Polytechnic strategic planning

Only read this if you want to know the nitty-gritty details about the fact that we're doing more in Namibia than looking for oryxes, ostriches, and oysters, oh my!

For better or worse, the Polytechnic is in the midst of strategic planning, their third such process since the institution was founded in 1995. We – especially Alan – find ourselves deeply involved in the process. It is an interesting higher-level perspective to accompany the program-building that we are doing within a single department. But first, a step back:

Namibia – a country of around 2 million with 40,000 high school graduates each year – has two institutions of higher learning. The University of Namibia is based in Windhoek and has satellite campuses (for instance, several agricultural campuses and an engineering campus in the works) throughout the country. UNAM was founded in 1992 but (I think) was mostly renamed from an existing institution. The chancellor of the university is the founding president of the country. And UNAM is widely recognized as being responsible for producing bachelor degrees. The Polytechnic of Namibia, in contrast, is responsible for training technicians. Its schools include Business (6000 of 8000 students), Engineering (where new programs are just starting in biomedical and environmental science, go figure), Communications (largely responsible for making sure all students have functional English skills), Information Technology, and Natural Resources and Tourism. Within the last, there are 4 departments: Agriculture, Nature conservation, Land management (including surveying), and Hotel and tourism management. We are in Agriculture, responsible for helping to develop a new program in Aquaculture and for teaching Non-ruminant Animal Husbandry next term. (Technically, it’s JR’s responsibility, but early on we got permission from the Rector of PoN to job-share, hence AT’s involvement in strategic planning.)

Agriculture currently has 6 faculty (plus a seventh whom we have not met: He was recently hired to teach agribusiness courses but has not arrived due to delays in work permits). Their entering class is about 30 students each year. They offer a 3-year diploma, and, with an additional year or two of distance courses and research project to receive a Bachelor of Technology – we remain pretty uncertain about what constitutes a BTech, which is okay, because it’s being phased out anyway. The faculty are largely trained in agribusiness but very committed to providing students with hands-on training that would allow them to become successful farmers. So the students take a course in building with concrete, electric fences, etc. They also spend one term (out of 6) working on a farm or with some other agriculture-production oriented business. What we are beginning to realize is that the department’s vision of their role in Namibia may be somewhat different than that of the administration (but isn’t that why strategic planning happens – to reconcile those views?). Driven by the administration, Poly is in the process of transforming from a technical college to a university: this involves more than a name change to University of Science and Technology, but also an accreditation process and direct competition with UNAM. Some might say that UNAM doesn’t present much competition, since, for instance, the Fulbright Fellow posted there hasn’t even been given an office after 2 months, and her teaching responsibilities will be guest lectures. Right now, nothing is happening at UNAM because the faculty are on strike for 12% raises. We have heard that BSc preparation out of UNAM does not provide students with equivalent skills as they could acquire at a South African university, where most of the best students in Namibia still go. However, the two institutions certainly compete for resources, and we have heard that Poly gets much less government support than UNAM.

Last year, the Department of Agriculture developed two new curricula, an update to their agriculture programs and a new curriculum in aquaculture. The curricula are matched explicitly to NQF/NQA criteria – these stand for Namibian Qualification something or other – which require that the degrees and each course within the degree contain specific learning objectives. The learning objectives are scored by level (sort of like Bloom’s taxonomy – a course where students learn to identify is at a lower level than one where they have to compare, apply, or evaluate) and by Notional Hours (which incorporate both contact hours and study time on their own). Then, specific numbers of notional hours at specific levels are required for certification as a National Diploma or Bachelor degree. Some of this is very familiar from similar attention to learning objectives at the University of Washington. However, other parts have taken some getting used to: for instance, the degrees proposed for Agriculture Management and Aquaculture Management have no electives – all students in a class take exactly the same 5 courses each term. Also, curricula are being built in the absence of faculty to teach the courses. This is particularly obvious in Aquaculture, where one inspired faculty member read a lot of books to put together a curriculum, which will need to be taught by at least 4 additional people trained in aquatic science or aquaculture.
The curricula proposed by the Department last year passed through the Board of Studies (essentially a “faculty meeting” of everyone in the School) but stalled at the Senate (which consists of upper administration), which requested that the Department develop BSc degrees, in addition to the Diploma. Now, if Poly is to become the University of Science and Technology, it definitely makes sense to have BSc’s. But, the department’s response was to add an additional year of courses to the diploma (courses in agribusiness, marketing, plant production, and animal production – even though students have already had 3 business courses, and 5 taxon-specific production courses) and call it a BSc. Our first contribution to program-building was therefore sort of negative (well, hopefully constructive criticism). We pointed out that the amount of math (accounting), chemistry (1 term), physics (none), and biology (some physiology and ecology in the context of agriculture species and rangeland) did not align well with any other BSc’s with which we were familiar. We suggested that it was not possible to build a BSc on top of a technical diploma (unless students wanted to take all of their physics, organic chemistry, and calculus in the final year, which sounded neither fun nor useful), but a BSc could be developed in parallel, with (gasp) electives, use of courses offered in engineering, and synthetic seminars to help students draw together, say, strands of preparation in genetics and farming. Resistance has been high, on a number of grounds: we have heard that Namibia doesn’t need scientists, that UNAM is charged with producing those sorts of graduates, and that graduates of an agribusiness program at Poly would still be better than UNAM graduates. Okay, well, it is sort of funny to be thinking about what distinguishes a farmer and a scientist (like, the scientist can’t actually grow food), since these are two paths that we’re personally interested in. But, we mostly wonder whether the disparity of vision between administration and department is as high as it now seems – what is the role of this institution, and how can it best contribute to economic development in the country? As scientists, we have seen opportunities for research at every turn, from tracking mountain zebras to understand their competition with cows, to growing salt pond Dunaliella in culture to extract beta-carotene, to more marine ecological issues of top-down vs. bottom-up controls on oyster production. But then again, we’re not asking to be paid to work on scientific questions – it’s a passion, not a 7:30-4:30 job (which reminds me, the culture at Poly definitely emphasizes “seat time” for faculty – definitely not the way we work!). Alan was up past midnight last night learning about boring polychaetes and summer mortality in oysters, which will allow us to avoid taking our research down well-trodden territory. I counted isopods until dark last week to get a first sample of the Paridotea population. But we do wonder how many scientists Namibia could support, with no national funding for research and industries struggling to break even, let alone support research.