Community Interaction Projects
All community projects or programmes under the auspices of the University must be registered on the institutional CI database.
"5.7. An electronic institutional CI database is maintained in which all CI activities are uniformly documented and updated for managing, monitoring and co-ordinating purposes. The registration of CI projects is compulsory irrespective of its relation to an academic programme and serves as a requirement for eligibility for any award or financial assistance as well as departmental appraisal."
(Community Interaction Policy 2009)
The Division for Community Interaction takes the responsibility to facilitate the registration of projects. The dean of each Faculty takes the responsibility for the registration of projects managed by staff in departments. Faculty managers will receive support to enable them to give guidance to departments. The Division for Community Interaction makes staff available who can assist with the registration process. Please contact the Division in this respect. Please access the database template to view the kinds of information required.
It is recommended that a coordinator is assigned for each department to oversee the registration of the department's projects. In collaboration with the Stellenbosch Foundation, no financial proposals for work in a community will be accepted unless the project is registered on the database.
In order to be considered a fully registered and approved CI project of the university a project is subjected to an initial approval (quality assurance) process which involves the following steps:
1. The database administrator in the Division for Community Interaction approves the project in terms of completeness of information.
2. The Head of Department approves the project in terms of validity and relevance in the department, ethical compliance and the information contained in the project record.
3. The Dean of the Faculty approves the project in terms of validity and relevance in the faculty, ethical compliance and the information contained in the project record.
Project owners are required to update the details of their project each year on the database to ensure that the information is always relevant and accurate.
Purpose of the Database
- An institutional audit of community interaction activities according to HEQC guidelines
- Management information to enable policy and planning processes
- Accountability in terms of resources allocation and identification of external resource base
- Profiling of individual project focus and accumulative institutional focus
- Promotion of collaboration/coordination
Goals of Database
- To identify projects according to university structure (Faculty/Dept/Person)
- To identify types of community interaction and integration with teaching and research
- To determine interaction with (target groups)and participation of the community
- To contextualize project ito sector in society, impact and functions
- To determine fiscal and human investment
- To determine coordination/collaboration