A tracking mechanism for equity development programmes at selected South African universitiesS&T partner Ross Jennings describes a major three-year partnership between S&T and The Atlantic Philanthropies.S&T is designing a mechanism that will enable The Atlantic Philanthropies
to monitor and evaluate its funding of staff equity development programmes
at selected South African universities. S&T has been contracted to
implement and maintain the mechanism for the next 3 years.
The broad objectives of the project are to:
- Track what happens to students who participate in the staff development
programmes.
- Assess whether or not the programmes meet the stated goals of developing
new academics.
- Investigate whether these new academics remain in academia when they
have completed their contractual obligations.
As part of Phase One, S&T has already facilitated a national workshop
with The Atlantic Philanthropies, the relevant universities and key stakeholders.
This national workshop is currently being followed up with a series of
workshops at each of the institutions in order for all participants and
stakeholders to have a say in the design of appropriate indicators around
which the database will be developed.
There are 3 distinct phases to the project:
Phase One: the development of a database of programmes supported
by The Atlantic Philanthropies and design of a tracer study to track participants
in these programmes. One of the key outputs of this phase is a set of appropriate
impact indicators to measure the success or failure of these programmes.
Phase Two: maintenance and analysis of data contained in the
database with regular feedback to The Atlantic Philanthropies and the
concerned institutions.
Phase Three: to evaluate the impact of the programmes at the
end of the 3 years based on the data collected in the previous phases.
This will also involve the identification of best practices, which could
be emulated at other institutions.
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