University of Cape Town

"UCT" redirects here. UCT may also be a misabbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time.

University of Cape Town

Coat of arms of the University of Cape Town
Former names	South African College
Motto	Spes Bona
Motto in English	Good Hope
Type	Public
Established	1st October 1829
Endowment	R2,173.4 million (US$300 million as of 2010)
Chancellor	Graça Machel
Vice-Chancellor	Dr Max Price
Academic staff	1,980
Administrative staff	2,520
Students	23,500
Undergraduates	15,800
Postgraduates	6,700
Location	Cape Town , Western Cape , South Africa 33°57′27″S 18°27′38″E
Campus	4 suburban and 2 urban campuses
Colours	Light blue, Dark blue and White
Nickname	Ikeys
Affiliations	AAU, ACU, CHEC, HESA, IAU, WUN
Mascot	Tiger
Website	www.uct.ac.za
University of Cape Town logo

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.

History

File:University of Cape Town 1930.jpg

University of Cape Town's Groote Schuur campus in 1930

The roots of UCT lie in the establishment of the South African College in 1829 as a school for boys. In 1874 the South African College Schools, teaching up to secondary level, were separated from the College, which prepared students for the examinations of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1918 the South African College was elevated to full university status with the power to award degrees, and renamed the University of Cape Town.

UCT moved to the Groote Schuur Estate campus in 1928. During the apartheid era, roughly 1960-1990, many UCT students consistently opposed apartheid, and the university was a bastion of liberalism. However, the demographics of the university did not begin to change meaningfully until the 1980s and especially the 1990s. 1987 saw frequent clashes between protesting students and police, with reporting of police presence on the campus being censored by the government. On 24 April 1987 the police entered the campus and this marked the first time since 1972 that South Africa's police services had suppressed a demonstration at a white university.

The UCT crest was designed in 1859 by Charles Davidson Bell, Surveyor-General of the Cape Colony at the time. Bell was an accomplished artist who also designed medals and the triangular Cape stamp.

Campus

A view of UCT

The main teaching campus, known as the Upper Campus, is located on the Rhodes Estate on the slopes of Devil's Peak. This campus contains, in a relatively compact site, the faculties of Science, Engineering, Commerce, and Humanities (except for the arts departments), as well as Smuts Hall and Fuller Hall residences. Upper Campus is centered on Jameson Hall, the location for graduation and other ceremonial events, as well as many examinations. The original buildings and layout of Upper Campus were designed by JM Solomon and built between 1928 and 1930. Since that time, many more buildings have been added as the university has grown. Upper Campus is also home to the main library, The Chancellor Oppenheimer library which holds the majority of the University's 1.3 million volume collection.

Contiguous with Upper Campus, but separated from it by university sports fields and the M3 expressway, are the Middle and Lower Campuses. These campuses, which are spread through the suburbs of Rondebosch, Rosebank and Mowbray, contain the Law faculty, the South African College of Music, most of the student residences, most of the university administrative offices, and various sporting facilities. The state of the art artificial grass soccer field has been approved by FIFA for training for World Cup teams. The Upper, Middle and Lower Campuses together are often referred to as the "main campus".

The Faculty of Health Sciences is located on the Medical School campus next to the Groote Schuur Hospital in Observatory. The Fine Arts and Drama departments are located on the Hiddingh Campus in central Cape Town. The University's original building, now known as the Egyptian Building, on the Hiddingh campus, was built in the Egyptian Revival style. The only other campus built in this style was the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia in the United States. The UCT Graduate School of Business is located on the Breakwater Lodge Campus at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.

Hiddingh Hall Library on Hiddingh campus in Gardens Cape Town

Organisation

Jameson Hall and Jammie Plaza, the focal point of the upper campus

The organisation of the University is defined in the Statute of the University of Cape Town, in accordance with the Higher Education Act, 1997. Before 2002, it was defined by a private Act of Parliament.

The titular head of the University is the Chancellor; this is a ceremonial position without executive power. The primary role of the Chancellor is to confer degrees on behalf of the University, and to represent the University to the rest of the world. The current Chancellor is Ms Graça Machel, elected for her first 10-year term in September 1999 and re-elected in May 2010.

The executive head of the University is the Vice-Chancellor (or VC). The VC has the overall responsibility for the policy and administration of the University. The current VC is Dr Max Price, who replaced Professor Njabulo Ndebele on 1 July 2008. The VC is assisted in his task by a number of Deputy Vice-Chancellors (DVCs) who handle specific portfolios. The Registrar is responsible for the academic administration of the University, as well as legal matters, and is secretary to the University Council and Senate.

The Kramer Building, home of the Law Faculty

The academic departments of UCT are divided into six faculties: Commerce, Engineering and the Built Environment, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law, and Science; each faculty is led by a Dean. The multidisciplinary Center for Higher Education Development rates on a level equal to the faculties. Although the Graduate School of Business is considered to be part of the Faculty of Commerce, it is run independently and has its own Dean and Director.

Students and staff

Tugwell and Marquard residence halls

As of 2009, 23,500 students were enrolled, of which 6,700 (28,5%) were postgraduate students. The ratio between male and female students is almost exactly 50:50. Over 50% of the student body is non-white. International students account for 19% of total student enrollment at 4300, representing over 100 countries.

