Posted on by mamothena

Reflections from the liminal stage

I am typing this sitting among a pile of boxes and rubbish, as I prepare to move to another house. Life is changing yet again, and I have to find time to keep doing the important things – such as, meeting my deadline for this blog. Try moving in the middle of the week and still have to coordinate getting the kids to school, making sure their uniform is ironed and lunch made. This morning I had mini panic attack thinking I packed my youngest’s school bag in with one of the sealed boxes. It’s crazy!

I am hoping that someday soon I can have a house of my own that I will never need to move away from. We all dream of this stable future devoid of inconveniences. It is perhaps how we assume that things will be, once we finish our PhDs. But I have a sneaky suspicion that maybe things won’t change after all. Maybe it will even get worse, considering how stressed-out academics are always saying they are? Being on the doorstep of change, as I am, is anxiety inducing. Not a student and not yet a scholar/academic. This is what Abram and Ibrahim (2012) say about the liminal stage that is PhD candidacy, ““The PhD journey, like foreign travel, involves the exploration of unknown territories and encounters with unfamiliar cultures. The experience is as much emotional as cognitive, and aspects of the journey may be exhilarating, frightening, puzzling, stimulating, exhausting or tedious.” I find that this description fits being a parent to little kids as well. And I am doing both at the moment. Wouldn’t it be nice to try and figure out only one critical thing at a time? 🙂

I am at the end of my third year. Thank God that there haven’t been any catastrophic events with my PhD studies so far. I’ve had challenges, but none of the horror stories you sometimes read about on the internet. In the coming year I have to be dynamic and pragmatic, as things haven’t always turned out as planned. (Both in my personal and academic life.) And because I have to start looking towards the future, that means I have to spare time to build my skills and look for possible employment. No more selfishly dedicating all of my time to my studies, and the occasional conference or supervision of Masters’ students.

I’m just a little bit stressed! How will I balance analysis, writing up, and engaging in work opportunities? I am looking beyond the exhilaration of the past three years, when I gained new skills, learned new methodologies, articulated brand new concepts. I am leveraging the sense of growth I feel to weather the frightening experiences, such as financial insecurities (with a family to feed!). I also use that sense of growth to weather the fatigue of doing nothing but study in the past three years. The exhaustion that comes with having to run the last mile. I do feel that there is something exciting on the horizon but I know that it will probably be more difficult before it gets easy. Hopefully I have laid a good foundation in the past three years.

My PhD experience has been the quintessential rite of passage, where “the individual [is] neither one thing nor another, but betwixt and between. …In managing the peaks and troughs of research, many students battle with moments of fear, inferiority, darkness and invisibility. They not only deal with emotional challenges, stressful situations, confusion, lack of moral, theoretical and methodological support, but they also juggle with too many responsibilities, identity crises and demands, either from their families, their institutions or their sponsors.” But there are many good days. Lots of achievements and milestones on the way. Right now I am feeling hopeful and calm regarding my PhD, and I wish I could wrap this feeling up for some of the tougher days. Of course if I come out the other end feeling as I feel now, I will 100% recommend a PhD to all my friends. 😉

Posted on by Loosely Translated

What is at the Centre of Excellence?

In 2004, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) with the National Research Foundation (NRF) established the first seven Centres of Excellence (CoE). These Centres, based on the successful CoE models implemented overseas, were adopted to build on existing capacity and resources but also aimed to bring researchers together to collaborate across disciplines and institutions to drive science excellence.

I joined the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)–the host institution of the Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB)–in 2008 when I started my Honours degree. At the beginning on my Honours, I didn’t quite understand what the Centre of Excellence was or why it even existed. How “excellent” was this programme? Was there a need for tree health research in South Africa? I was really only concerned about doing well and learning as much as I could so that I would be a better candidate for a Master’s. But my eyes have opened up since then.

Between my classes and research project, I was encouraged to get more involved in the CoE’s activities by volunteering to be a mentor for the undergraduate mentorship programme, working in the Diagnostic Clinic (which services both the CTHB and TPCP), attending workshops run by Dr Marin Coetzee, who conducts some of his research in the CoE, and so on. The CTHB–true to the purpose of the Centres–made more room for excellence; more postgraduates could complete their studies through FABI, more essential equipment could be bought, research could include other sectors and not threaten industry-specific funding, opportunities through workshops and collaboration started to grow, leveraging funding and excellence became more important, etc. The CTHB – a virtual centre run through FABI – became a critical part of FABI and because of that, the CTHB absorbed some of its excellence, built on it and delivered its own excellence.

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The TPCP began at the University of the Free State before moving to the University of Pretoria, where it became the founding programme for FABI. The TPCP helped start a number of other research programmes that are run out of FABI.  The CTHB started at FABI in 2004 and has linked a number of institutions to FABI and the University of Pretoria. 

I experienced how research can truly grow and have international reach. As the CoE’s research net widened, we started to identify more and more problems of concern to plant health in South Africa—many of them brought on by climate change and globalization. Because of the limited capacity in the country, back in 2004 to deal with pest and diseases that were arriving from other parts of the world, the importance of national and international collaborations and knowledge exchange became a priority. These close connections–that are still being built and expanded today–have led to growth in South Africa’s capacity; not just around FABI but at all the institutions linked to the CTHB. In 14 years, the CoE has produced 786 publications, 125 students, and really changed the ways in which we understand diseases of our native plants.

As a student associated with a CoE, I have had better opportunities for funding, wonderful teaching, mentorship, collaboration, and international exposure. Like those that have come before me, I plan to contribute to the science excellence in the country and grow more excellent people. No matter what happens to these Centres in future, as funding continues to dry up, we need to remember to keep excellence at the centre of anything we do—for us, for our country and for the world.