People Make the Place: Future Proofing Support Staff in Higher Education, a UJ Case Study
Professor Maria Frahm-Arp
Executive Director of the Library and Information Centre,
University of Johannesburg
Professor Maria Frahm-Arp’s presentation examines how universities can effectively bring about development, training and upskilling for support staff within the changing world of contemporary Higher Education. In a future oriented higher education ecosystem university leaders must ensure that all staff are able to continually keep up to date with new technologies and trends in order for support staff to offer the services needed by academics and students.
The research for this presentation is based on a six-year longitudinal case study of the Library at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), South Africa. The research for this presentation was drawn from semi-structured open-ended interviews, minutes of meetings, training and development material, and statistical data of the Library’s performance between 2018 and 2023.
The presentation will outline what interventions the University of Johannesburg Library put in place to re-shape jobs, re-skill staff and strategically plan for the future. It will then examine which interventions worked and which did not and from these findings offer best practices recommendations for administrators and leaders in the higher education sector.
As this research is based on a university in the global south the lessons learnt are directly applicable to the Caribbean context where challenges of decolonization, digital transformation and constrained budgets are often very similar.
Moderator:
Ms. Georgia Alexander,
Librarian,
Alma Jordan Library,
The UWI St. Augustine Campus