UCT employs approximately 4500 staff members of whom 44% are academic staff, the rest are administrative and support staff. In 2007 UCT had 866 permanent academic staff members. Between 85% and 90% of academic staff hold doctoral or masters qualifications.

Student life

UCT has 36 different sports clubs, including team sports, individual sports, extreme sports and martial arts. The university's sports teams, and in particular the rugby union team, are known as the "Ikey Tigers" or the "Ikeys". The "Ikey" nickname originated in the 1910s as an anti-semitic epithet applied to UCT students by the students of Stellenbosch University, because of the supposed large number of Jewish students at UCT. Stellenbosch is UCT's traditional rugby opponent; an annual "Intervarsity" match is played between the two universities.

There are more than 80 student societies at UCT; these fall generally into five categories:

• Academic societies for those interested in a particular field of study or studying a particular topic: The most prominent of these include the History and Current Affairs Society (HCA), United Nations Association of Southern Africa (UNASA) and Students for Law and Social Justice (SLSJ).
• Political societies, including branches of the youth wings of national political parties such as the South African Students Congress (SASCO), the Democratic Alliance Students Organisation (DASO), and the African National Congress Youth League.
• Religious societies, some of which are associated with religious denominations or local places of worship.
• National/cultural societies for students from particular countries or particular ethnic backgrounds.
• Special interest societies (such as RainbowUCT, the universities LGBTI society) for those interested in various different activities or issues.

In addition to the plethora of student societies, there are several student organisations dedicated to the development of communities surrounding the University in the Cape Metropolitan Area. Some of the biggest include: SHAWCO, Ubunye and RAG. Recently, several students movements have developed, such as the Green Campus Initiative.

Walking on University Avenue north on upper campus

Rankings

See also: Rankings of universities in South Africa and Rankings of business schools in South Africa

The University of Cape Town is the highest ranked African university in the QS World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. It achieved a rank of 156 in the 2011 QS World University Rankings and a rank of 103 in the 2011 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, making it the only African university in the top 200. Within this same ranking UCT was placed in the top 50 in the categories of life sciences and social sciences. UCT's MBA programme was globally ranked at 60 in 2011 by the Financial Times, and was ranked first in the "value for money" category. In addition to this, The University of Cape Town was placed as the second best business school in Africa and the Middle East in the 2010 QS Global 200 Business Schools Report. The University also achieved a rank of 141 - 145 in the Russian based Global Universities Ranking in 2011 AcademyRank.com also ranked the university first in africa , however it was placed 515 world wide based on data mined from the Internet objectivly.

Affiliations

UCT is a member of the Worldwide Universities Network, the Association of African Universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Cape Higher Education Consortium, Higher Education South Africa, and the International Association of Universities.

Notable alumni

J. M. Coetzee, twice awarded the Booker Prize and awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, did his undergraduate studies in Mathematics and got a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cape Town.

Main article: List of Notable Alumni of the University of Cape Town

Five of the University's graduates have become Nobel Laureates:

• Ralph Bunche, American political scientist and diplomat awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his role in the 1949 Armistice Agreements.
• Max Theiler, virologist awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever.
• Professor Allan McLeod Cormack (Medicine, 1979)
• Sir Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 1982)
• Professor Emeritus J. M. Coetzee (Literature, 2003)

Notable staff

• Cosmologist George Ellis, collaborator with Stephen Hawking and winner of the 2004 Templeton Prize, Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics.
• Author Andre Brink, professor in the English Language and Literature Department.
• Author Breyten Breytenbach, visiting professor in the Graduate School of Humanities from January 2000.
• Professor David H. M. Brooks (1950-1996), author of On living in an Unjust Society and The Unity of the Mind.
• Helen Zille, former Mayor of Cape Town and current Premier of the Western Cape, former Director of Public Relations for the university.

Notable research

• Africa Earth Observatory Network [(AEON)] http://www.aeon.uct.ac.za , an Earth Science initiative aiming to promote Earth Stewardship through science, with partners in Germany and France.
• The Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics is an international centre for research in the fields of cosmology and topology.
• The Centre for Rhetoric Studies, the only one of its kind on the African Continent (director: Philippe-Joseph Salazar).
• The Department of Physics is home to the UCT-CERN research centre, which is partially responsible for the software design of the High Level Trigger component of the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, as well as other activities related to ALICE.
• The Department of Electrical Engineering is involved in the development of technology for the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT). KAT is a precursor to the Square Kilometer Array, a proposed International project to build the world's largest radio telescope by 2020. Research groups in RF design and digital design contribute to the RF front-end and digital back-end of the KAT project.
• The Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine [(IIDMM)] http://www.uct.ac.za/depts/iidmm is engaged in research on candidate tuberculosis vaccines, and is developing candidate HIV vaccines matched to the South African epidemic.
• The MRC/UCT Medical Imaging Research Unit [(MIRU)] http://www.miru.uct.ac.za, inspired by the work of alumnus Allan McLeod Cormack who won a Nobel Prize for the CAT-scanner, studies brain and cardiac function and develops diagnostic imaging tools, one of which has led to the spinout of CapeRay.

See also

• Centre for Curating the Archive
• List of universities in South Africa
• Education in South Africa
• Chancellor of the University of Cape Town

References

• Statute of the University of Cape Town, Government Notice No. 1199, 20 September 2002.

External links

• UCT website
• Southern African University
• UCT OpenContent - Open Educational Resource website