Unlike many undergraduate, certificate or diploma students, postgraduates often have significant family and are-giving responsibilities; in many cases they are de facto part-time because they also work (whether full or part-time) whether inside the university as lab assistants, library assistants, research assistants, tutors and teaching assistants, or the like, or outside the university. The design and offering of postgraduate support must take all these variables into account.
In my first year at UCT, a lot of focus has been on understanding the varied support services availed to postgraduates from different sectors and levels in the university organisation, whether at programme, department, faculty, campus or institutional level, and by academic staff (such as programme convenors and supervisors), academic managers (like HODs, Deans) or administrative staff and managers (like student affairs or the research office).
The "rainbow iris" of UCT's postgraduate support ecosystem is there to look out for postgraduate students and support them. It was originally developed under my predecessor, Prof Peter Meissner, and the postgraduate communication specialist in the Research Office, Jess Oosthuizen. In the course of 2025 we have revised and expanded the listing of services and created links and brochures, available online and offline, to the different support hubs.
