Stellenbosch University
Welcome to Stellenbosch University
International collaborations reap fruits for SU and its partners
Author: Janka Pieper and Lynne Rippenaar-Moses
Published: 10/04/2018

Northwestern University's relationship with Stellenbosch University is a flagship example of strategic collaborations and partnership building

It may be cliché, but it's true: The world is a small place.

On a sunny afternoon in 2004, thousands of miles away from Northwestern's campus, Dévora Grynspan entered the office of the Political Science Chair at Stellenbosch University (SU) in South Africa. It was then that Grynspan saw a familiar face, Prof Amanda Gouws, a former PhD student from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Grynspan had taught Latin American politics from 1986 to 1998.

In her role as director of Northwestern's former Office of International Program Development, Grynspan had traveled to Stellenbosch to set up a customised Study Abroad programme for Northwestern undergraduate students. And so, she did—with the help of the graduate student she had taught 20 years prior in Illinois.

 “Amanda was the main person at Stellenbosch University who helped create our unique program from the beginning, and she is still heavily involved," says Grynspan, who is now Vice President for International Relations. “The programme wouldn't be what it is today without all her hard work and input."

Gouws wears many hats. Along with her role as , now a Professor of Political Science and the SARChI Chair in Gender Politics at SU, she is a widely known activist and published academic in women's rights and representation. Gouws and a colleague also wrote the first sexual harassment policy for SU in 1994 and established a Women's Forum examining the conditions of employment for women. She was also the first woman on the appointments committee. In addition, she has served as a commissioner for the South African Commission for Gender Equality from 2012 to 2014 and in 2016, received the SARChI Chair, an academic position that, until recently, had been given to very few women.

Through Gouws' relationship with Northwestern, her work's impact has reached far beyond the borders of South Africa.

“While I anticipated I would become a stronger advocate for non-dominant races and ethnicities—and you bet I did—I didn't anticipate becoming so much more passionate about women's rights and feminism during my time in South Africa," says Kathleen Clark, who studied abroad in South Africa this past spring and met with Gouws while in Evanston. 

“For that, I owe a lot of thanks to Professor Gouws. She is an example of both career and personal excellence, all while fighting tirelessly for other women and yet retaining her infectious sense of humor."

Over the years, the exceptionally successful study abroad programme has sent close to 230 students from Northwestern to Stellenbosch for a unique experience in global health—to learn about everything from the public health system and its most pressing challenges to South Africa's unique historical and political context.

Since that meeting 13 years ago, Grynspan and Gouws, together with Programme Director Jacob Du Plessis and other dedicated faculty and administrators at Northwestern and SU, have built a unique, multi-faceted partnership, spanning several study abroad programmes, various research collaborations among faculty and students, and new curriculum development initiatives.

The first group of 16 Northwestern undergraduate students went on to study Public Health in the South African programme in 2005. As Grynspan and Gouws collaborated through the years, the curriculum shifted and improved. By 2008, a track on diversity and democracy in South Africa was added, and by 2012, both tracks were combined to form one programme.

“The aim was to make the students more familiar with the South African context," says Gouws.

“At the time we started, South Africa was still struggling to bring the very high levels of AIDS infection down. Putting a strong emphasis on the health epidemic was important, as we were trying to understand it in its sociopolitical context in an African country," she adds.

“So we decided that we would teach students about South African politics, as well."

Now called Public Health and Development in South Africa, the quarter-long programme offers students in-classroom instruction with pre-eminent guest lecturers and practitioners, along with site visits to local health clinics, community organisations, museums, and important historical sites.

The highlight of the program is an excursion to South Africa's oasis of natural wildlife, Kruger National Park. For four days, Northwestern students immerse themselves in the natural beauty of the park. They then travel to Hamakuya, a rural village in northern South Africa, where students stay with local villagers, learn from traditional communities, and participate in a water insecurity study. The trip, led by noted scientist and Northwestern alumnus David Bunn, culminates in a candlelit dinner on the banks of the Olifants River.

“By being in a space where one is challenged by silence and where one's sense of time is so different compared to life in Evanston, many students can observe how a simplified life could be so meaningful to those living in remote rural villages—irrespective of initial impressions of poverty and inequality," says Du Plessis, a Lecturer in Sociology at SU who has served as Programme Director for over a decade.

“A shift in thinking occurs through embodied experiences and engaging others within their own space and on their terms. What might seem strange becomes often familiar, while the familiar might feel strange or even wrong for some students who return home at the end of the programme," he says.

