is a past president. He was a representative at an international student sports conference in Izmir, Turkey. Off the field, Mr Titus was the Dean of Students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology from 1985 to 1997.

After his stint as WPRFU president, Mr Titus served on the South African Rugby Union (SARU) executive from 1994 to 2010 as well as from 2012 to the present. He also held the position of SARU Youth and Students Rugby Committee member and was president of the SARU Students Rugby Committee. Mr Titus represented SARU at International Rugby Board tournaments in various countries.

He has been recognised for his services to sport and South African rugby. He received the Western Cape Provincial Government Sports Legend Award in 2007 and a South African Sports Confederation (SASCOC) award for long service in sport in 2014. He was a participant in two international leadership exchange programmes in the USA and Canada.

Other accolades include life membership of the United Students Sports Association (USSA), the Western Province Rugby Football Union and the UWC Rugby Club, and honorary membership of SARU. Mr Titus receives the Outstanding Alumnus Award in the Outstanding Sportsperson, Educator or Administrator category.

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Despite bouts of ill health Mr Titus has worked tirelessly to make rugby a sport for all people in South Africa. He demonstrates his continued commitment to transformation and development in his membership of the SARU Development and Transformation Committee.

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient PROFESSOR NICOLETTE ROMAN Professor Nicolette Roman currently heads the Child and Family Studies Programme at UWC where she specialises in family psychological well-being, family functioning and practices, parenting, self-determination theory, research design and writing methods.

After qualifying as a teacher Prof Roman spent ten years teaching in the primary school system. She returned to the University to complete her Bachelor of Education (Psychology) in 2000 and Masters in Child and Family Studies (2003). She was awarded a PhD in Psychology at UWC in 2008 and was subsequently permanently appointed.

Prof Roman’s dedication to teaching and research excellence has been recognised many times. She won a Dean’s Merit Award in 2012 for the Best Scientific Presentation at the University’s Annual Research Day and another Dean’s Merit Award in 2015 for Excellence in Research.

She is a recipient of four scholarships: the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Scholarship (2004); the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad (VLIR) Scholarship (2005), the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2009) and the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Scholarship (20112012).

Prof Roman has authored outstanding scholarly work on the themes of family well-being, youth development and parentchild relationships. Most recently, she edited and contributed chapters to an international book titled Parenting: Behaviors, Cultural Influences and Impact on Childhood Health and Well-Being, published in 2015.

Prof Roman has devoted much time to training young emerging academic researchers and social workers in the Department of Social Development and developing postgraduate training for social workers in child and family work. She also contributes to innovative research through community engagement and evidence-based projects in the community, among which are innovative projects in schools, including research and awareness of substance abuse (hookah pipe smoking). Part of this work entailed awareness and training in parenting and family resilience models.

Her community work includes providing research support to Proud2BeMe and serving as a board member of Youth Development Specialist Services, two Cape Town-based nongovernmental organisations.

Prof Roman receives the Outstanding Alumnus award for her outstanding contribution to Health Sciences in the field of Child and Family Studies (Psychology).

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Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Awards 2015

Award Recipient EXTRAORDINARY PROFESSOR PRANEET VALODIA Professor Praneet Valodia is considered a leading voice in healthcare management in South Africa, with over 30 years’ experience in managed healthcare, public health, pharmaceutical policy and training, and a strong track record in healthcare innovation. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pharmacy from UWC, and his PhD from the University of Cape Town. After serving as an academic staff member at UWC for 16 years, he entered the corporate sector on a full-time basis in 2002, joining Metropolitan Health, where he worked as a director of medicine risk management, clinical executive, head of product development, research and development executive, and chairman of the company’s drugs and therapeutics committee.

current interest focuses on the delivery of affordable and quality healthcare in South Africa.

Prof Valodia is playing a key role in shaping the public healthcare arena in South Africa as a consultant in the healthcare industry. He has been a member of the national Department of Health Pricing Committee appointed by the Minister of Health since 2005 and is chairman of that committee’s Pharmaeconomics Task Team.

Prof Valodia was one of three finalists for the 2015 Board of Healthcare Funders Titanium Lifetime Achievers Award, which recognises excellence and significant contributions to the healthcare industry in Southern Africa.

In 2009, Prof Valodia was appointed as an advanced specialist in medicines and beneficiary management in the Health Intelligence Unit at Medscheme. In 2011 he joined the Independent Clinical Oncology Network (ICON) as an executive manager for innovation and development. He also served as the chairman of the oncology formulary committee at ICON. While working in the corporate sector, UWC appointed him as an extraordinary professor no fewer than five times.

Prof Valodia has worked with world renowned experts on data analysis and statistical models and has developed unique models to measure the value of healthcare interventions.

His research has been published in various accredited journals, and he has presented his findings at 60 national and international scientific and healthcare conferences. His

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About the award The Outstanding Alumnus Award is presented to alumni who have made outstanding contributions in their fields of study and toward nation building. All Alumni Award winners are presented with a plaque and a certificate of recognition signed by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University. The male winners also receive a UWC blazer while women awardees receive specially branded UWC scarves and brooches.

The certificate of recognition and plaque portray the vision and mission of UWC within its African context, using the motif of the African continent to symbolise the role that UWC graduates should play in bringing about hope and change in Africa through the knowledge they acquired at UWC. The design echoes the concept of the African Renaissance, and the notion of African cultural, scientific and economic renewal.

The protea is a significant part of the UWC coat of arms and can be seen on the plaque and blazer. The protea has symbolic meaning for UWC as it grows in the Western Cape and is also a national symbol. It was named after Proteus, the son of the Greek God Poseidon, who had the power to know all things past, present and future, and could change his appearance to avoid trouble.

The protea thus symbolises wisdom, diversity, courage and transformation – the traits of an outstanding student and alumnus.

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