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Unisa PVC honoured with SAASSAP’s 2024 Presidency Lifetime Award
Citing her immense contribution to student affairs and services in higher education, the South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals (SAASSAP) presented its coveted Presidency Lifetime Award for 2024 to Professor Puleng LenkaBula, Unisa Principal and Vice-Chancellor, at a gala event hosted by the University of Fort Hare on 28 September.
Prof Puleng LenkaBula, Unisa Principal and Vice-Chancellor, receiving the SAASSAP 2024 Presidency Lifetime Award from Prof Sibusiso Chalufu, SAASSAP President and Executive Director: Student Life, North-West University (Image credit: SAASSAP)
Formed in 2000 to represent senior student affairs professionals at all universities in South Africa, SAASSAP is a vibrant, context-driven association, and its mission is to articulate, direct, and actualise holistic student growth, development, and success in the South African higher education context by influencing policy and mobilising and leveraging stakeholders, resources, knowledge, and innovation.
Now internationally recognised as one of the brightest stars in the top echelon of higher education leadership, LenkaBula takes her lifelong commitment to student affairs as seriously as she does the other aspects of her role as the first woman to lead Africa’s largest (and oldest) comprehensive open, distance and eLearning (CODeL) higher education institution.
In a storied career, LenkaBula was Executive Dean of Student Affairs at the University of the Witwatersrand. and Vice-Rector (Deputy Vice-Chancellor): Institutional Change, Student Affairs and Community Engagement at the University of the Free State. During her earlier stint at Unisa, first as advisor to the then Principal and Vice-Chancellor, and then as Dean of Student Affairs, she initiated a Student Affairs Week in order to project the dire need for the professionalisation of student affairs activities. LenkaBula instituted 23 multipurpose technology laboratories for students and staff with disabilities at Unisa, a resource shared with other universities spread across all the provinces of South Africa. She also developed an academic-centred student governance support system, internationalising students’ governance participation and impact.
Since taking up the reigns at Unisa, LenkaBula has worked tirelessly to prioritise the holistic well-being of students. Appointed by the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, she co-chairs the national Gender-Based Violence Technical Task Team (GBV TTT). The activities of the task team are informed by the strategic plan of Higher Health, an organisation that emerged in 2019 from the Higher Education and Training HIV and AIDS Programme. The GBV TTT seeks to be the primary instrument for improving students’ success rates and the completion of their studies through enhanced levels of holistic health and psychological well-being.
The SAASSAP 2024 Presidency Lifetime Award is indeed a fitting reflection of LenkaBula’s achievements in providing strategic student affairs leadership, building capacity and sharing knowledge for the benefit of students in accordance with national imperatives and global trends.
* By Philip van der Merwe, Editor, Department of Institutional Advancement
Publish date: 2024/10/02
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