UWC Sustainable Development Goals 2020

ENABLING LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS The University of the Western Cape (UWC) ranks among the world’s top 200 higher education institutions in the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2019. These rankings recognise institutions which concentrate on achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The University also prioritises the country’s National Development Plan which aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030.

At UWC, emphasis is placed on these international and national goals by using a multi-disciplinary approach rooted in Learning and Teaching, Research and Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship.

UWC has positioned itself as an intellectual base for solving challenges set out in the SDGs - challenges relevant to the African continent, and globally. To sustain these endeavours, the University relies on collaboration, partnerships and funding.

UWC’s response: • The Centre for Innovative Education and Communication Technologies (CIECT): The Centre defines eLearning’s position on education within UWC and how it will support and develop learning and teaching activities.

• Zone Learning: Offered at UWC as a partner of Ryerson University, Toronto, Zone Learning enables students to apply their formal learning to develop business ideas, start-ups, companies or projects.

• Directorate of Teaching and Learning: The Directorate develops an encompassing strategic plan for teaching and learning, and guides and evaluates its implementation.

• First-Year Experience programme: The programme provides a support structure to empower and equip first-year university students with essential skills to successfully navigate university life. .

• Global Environmental Law: Global Environmental Law is an area of current research strength within the Faculty of Law. It aims to facilitate scholarship that responds to increasingly global ecological crises from a perspective of ecological justice.

• Department of Geography, Environmental Studies & Tourism: The Department critically explores the interrelations between people, places and the environment in Africa, as well as in the global context.

• Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Children, Family and Society: Society The centre provides highly skilled human capital in youth, family, community and societal development, and health and well-being and thus build important bridges of learning concerning the acquisition and application of knowledge to benefit all stakeholders.

COMBATING INEQUALITY The University of the Western Cape (UWC) ranks among the world’s top 200 higher education institutions in the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2019. These rankings recognise institutions which concentrate on achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The University also prioritises the country’s National Development Plan which aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030.

At UWC, emphasis is placed on these international and national goals by using a multi-disciplinary approach rooted in Learning and Teaching, Research and Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship.

UWC has positioned itself as an intellectual base for solving challenges set out in the SDGs - challenges relevant to the African continent, and globally. To sustain these endeavours, the University relies on collaboration, partnerships and funding.

UWC’s response: • Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies: The Institute performs research, policy engagement, teaching and training on the dynamics of chronic poverty and structural inequality in Southern Africa, with a particular emphasis on the key role of restructuring and contesting land-holding and agro-food systems.

• The Higher Education and Training HIV/AIDS Programme: The Programme, which UWC is a member of, develops and supports HIV mitigation programmes at South Africa's public universities and technical and vocational training colleges.

• Women’s & Gender Studies: The inter-disciplinary department emerged from gender and anti-apartheid activism at UWC. It foregrounds questions of social justice and processes of societal and institutional transformation.

• Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights: The Institute focuses on children’s rights, socio-economic rights, multi-level government, criminal justice reform and women’s rights.

• Migration and Mobilities: UWC has a research niche in migration and mobilities to promote critical approaches in research and collaboration on this topic. It is part of an interdisciplinary programme across faculties and is directly accountable to the DVC: Academic. It connects research, teaching and learning as well as community engagement in this field.

• Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Children, Family and Society: Society The centre provides highly skilled human capital in youth, family, community and societal development, and health and well-being and thus build important bridges of learning concerning the acquisition and application of knowledge to benefit all stakeholders.

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