Faculty and support unit coordinators are hard at work ensuring that it’s all systems go for the much anticipated virtual site visit by the national review for doctoral qualifications panel.

The panel, under the authority of the Council on Higher Education (CHE), aims to measure the extent to which institutional strategies, policies, protocols, and procedures for postgraduate study meet the Doctoral Qualification Standard for both public and private higher education institutions.

The virtual site visit is scheduled for 19 to 22 October.

The National Review of Doctoral Qualifications Institutional Coordinator at CPUT, Dr Siyanda Makaula, says a national review is a quality enhancement exercise, which provides the University with an opportunity to be evaluated by external doctoral education experts in order to ascertain the extent to which the institution meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the CHE's national doctoral qualification standard.

“This exercise will help us improve in areas that would have been identified by the review panel to be in need of improvement while providing us with an opportunity to demonstrate significant improvements that took place in our doctoral education environment in the past few years,” Makaula explains.

The preparations include electronic evidence files and video clips on a virtual tour of facilities for doctoral students. All participants (including doctoral students, supervisors, examiners, alumni, and many more) have been invited and informed about the doctoral review site visit.  Makaula says the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Chris Nhlapo, and executive management have given them tremendous support.

“All hands are on deck and we are ready to take off. We welcome the national review; we welcome the CHE review panel to CPUT. We are looking forward to a review panel report that will give a critical impression of CPUT's quality of doctoral provision,” he remarks.

During the launch of the institutional CHE review of doctoral qualifications last year, Nhlapo said the University was proud of the research and postgraduate brand “we have created what CPUT has achieved in this short time”.  He said the institution has seven focus areas for applied research: climate change and environment, space science and technology, economic growth and international competitiveness, design for sustainability, human and social dynamics, energy, bio-economy, and biotechnology.

“To date, we have the proud achievement of launching two satellites and setting up our own company, Amaya Space, the first black-owned space technology company,” he said.

Furthermore, in April this year, CPUT submitted the institutional Self Evaluation Report (SER) to CHE based on the Faculty Self Evaluation reports that were all consolidated to one institutional SER. The report reflected the status of doctoral qualification in the institution that pointed out some acceptable practices and facilities available to support students in achieving their qualification.

With this, it is required by CHE to provide all evidence of acceptable practices and resources available to support students. Faculty coordinators have been approached to make evidence readily available during the time of the review.

Written by Aphiwe Boyce
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A PhD candidate at the SA Medical Research Council/CPUT Cardiometabolic Health Research Unit recently attended the 24th International Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine.

Dipuo Motshwari said she was awarded a travel bursary by the African Federation of Clinical Chemistry (AFCC) to attend the congress, which was held in Seoul, South Korea.

She said she learnt about the call for the application of the travel grant through the AFCC president, Prof Rajiv Erasmus, and decided to apply.

Motshwari said she was grateful for the opportunity to have attended the prestigious congress.

“I had the opportunity to learn, unlearn and re-learn from research peers and well-established researchers in the field and this wouldn’t have been possible via virtual means.”

She said the congress was initially scheduled to take place in May 2020 but due to the Covid-19 pandemic was moved to 2021 and then to this year.

“The IFCC young scientists forum was the highlight of the whole congress for me. It included a lot of interactive, informative and encouraging discussions among young researchers and gave us an opportunity to form a network amongst ourselves. The main congress also gave us access to leading laboratory medicine experts from all over the world, who shared their invaluable knowledge.”

Her research field of interest is molecular biology and non-communicable diseases. Motshwari joined the research unit in 2019 when she started her PhD in Biomedical Sciences under the supervision of Prof Tandi Matsha.

“My initial PhD project was based on ‘Investigating the level of DNA Methylation in hypertensive and normotensive mixed ancestry subjects of Bellville South, Western Cape’. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I could not carry out my laboratory analyses for the project and as a result in May 2020 I started a new project titled: Small non-coding RNA profiles in chronic kidney disease in the general population and high-risk subgroups (with hypertension and/or diabetes mellitus) in a South African community-based cohort, under the supervision of Professor Tandi E Matsha and Dr Cindy George (a senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council.”

She has since published three first-author manuscripts in peer reviewed journals, which form part of her thesis.

Motshwari has also contributed to the writing of a book chapter titled “Glycated albumin, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease” where she wrote on the limitations of HbA1c as a marker for glycaemic control monitoring in diabetes individuals with severe stages of chronic kidney disease and alternative markers that can be used instead.

She recently submitted her PhD thesis for examination.

Motshwari also works part-time as a retention officer for the Faculty of Health and Wellness Sciences.

She grew up in a family of six and was born and raised in Morebeng (formerly known as Soekmekaar) a small rural town in Limpopo.

“I matriculated in the year 2011 and went to study towards a BSc in Medical Sciences at the University of Limpopo from 2012 to 2015, and during the course of my studies I was funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). My passion for research developed in 2015 when I was doing my Honours year, specialising in chemical pathology at the University of Limpopo.”

She thanked her supervisor, the AFCC president and her colleagues from the Cardiometabolic Health Research Unit for their support.

Written by Ilse Fredericks
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.