Professor Thandwa Mthembu, the Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Technology, Free State, www.cut.ac.za , will deliver the inaugural Kwa-Zulu Natal Dr Richard Maponya Annual Provincial Entrepreneurship Lecture in the evening of the 9th May 2016. The lecture is hosted by the Durban University of Technology (DUT), www.dut.ac.za , in partnership with the Dr Richard Maponya Institute for Skills and Entrepreneurship Development NPC.
For further information contact Shireen Singh atsingh_s@dut.ac.za or Bongani Qwabe at bonganiq@dut.ac.za or Sibongile Mahlangu at sibongile.mahlangu@Maponya-
Professor Thandwa Mthembu was appointed Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT), on 1 January 2007 and is now serving his tenth year in this position. Before then he had been Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Partnerships and Advancement at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, colloquially known as Wits. He has served in senior and executive management positions at South African universities, including the then University of Durban Westville (as Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic and Research) and the then Vista University (as Campus Principal at Welkom) for almost 20 years.
A PhD in mathematics by formal education, he has published mathematics papers in international journals and is co-author of a 100-page monograph entitled: Christoffel Functions and Orthogonal Polynomials for Erdõs Weights. Over the last 21 years he diversified his scholarly interests to include higher education governance and management, social transformation and public intellectualism, areas in which he has written and published in journals, newspapers and magazines and contributed book chapters. His latest publication is a chapter in a book entitled: Strategies for University Management, published by Business Expert Press, New York, in January 2016.
Until recently, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the East African Social Science Research Review, a journal based in East Africa, but catering for both eastern and southern Africa. He was guest editor of a 2012 special journal issue of the South African Journal of Higher Education.
He is the immediate past Chairman of the South African Technology Network (SATN) (2010 – 2013), a network of universities of technology and other innovation focused organisations and agencies in South Africa, including Namibia; he was until recently Chairman of the Steering Committee of Rural University Campus Network Connections (2010-2014), a special ministerial project; until recently, he was Co-Chairman of Higher Education South Africa’s Research and Innovation Strategy Group (2011-2014). In 2010, he was Chairman of the Ministerial Task Team on the establishment of a University in the Mpumalanga province, a national project that has culminated in the establishment of a university in that province as of 2014. He was also a member of the Ministerial Task Team (championed by the then Ministry of Defence) on the National Youth Service (2011). He resigned from all of the positions mentioned above as a result of his sabbatical leave focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship and on which the book chapter mentioned earlier is based.
Internationally, besides representing CUT as a member of many international organisations, he has been the International Association of University President’s (IAUP) Regional Chairman: Southern Africa since 2011.