Institution appoints first black woman dean in engineering

Tshwane University of Technology’s first black female executive dean for the faculy of engineering and the built environment, Dr Mukondeleli Grace Kanakana-Katumba, intends to implement sweeping changes to position the faculty as South Africa’s leading school of engineering.

According to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for engineering, Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) ranks second in South Africa. Globally, it ranks between 301 and 400.

Since she assumed her position on 1 February 2021, Kanakana-Katumba’s vision as executive dean of the faculty has been to assess how she can elevate the faculty into that leading position.

“I would like the faculty to support the university’s vision, doing it in a way that sets our faculty apart from other universities of technology,” she said.

“TUT’s engineering faculty is one of the best right now in South Africa, and I believe my role as the dean is to propel it to even better heights,” she told University World News during an interview conducted via video conferencing.

Career plans

Kanakana-Katumba is a professional industrial engineer with more than 15 years of experience as an engineer in the field and about 13 years of experience in academia.

She began part-time lecturing at TUT in 2007 and was promoted to head of the department of industrial engineering in 2008.

“Initially, I thought that, if I did my doctorate, I’d be able to start doing consulting. I joined the higher education environment because of my drive to do my doctorate and I thought involvement in higher education would be the best place for me to do it,” she said.

That was her long-term strategy. However, her involvement in higher education led her career path to take a different trajectory from the one she had planned for herself. She was moved to middle-management within months and, in 2013, became the assistant dean of teaching and learning of the same faculty.

“I enjoyed being there so I decided to continue contributing. The need to contribute towards the development of young people also led me to stay in the higher education space,” she explained.

Switching from industry to academia was one of many spanners thrown into her career advancement plans – industrial engineering had not been her preferred field of study when she completed her secondary school education.

She had planned to study aeronautical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, commonly called Wits, but her average score denied her entry to the university.

Committed to the youth

Kanakana-Katumba is committed to advancing young people, who, she believes, are part of the answer to Africa’s problems.

“We have to solve our own problems as Africans. So, if our students don’t have the graduate attributes to go out and be able to do that, we are in trouble as a country where youth unemployment sits at almost 70%,” she said.

Youth and graduate unemployment is a major bottleneck for the country’s young people.

According to Kanakana-Katumba, South Africa’s higher education institutions need to be more deliberate about how to solve the issue of graduate unemployment, currently estimated to be at about 1.8% according to the Quarterly Labour Survey 2020 conducted by Statistics South Africa.

Additionally, 7.5% of other unemployed persons in the country have other tertiary qualifications as their highest level of education.

“We [universities] are producing graduates who are not able to go out there and create solutions for themselves and create employment for themselves and others. We are in trouble as a country.

“We need to build innovation capabilities, value chains between our faculties so that the graduates we produce are innovative by nature,” said Kanakana-Katumba.

“I don’t think innovation is something you are necessarily born with, but it is something that you can acquire as a skill so, if we can then instil the innovation attribution into our students, then, when they graduate, they can be in a position to see areas of improvement, solve complex problems and produce products or services that can help communities around them,” she added.

Innovation, entrepreneurship and capacitating the faculty’s teaching and learning methodologies will be key focus areas during her five-year tenure as dean.

“We have to develop our academic staff members to have these technology capabilities so that they can teach our students properly using technology. Technology then becomes a driver to enable quality teaching and learning, so that is one of the priorities I have for the next five years,” she added.

Women in engineering

Kanakana-Katumba was born and raised in Dzwerani village, outside Thohoyandou, in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province. She attended school at a time when brick and mortar classrooms were a distant dream in many of the country’s schools. Lessons would usually be held under a tree with just a chair and her lap as the table.

Walking into higher education, fresh out of high school and without a hunch of what to expect, she recalls the culture shock she experienced, especially because all her lectures were in Afrikaans at the time – a language she could not comprehend, speak or read.

“The lecturer would come in and teach in Afrikaans the whole session. You understand nothing at that point. And even if you knew Afrikaans, were you going to understand Afrikaans-mathematics?”

While she acknowledged the odds were stacked against many black South Africans at the time because access to higher education was a privilege for the minority, she sees it as the fuel she needed to keep the fire to obtain an education burning.

“The tough times sometimes help to motivate you as a person to aspire to better things.”

Before returning to TUT, Kanakana-Katumba was the deputy-executive dean of the University of South Africa’s college of science, engineering and technology from 2018.

She has received numerous awards and recognition for her work but is most proud of her role as one of the founding members of Women in Engineering at TUT– a body responsible for the empowerment of women in academia and the industry.

In a continent where the proportion of females graduating from universities with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields is lower than 30%, she described her appointment as a milestone, not just for women and gender equality as a whole, but also a feat for women in STEM.

“There are still a lot of issues that we need to confront in this industry because it is still very much male-dominated,” she acknowledged. “I know women who feel stuck because men still get first preference, although women qualify. But engineering is not reserved for men only.”