Our Vision

Towards a transformed Stellenbosch University community that celebrates diversity and is committed to a positive impact on society.

Mission

To be a multi-facet driver of institutional culture strategies at Stellenbosch University in maximising the University’s impact and fulfill its commitment to create inclusive and diverse experiences that would allow students and staff to unleash their full potential.

Core Functions

The core functions of the Centre in terms of Social Impact and Transformation are the following:

1. Management: strategy, policy and governance

The role of this function is to facilitate the review and the development of the Transformation and the Social Impact policies respectively; to provide the strategic direction for the Centre, which includes strategy and the provision and distribution of resources; and to ensure the efficiency of the implementation of both policies and the strategic plan within the institution.

2. Training and development

This function aims to encourage and enable SU staff and students to undertake Social Impact and Transformation initiatives in faculties and responsibility centres/ divisions. Social Impact and Transformation theories and best practices are used to assist in developing and designing programmes and opportunities for curricular and co-curricular work. Participants are oriented in terms of engaged scholarship, engaged citizenship, (Social Impact Draft Policy, 2024) and the transformation agenda and approach for SU and its connections.

3. Knowledge exchange and Scholarship

This function facilitates and supports engaged scholarship, which includes engaged research and engaged teaching and learning (Social Impact Draft Policy, 2024) This is done through capacity building workshops for academic staff and senior postgraduate students, on the principles and practice of engaged scholarship, peer to peer learning, case studies, knowledge exchange, funding opportunities, consulting, proposal development, faculty support and reviewing.

4. Partnerships and Engagements

This function supports and facilitates the quintuple helix approach. The Quintuple Helix model expands on the quadruple helix model (Social Impact Draft Policy, 2024) which emphasizes knowledge democracy, by adding an environmental emphasis as critical drivers for knowledge creation and innovation. It focusses on university- industry- government relations, including media- and culture- based public and civil society and the environment (Carayannis, Barth & Campbell, 2012). This is done through building and maintaining relationships, with the aim of facilitating collaborations around shared interests.

5. Communications and Marketing

The role of this function is to develop, implement and execute a cross-cutting and integrated communications and marketing strategy, that profiles Social Impact and Transformation at SU.

6. Reporting, monitoring and evaluation

The role of this function is researching best practices, criteria, discerning between what needs to be monitored, evaluated and what needs to be shared and reported to whom, benchmarking, review and what needs to change, can be built into programme, competencies built into course, comparative analyses, baseline assessment, feedback to and from partners.

These core functions are supported by a cross-cutting Operations and Administration function that provides administrative and financial support to the CASIT with institutional facilities.