Jayshree Thakrar

Director: Community Engagement University of Fort Hare

E-Mail : jthakrar@ufh.ac.za

Ph. No. : +27 (0)73 240 2964 (mobile)

In September 2009, Jayshree was appointed as the Director: Community Engagement, reporting to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Jayshree joined the University of Fort Hare (UFH) in 2002, where she has held various positions in the Faculty of Management & Commerce, the Quality Management & Assurance Unit, and since 2006, in the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, where for 50% of her time, she project managed the development of the self-evaluation portfolio required for the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) Institutional Audit and subsequently the development of UFH’s new Strategic Plan, 2009 – 2016. For the other 50% Jayshree headed up the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project in the Faculty of Education. Working with 9 African countries the TESSA initiative resulted in the collaborative development of Open Educational Resources, customised to each country context, and currently translated into four languages, aimed at teacher development and the improvement of classroom practice (see www.tessafrica.net). Jayshree (on the left) chatting to a Jayshree’s roles and responsibilities have been both diverse and student representative on the finer institution-wide. These have included, amongst others, curriculum points of the UFH Strategic Plan design and development; training and lecturing; policy development and process re-engineering; strategic planning facilitation and development; training materials design and development; conference presentations; research publication; hosting seminars and conferences; internal and external consultancies; financial, people and project management. Jayshree’s career has thus far taken a number of trajectories, starting in the mid 1980s (her first career) as an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand, UK (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers). In the early 1990s Jayshree’s career took a new path when, having qualified as a teacher at the Metropolitan University of Manchester, UK, she taught in France, India and Namibia. She then joined the international NGO sector which combined her education and financial skills, working on a project that involved living in various countries in Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. Since joining UFH, Jayshree has completed her Masters in Education (University of Witwatersrand) and is currently registered for a PhD. Her current research interests are in education and local economic development.