For many Northwestern students who have studied at SU since the programme's inception in 2005, it was more than just a study trip abroad. Northwestern alumna Kalindi Shah, who participated in the programme in 2012, has had time to reflect on her transformative time abroad. “With passionate, world-class faculty leading us, we dove headfirst into the rich, diverse experiences Stellenbosch had to offer—whether it was learning about Julius Malema during a lecture or developing a sexual health curriculum for an NGO," she remembers. “Altogether, it was a beautifully life-changing experience."

Building on the success of the undergraduate Public Health programme, Grynspan has since collaborated with Northwestern faculty and administrators across several disciplines to establish additional opportunities in South Africa.

MEDICAL, ENGINEERING AND EXCHANGE STUDY ABROAD OPPORTUNITIES ADDED

In 2008, the Feinberg School of Medicine developed a medical student exchange with Stellenbosch University Medical School at Tygerberg Hospital, Stellenbosch's affiliated teaching hospital. By June 2018, 99 fourth-year medical students will have completed four-to-six-week-long rotations in South Africa.

In 2016, the two universities added an undergraduate exchange programme to provide students from both institutions the opportunity for a more immersive academic and cultural experience. So far, two SU students have spent one quarter each at Northwestern, and one Northwestern student has participated in the exchange in South Africa. To make the exchange programme accessible to all SU students, Northwestern covers the cost of room and board and health insurance.

This year, another undergraduate study abroad programme was added to the partnership: Global Healthcare Technologies.

“The program allows engineering students to gain a hands-on, immersive experience by working directly with South Africans to design technologies to improve health outcomes," says Karey Fuhs from the Office of Undergraduate Learning Abroad, who has overseen the programme since 2010 and assisted in transitioning the programme from the University of Cape Town.

“Stellenbosch University is a great partner for this programme, given their strong engineering faculty, community and industry connections, international programs infrastructure, and our already existing strong relationship," she says.

This winter quarter, a total of 16 engineering students participated in this programme, developed jointly by Northwestern Biomedical Engineering Professors Matthew Glucksberg and David Kelso, and colleagues from South Africa.

NEW CONNECTIONS WITH STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY

International partnerships provide a multitude of possibilities not just for students, but also for faculty and scholars. One such example is the three-and-a half-year, $1 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant awarded to Northwestern in 2016 to support new inter-university teaching cooperations in conjunction with a $1.5  million grant awarded by the Mellon Foundation to the University of California, Berkeley, to establish—in cooperation with  colleagues from a number of universities—the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) .

“The purpose of the consortium is to internationalise critical theory," says Evan Mwangi, Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at Northwestern. “It is mainly to change how we do critical theory in the West, because critical theory is usually seen as Western philosophical thought, and we're trying to change that to include perspectives from the global south—Africa and Latin America."

With the first year of the ICCTP already underway, Northwestern is currently running several projects as part of the Critical Theory in the Global South Project, involving Stellenbosch and several institutions around the world. One of these projects is the Indian Ocean Epistemologies, led by Mwangi and his colleague Dr Tina Steiner, Professor of English at SU. The two are in charge of developing a course on Indian Ocean epistemologies, translating Xhosa travelogues to India into English, and publishing scholarly articles in a special issue of the Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies journal.

For Mwangi, Stellenbosch's geographic location and expertise in the field makes the university an excellent partner. By being able to spend time in South Africa this past March, Mwangi was able to immerse himself into the South African culture to better understand the Indian Ocean concept in all its facets.

“African culture is very oral," he says. “Many ideas and narratives about the Indian Ocean are communicated verbally through storytelling or folklore, without ever getting published. You have to go and have conversations with the African people and learn from them."

Bringing South African fellows and professors to Northwestern as part of the project also allows Northwestern students and researchers to get insights into different perspectives and a deeper understanding of the topic at their home campus. This past year, doctoral student Serah Namulisa Kasembeli from SU spent six months at Northwestern as part of the project, using Northwestern's rich Africana library collection to conduct research on African critical theory.

This type of reciprocal global relationship building is a continuous central effort of Northwestern University.

“Increasing this type of exchange on all levels and across disciplines to internationalise the campus, the curriculum, and students and faculty is crucial for a global university of our caliber," says Grynspan.

“As with most partnerships, we want to encourage faculty to go to South Africa to meet their counterparts and engage in collaborations," she says. “And we want to bring faculty and scholars here, as well."

Photo:  Stellenbosch University Prof Amanda Gouws (in the bakkie on the right) and scientist Prof David Bunn (in the bakkie on the left) took Northwestern University students on a 4-day excursion in the Kruger National Park in 2015. Bunn, who has worked in the Kruger National Park for many years of his career, gave lectures on the ecology, wild life and the history of the park in order to expose students to the natural surroundings of the animals living in the park.