UCT has had a support programme in Computer Science for disadvantaged students for a number of years. The initial idea was to accept black students that fall outside the normal admissions criteria (mathematics being a particular stumbling block) and provide them with extra academic support and funding from industry. They were allowed prepare for the second year of Computer Science over a period of two years. I believe this programme must now be replaced. This is for a number of reasons that arise from our experience: the University as a whole is changing to provide better support for underprepared students. We can better employ our financial and academic resources to support black students into the research preparation programmes (honours and masters). The key requirement is for more black students at higher levels. We shall be introducing this approach this year with the new programme fully operational in 1998.
In supporting disadvantaged students we have initiated a two-year honours option for students coming into our honours programme from other universities if it was felt that their preparation would not allow them to complete our rather demanding programme. In particular we find that students from some other universities do not have the basic technical skills to complete assignments. This has been running for 3 years now.
Our main partnership in this regard has been with the Department of Computer Science at the University of the Western Cape. This includes co-supervision of black academics and lecturing on topics in Human-Computer Interaction to honours students at UWC.
Our research in co-operative data visualization has been undertaken jointly with UWC. The pilot investigation is to develop an on-line distributed tutoring system for the third year graphics course. This will allow us to support UWC students in their practical work once we start our joint graphics and visualization courses.
In the past we have very effectively employed CapeTek students on Manufacturing Visualization research as part of their outside vocational training. The feedback from the technikon students on this was very positive.
The most significant contribution so far to capacity building for research in computer science has been the launching and the advocacy of the Cape Regional Visualization Facility (CapeRVF). This initiative is an active partnership of UWC and Stellenbosch.
We have identified the lack of up to date research equipment as one of the key stumbling blocks in building research capacity in Computer Science. Almost equal in importance to providing the equipment is to ensure that there is adequate support for its use in all institutions. Our strategy to achieve this has been to propose a distributed facility.
Modern computer networks (such as the Cape Metropolitan Area Network) have very high bandwidth and allows one to overcome geographical barriers to development. Equipment can be equally shared by widely distributed partners and support can be given to users via the same network.
The setting up of the Cape Regional Visualization Facility will, if it comes off, provide sophisticated visualization infrastructure not only to all the tertiary institutions of the Western Cape, but also to local industry, small business, and the wider community (for example, via the South African Planetarium). Spin-offs from the project are expected to include support for distance education and remote health care (in support of the latter we have already conducted a proof of concept demonstration with Prof Beningfield of the Department of Radiology at the UCT medical school).
The CapeRVF initially attracted funding for a feasibility study, after the success there have been a number of delays due to uncertainty and underfunding at the FRD. In 1996 we were awarded R300 000 seed money, together with a contribution of R90 000 from UCT and a very generous in kind contribution from Silicon Graphics South Africa we were able to purchase a four processor R4400 Onyx graphics supercomputer. We are currently negotiating with industry partners to further multiply the effectiveness of the admittedly small grant by mobilizing THRIP funding from the Department of Trade and Industry.
Once it is established, and together with the other support initiatives outlined above, I believe we will have a very effective regional research co-operation scheme in the Western Cape.