Interview with Education Dean

I interviewed George Euvrard, the dean of education, yesterday. He was extremely helpful and informative. What helped, of course, is that he knew my dad from his high school days. Amazing what help a little personal connection can be. It's something I must bear in mind for the civic mapping. In fact, during the interview, he kept on calling me by my dad's name by accident!

Anyway, Euvrard was very eager to explain the background behind his faculty's corner of the size and shape debate as much as possible, to make sure we didn't get the context wrong. So the information I got from him was rather interesting. It turns out that Naledi Pandor had a meeting with the education faculty last year, where she said she was impressed with Rhodes's quality of training and our throughput, so she wanted us to do more and take on more students.

He also was very transparent about the faculty's future plans for its size and shape. He outlined the whole plan to me as it stands, and invited me to the next faculty board meeting, where the issue would be discussed. It'll be after the deadline for our portfolios, but I may well go anyway, just to make sure the article is as up to date as possible when it gets published in Activate next term.

Another civic mapping issue I've been thinking about a lot lately has been access to the finance administrators. I asked for an interview with the Registrar: Finance, but he's on long leave until July. His secretary referred me to Sandra Stephenson at the Academic Planning office. I don't think she quite understood that I wanted to learn a bit more about the financial side of the size and shape debate in particular. I'm going back to her soon to ask for an interview with the director of the finance division, to talk with him about government funding of the university, and how expanding the university would affect the budget. I hope he'll be willing to talk with me.

We also discussed at our last news agency meeting what kind of students we should interview about the size and shape debate. Luke Reid made the valid point that first-years are quoted too often in Activate, so I've asked a PGCE student and a third-year for comment. That's another thing to note in civic mapping: how more senior students are generally more in tune with how the university works and so are more likely to offer good comment on matters like size and shape.