Focus and Responsibilities

The general strategy statement of the department is to:

• Create an enabling environment for quality research
• Excel in providing support to develop research capacity
• Streamline and standardise research support processes to improve the quality of research
• Support towards enhancing excellence and visibility of researchers and research programmes

Overview

The main objective of the Directorate is to provide support to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students across the three campuses of the NWU. There are various support and training programmes within the RPS that focus on postgraduate students, emerging researchers, and established researchers at the University. The Directorate also ensures that all researchers at the NWU are informed about funding opportunities available on national and international platforms. In the Research Support area of the Directorate, the programmes include Research Development, Research Quality, Research Grants Management and Research Ethics & Integrity. In the Postgraduate Support leg of the Directorate, the programmes include Higher Degrees Academic Support, Higher Degrees Student Development & Support and Postgraduate Funds Management. 

The services offered by the above programmes include support for Emerging Researchers (postdoctoral fellowships, workshops, training, internships, etc.), Advanced Researchers (mentorship, support towards NRF rating and research chair support), Research Entities Support (applications, upgrading, internal evaluations, external evaluations and monitoring of improvement plans), Management of research grants (managing various funder requirements from national and international funders), Monitoring and Evaluating of Research Ethics committees functionalities and enhance capacity in research ethics and integrity, Research and Creative Outputs Information Management and incentives; support for postgraduate students (skills development, competitions, workshops, research training, etc.) and enhancement of supervisor development and managing of external and international scholarships.

Research and Postgraduate Support Goals

• Enhancing the capacity of researchers and research programmes.
• Management of research grants, incentives, and postgraduate scholarships.
• Monitoring and evaluation of research programmes, funding, outputs, outcomes, and impact.
• Optimisation of the Research and postgraduate support processes and systems.

Our focus for 2025 is on: