Wednesday 21st March
We spent our second day at the University of Zimbabwe this morning. We met with Mr Kapungu (the chair of the Electrical Engineering department) who explained that courses ran similarly to the University of Cape Town, and that classes were significantly smaller - roughly 35 students per class in 1st year, and 25 students in 4th year. Many lecturers in the department (like in all departments at the university) left Zim from 2006 – 2009 (for economic reasons) and the department is in the process of building up teaching strength once more. They are currently looking for a Power and Machines lecturer, starting in September 2012, for at least a 1 year contract… and offered Leen the job! Pretty cool.
We headed back to Harare, and searched high and low for the Book Café. We learnt that although we were close at several points, the café had closed down and moved several time too. We eventually found it (on the LONG road that Vini advised us to look on first – sorry!) but it only opened at 9pm, so we gave it a skip this time.
On our hunt for the Book Café, while asking for directions, we literally found ourselves standing outside of the Open Learning Center! We walked straight in asking for Mr. Hassan (as Vini recommended), and what a great guy he is. He seemed to be expecting us too, which must have been Vini’s doing too.
Mr Hassan explained that the Open Learning Center was a university that offered mainly postgraduate degrees including MBAs. It uses facilities from other teaching institutions when not in use, and therefore teaches their students on the weekends. The model makes effective use of facilities in Harare, and provides people who work during the week the opportunity to enrol in postgraduate programmes like MBAs.
Mr Hassan described the history of all 13 universities in Zimbabwe – which we soaked up like sponges. Among the list of 13 was an “open university” (distance learning) model called the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU), based in Harare, which is somewhat comparable to UNISA in South Africa. He picked up the phone, called a Mr Kala, and set us up to see him for breakfast at his house at 10am the next morning. He lives only 10km from where we were staying in Highlands.
The strange thing was that Mr. Kala was expecting a “couple from South Africa, one Dutch and the other one American” – Vini, who else have you told about us???? Thanks a million for pushing us to go see these people! Seriously, high five to Vini for all the contacts and having such cool friends!
We spent our second day at the University of Zimbabwe this morning. We met with Mr Kapungu (the chair of the Electrical Engineering department) who explained that courses ran similarly to the University of Cape Town, and that classes were significantly smaller - roughly 35 students per class in 1st year, and 25 students in 4th year. Many lecturers in the department (like in all departments at the university) left Zim from 2006 – 2009 (for economic reasons) and the department is in the process of building up teaching strength once more. They are currently looking for a Power and Machines lecturer, starting in September 2012, for at least a 1 year contract… and offered Leen the job! Pretty cool.
We headed back to Harare, and searched high and low for the Book Café. We learnt that although we were close at several points, the café had closed down and moved several time too. We eventually found it (on the LONG road that Vini advised us to look on first – sorry!) but it only opened at 9pm, so we gave it a skip this time.
On our hunt for the Book Café, while asking for directions, we literally found ourselves standing outside of the Open Learning Center! We walked straight in asking for Mr. Hassan (as Vini recommended), and what a great guy he is. He seemed to be expecting us too, which must have been Vini’s doing too.
Mr Hassan explained that the Open Learning Center was a university that offered mainly postgraduate degrees including MBAs. It uses facilities from other teaching institutions when not in use, and therefore teaches their students on the weekends. The model makes effective use of facilities in Harare, and provides people who work during the week the opportunity to enrol in postgraduate programmes like MBAs.
Mr Hassan described the history of all 13 universities in Zimbabwe – which we soaked up like sponges. Among the list of 13 was an “open university” (distance learning) model called the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU), based in Harare, which is somewhat comparable to UNISA in South Africa. He picked up the phone, called a Mr Kala, and set us up to see him for breakfast at his house at 10am the next morning. He lives only 10km from where we were staying in Highlands.
The strange thing was that Mr. Kala was expecting a “couple from South Africa, one Dutch and the other one American” – Vini, who else have you told about us???? Thanks a million for pushing us to go see these people! Seriously, high five to Vini for all the contacts and having such cool friends!
No comments:
Post a Comment