Welcome to the School of Built Environment and Development Studies (which we affectionately call “SOBEDS”) within the College of Humanities at UKZN. Thank you for visiting our school’s website. SOBEDS is an excellent choice to attain your education and prepare for a successful career. Our school is in the pristine and beautiful Howard College campus in Durban, surrounded by natural beauty (and yes, the ocean). We cannot wait to welcome you on our premises. The past three years have been difficult with Covid-19 pandemic and other natural and man-made disasters impacting our lives in many ways. We stood steadfast and our resolve and commitment to providing quality education was not diminished. As we boldly transition to a somewhat familiar terrain of limited social restrictions and blended learning platforms, let us be cognisant of familiar challenges of how to engage ethically as a university community by rebuilding a culture of respect that is free of violence and that values diversity.

SOBEDS provides exciting educational opportunities for students from all backgrounds and locations. We offer diverse programs of study that prepare students for success in the real world to solve real problems. Our teaching and support staff are dedicated professionals who excel in connecting with students and providing educational experience equal to that of any university. Our success as SoBEDS depends on you and we have prioritised our students and have demonstrated our commitment to them by encouraging them to excel in their studies. We have made a difference in our communities through our award winning, record setting, and robust collection of programs in the built environment and development clusters. We offer high-quality and responsive curricula that explore connections across six unique disciplines (Housing, Town and Regional Planning, Architecture, Development Studies, Population Studies and Community Development), and provide exceptional learning opportunities in a variety of modalities (virtual, online, blended, face-to-face) for professional fields that encourage community engagement and provide practical employment readiness experience. Further, we have been working hard to create exciting partnerships that enhance learning through unique practicum and service-learning experiences. In SoBEDS, teaching and learning, research and community engagement is our priority. We have exceptional undergraduate degrees, honours degrees; postgraduate diplomas; and postgraduate programs with unique curriculum designed to provide rich educational experiences in both development and built environment fields. We boast outstanding academic and professional staff (full time and contract) that are committed to ensuring students have relevant educational experiences to prepare them to meet professional requirements and excel in their chosen professions. Our programs emphasize the integration of theory and practice (work-integrated learning) and experiential learning is a key component of our offerings in the School. We take pride in our collaborative relationships with communities we engage with and organizations that provide placements for community-based learning, practicum and to some extent, field education and inform program development through involvement on community advisory boards.

We continually refine our programs to keep them relevant and seek out opportunities to expand our offerings to reach students coming from historically underserved backgrounds. Through our exceptional teaching and learning teams and champions, research centers, researchers, knowledge hubs, and community engagement strategies we stay connected to industry, communities of practice, alumni, and the community so they can help guide our decisions and map the course for our future.

As Dean and Head of School, I am delighted to serve my second term. I am confident that 2023 and beyond will be exceptional. Our exceptional and diverse group of professionals, both in the academic and professional service sector, will assist in ensuring that we achieve our collective goals. We will continue to be inclusive and strive for justice in the work we do, and we will continue to be inspired by an anti-oppressive transformative praxis that respects diversity and promotes inclusion. Our team of award-winning academics, professional staff and administrators foster a culture of respect, innovation, collaboration and commitment to excellence. In recent times, we have seen a significant increase in throughputs and students exiting the system to enter the world of work. We have also witnessed our staff in the academic sector being recognized by their peers in many ways (i.e. academic promotions, international and national awards, etc), which is a testament of the culture of excellence we have collectively co-created. This is also due to intentional strategies led by academic leaders in the disciplines, our SARCHI chairs, research leaders, and driven by the Dean’s office to provide targeted mentorship programs to postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and emerging permanent academics with financial/in-kind research/teaching opportunities to support their career progression. This ensures that knowledge, resources and ideas are shared, and duplication minimized. This is a very important aspect of our work as our investments to our students and staff contributes to our scholarly teaching with, and for, students.

Our mission is to prepare outstanding students who are emerging in their fields to lead locally and globally through the collaborative teaching practices of our outstanding teaching teams, selective mentorship programmes, inspired learning through community engagement opportunities, and by advancing knowledge through focused and impactful scholarship and research in the areas of informality, inclusivity, and social cohesion. Our mandate as outlined in our School Strategic Plans (2018-2023) and Discipline-specific Transformation Plans (2018-2023) was to provide support to academic staff in increasing third stream income, involvement, and productivity in scholarly teaching, and facilitating intentional scholarship and research. This also increases student participation in research opportunities led by active researchers within the school. Our researchers and scholars have different support needs and we have developed a variety of strategies needed to facilitate the development of research and scholarship skills, successful grant applications, and the dissemination and translation of scholarly work in peer-reviewed publications and meetings. In recent years, we have significantly increased our school’s production units (PUs) and third-stream income generation activities with academics leading and co-leading significant research projects, development of new impactful research centers, and we are proud of being one of a few schools in the university with several DST/NRF SARCHI Chairs, a tradition we will continue for the future. We have also continuously provided endowment-based, sector-focused, and research specific bursaries and scholarships to our students to assist them through their educational journeys. We prepare graduates to access dynamic careers through our innovative programs. To date, we have developed five new Honours programmes (i.e. Development Studies, Population Studies, Town and Regional Planning, Architecture, and Housing) to address access gaps and pathways to employment. We are passionate about providing learning experiences that help them become leaders, mentors, and connected alumni.

Guided by the learnings we gained in our 2021/2022 Project Renewal process as we “reviewed the performance of academic provision, including academic offerings, with the aim of creating ‘better structured programmes/curricula’ that prepared students for the world of work”, several opportunities emerged to implement a winning agenda about “a school we want and deserve for future generations”. In 2023, we will continue the implementation of key strategic goals to shape the direction we would like to take; and how we could contribute to the new 2023-2033 UKZN Strategic Plan. A crucial part of our renewal strategy is nurturing relationships with our students, alumni, communities of practice, friends in the community, and important local, national, and international stakeholders. We not only want to keep you informed about what’s going on in SOBEDS, but we need your ideas and support of what we can improve on.

It’s truly a privilege and a pleasure for me to be leading SOBEDS. I’m energized and excited about the possibilities of what our school has to offer and what we can accomplish together. I am also equally encouraged about what we have accomplished thus far and the many opportunities that await us in 2023 as we nurture our students, develop the capacity of our staff, and serve the community in and around the city of Durban, the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the nation of South Africa, the beloved continent of Africa, and the world at large. Stay up to date with what’s new and exciting in our collective space. Together we can co-create an unmatched educational experience. Thank you for being interested in SoBEDS and for your support.