Mangosuthu University of Technology’s Senate has continued to strengthen its role as the University’s principal academic governance structure through a second Senate Colloquium held on 3 November 2026, at an event that began on a lighter but purposeful note with an interactive “Senate Mandate or Myth?” team game, which tested Senators’ knowledge of the responsibilities and powers of Senate under the MUT Statute before they moved into the substantive workshop.
The colloquium was deliberately designed not as a talk show or a series of presentations, but as a working session, that gave Senators a chance to engage directly with evidence on student success, progression, throughput, curriculum, enrolment, academic quality, research and postgraduate development. Working in groups, Senators interrogated the evidence, tested possible explanations and developed proposals for the way forward as a preparation for the coming year.
Opening the colloquium, interim Vice-Chancellor and Principal and Chair of Senate, Professor Rushiella Songca, emphasised the importance of Senate exercising its mandate through deeper academic engagement. Professor Songca encouraged Senators to move beyond simply receiving and approving matters placed before them, and to use the opportunity to question the evidence, interrogate underlying issues, and apply collective academic judgement. “Senate must be more than a structure that receives and approves academic matters. It must create space for rigorous engagement with the evidence, ask difficult questions and exercise its collective academic judgement on the issues that affect the quality and future of the University,” Professor Songca said.
Dr Liile Lekena-Bayaga, who facilitated the colloquium on behalf of the Directorate of Institutional Planning and Research (DIPR), explained that the exercise was intended to reconnect the workshop to Senate’s fundamental purpose. “Before asking Senate to interrogate institutional performance, we wanted to test how well we understood our own mandate. We must be clear about what Senate is responsible for before we can decide what Senate should do with the evidence before it.”
The colloquium reflects the broader institutional improvement agenda arising from the Council on Higher Education (CHE) process, particularly the need to strengthen evidence-informed reflection, academic oversight, and the use of institutional data in decision-making.
DIPR plays an important enabling role in this process by bringing together institutional data, planning information and performance trends to support informed academic discussion. Through the MUT at a Glance dashboard, evidence exhibits, longitudinal institutional data and supporting documents, Senators were able to engage directly with patterns across the academic enterprise.
Importantly, the evidence was not presented as providing all the answers. Senators were encouraged to interrogate the underlying information further, draw on relevant policies, academic rules and programme documents, and distinguish between what the evidence demonstrated, and what still required investigation.
The workshop format enabled Senators to delve deeply into matters within their mandate and develop practical proposals on what Senate should require, recommend, refer or continue to monitor. Discussions focused not only on whether targets were being achieved, but on the academic issues behind the numbers, and what institutional action should follow.
This was the second Senate Colloquium of 2026, a demonstration of a growing commitment to creating structured opportunities for Senate to reflect more rigorously on academic performance and institutional evidence.
DVC: Teaching and Learning, Professor Marcus Ramogale, reflected on the importance of translating discussion into sustained academic action. Professor Ramogale also shared encouraging news regarding the reaccreditation of Engineering programmes and a Management Sciences programme, highlighting positive developments in programme quality and academic standards.
Dr Lekena-Bayaga said the next step was to ensure that the discussion does not end with the colloquium. “A Senate decision and action register will be introduced to capture the key proposals and decisions arising from the engagements, identify responsible structures and track progress until matters are completed or formally reported back to Senate,” Dr Lekena-Bayaga said.
In this way, the Senate Colloquium is becoming more than an event. It is part of strengthening a culture of active academic governance, evidence-based decision-making and accountability across the University.