Pretoria - Unisa has won an award in the category of Excellence for Research Impact at the 2022 Zairi International Awards for Excellence in Higher Education ceremony held in Dubai.
The university was among the 90 applications received from 52 countries across the world.
“This recognition affirms our commitment to cutting-edge research and scholarship, which is also one of the key pillars of our vision to become a centre of excellence and success, but also a lever of optimum participation in the global knowledge arena.”
Principal and Vice Chancellor Professor Puleng LenkaBula said she knew that some of the public perceptions were that Unisa was losing its position as a centre of academic excellence.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to assure all stakeholders that we remain a leader in many academic fields, and our academic programmes and qualifications are fully certified by the Council on Higher Education and recognised by other international quality assurance bodies across the world.”
She said they remained committed to their mandate and vision to position Unisa as an academic centre of excellence that produces outstanding research and quality graduates for local, continental and global economies. The university has experienced a steady improvement in global rankings, including the Shanghai Rankings and other significant rankings, she said.
Unisa improved its overall ranking in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking to joint position 948.
“In the Times Higher Education Emerging Economies Ranking for 2022, Unisa improved its position to joint 237th out of 698 institutions in the second quartile overall.”
Among African universities ranked, Unisa achieved 30th position out of the 71 ranked African universities.
In the US Best Global Universities, Unisa achieved joint 851st position out of 1 750 universities and scored in the third quartile overall.
The award recognises higher education institutions which distinguish themselves through engaging in groundbreaking research that addresses real world challenges whether social, economic, political, cultural or other, and that has made a meaningful impact in communities or had significant impact on the field/discipline.
The selection criteria for the award included research priorities and strategy, research culture and leadership, impact and results, and research partnerships and collaborations.
Unisa said they also get invitations to participate in history and life-changing research work on the continent and elsewhere.
“Recently, we were invited to partner with the African BioGenome Project, a co-ordinated pan-African effort to build capacity (and infrastructure) to generate, analyse and deploy genomics data for the improvement and sustainable use of biodiversity and agriculture across Africa.”
Pretoria News