November 2010 - University of Johannesburg

{ 9 | AWARDS }DR JOSEF DE BEER SCORESIN HELTASA’S NATIONALAWARDSIn 2009, Higher Education Teaching andLearning South Africa (HELTASA) and theHigher Education Quality Committee(HEQC) of the Council on HigherEducation jointly initiated the NationalExcellence in Teaching and LearningAwards. The objective of the NationalExcellence in Teaching and LearningAwards is to: and learning excellence in highereducation; act as leaders in teaching in disciplines,institutions and regions; and about forms of teaching excellence.Dr Josef de Beer is a senior lecturer in theDepartment of Mathematics, Science,Technology and Computer Educationin the Faculty of Education, and holderof the UJ Vice-Chancellor’s TeachingExcellence Award for 2008. He wasselected as one of four awardees outof a total of 48 nominees from acrossSouth Africa. The awards were presentedduring a gala evening at the HELTASAconference at UJ, with each awardwinnermaking a short presentation ontheir teaching approach.Dr de Beer’s work focuses on pre-serviceteacher education and issues in scienceeducation. With the support of Prof SarahGravett, the Executive Dean of the Facultyof Education, he has also played a role inintroducing the five-day excursion to theGolden Gate Highlands National Park forfirst-year BEd students.INTERNATIONALRECOGNITION FOR UJSOCIOLOGY’S TINA UYSA strong commitment to building thediscipline of sociology has culminatedin substantial recognition for UJ’sProfessor Tina Uys earlier this year whenshe was elected as Vice-President,National Associations of the InternationalSociological Association (ISA) for a fouryearterm commencing from 2010.Prof Uys served on the ISA executivefrom 2006 to 2010 and was president ofthe association’s Research Committee onSocial Psychology from 2002 to 2006. Shesucceeds Prof Michael Burawoy, worldrenownedsociologist from the Universityof California at Berkeley, who has beenelected as president of ISA.It is the first time that an African womanhas been elected to a position of suchstature within the almost 5000-strongorganisation. But this inaugural accoladeis something that Prof Uys can beexpected to take in her stride.She was also the first woman, and still theonly one to have become president ofthe South African Sociological Association(SASA) and is one of only four women tohead a Department of Sociology in highereducation institutions across South Africa.“The fact that someone from the globalSouth holds this position provides anopportunity to challenge metropolitandominance in knowledge production andto widen global understanding of theissues faced by academics in the Southwith regard to knowledge productionand transfer”, Prof Uys comments.NRF PRESIDENT’S AWARDFOR UJ GEOLOGYPROFESSORThe National Research Foundation’s(NRF) prestigious President’s Award hasbeen bestowed upon Prof Nic Beukesfrom UJ’s Department of Geology. ThePresident’s Award celebrates excellence inresearch, and highlights those researchersconsidered by their peers to be worldleaders in their field.Prof Beukes is primarily a field geologist,specialising in sedimentology andstratigraphy, with an emphasis onunderstanding the origin of iron- andmanganese-ore deposits, and thenature of surface environments onearly Earth, which includes the historyof atmospheric oxygen and climatechanges in the middle Archaean to earlyPaleoproterozoic times.He has worked extensively on iron andmanganese formations all over theworld, and has studied the geneticand sequence stratigraphy of thesiliciclastic strata of the Witwatersrandand Pongola basins, depofacies inearly Precambrian carbonate platformsuccessions, early Precambrian lateriteprofiles and paleosols, and the natureof post-Gondwana land surfaces andassociated soil profiles.Prof Beukes was also the 2002 recipientof the Draper Medal, the highestaward bestowed by the GeologicalSociety of South Africa for scientificcontributions in geology. He serveson various national and internationalgeological research committees, andwas fundamental in recognising that theearly Proterozoic sequences containeda set of glacial deposits. These findingshave had a major impact on thinkingabout early climate changes.