In the lead up to International Women's Day on 8 March, we are profiling some of the women involved in EU projects in South Africa who make a difference in their communities.
Last year Merle Hodges was selected as one of the top ten South African Women in Higher Education and when you hear her story it's not difficult to see why. Director of the Office of International Affairs at the Cape Peninsular University of Technology (CPUT) and joint coordinator of the EU's Erasmus Mundus Programme, Merle's love affair has really always been with science.
"I went to a poor farm school with multi-grade classes," she says, "My father was a teacher and my mother was a cleaner. My father passed away when I was 12 years old and my mother decided she didn't want her three daughters to end up as cleaners as well so she made sure we stayed in school". In fact all three daughters went on to become teachers like their father and Merle remembers the exact moment she realised she knew what she wanted to study. "As part of my mother's work we would go with her to help her clean houses and schools and I ended up cleaning in a lab at a white school," she says, "I remember looking around and thinking 'one day I want to study these things'. So that's what I did".
While Merle had never learned chemistry or physics at school, she went on to graduate with a BSc from the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Afterwards she continued working in the lab and studied part time, getting her Honours as well as a B.Ed and HDE. The British Council then awarded Merle a scholarship to do her Masters at Leeds University and she knew what she wanted to focus on. "What I wanted to do was to include environmental education in the school curriculum in South Africa," she says, "I wanted to get all grades together and take school children into the environment to teach them how lively science could be".
After she graduated, Merle returned to South Africa and took up a job with the British Council training science teachers before eventually settling into her post at the International Office at CPUT. "It's really amazing," she says, "I get paid to do what I love to do".
"Science is all around us," Merle smiles broadly, "It's logical and imaginative, it's beautiful.
You have to show that to people so they see the logic of science but fall in love with what they see. You have to teach imagination and passion though science. I want to make students more critical and make their thinking more ethical, make science a lived subject to them not just a taught subject".
This passion is evident in the former scholars that still come up to Merle to tell her she was the best science teacher they ever had. "I have a passion for science, to demystify it and make it accessible. I want to bring in the human aspects of it and give people confidence so I can be a role model for people of my colour but especially for women to do science. Through my work I live that the whole time".
"With Erasmus Mundus we were the only university of technology invited to be part of the consortia," Merle says proudly, "In that way the EU has not only helped individuals through this programme but they have allowed an institution that was disadvantaged to showcase itself with the best of them. The executive management could proud because [the EU] believed in us. It was an unintended outcome but still one to be celebrated".
Merle was also the first person from a university of technology to be asked to be a joint coordinator by Eurosa (the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Partnerships Scholarship Programme) and since then she and her team have submitted five successful proposals. "My approach to scholarships is to make them available to everyone in every discipline," she says, "I also have a very good team to manage what we're doing so we showed the EU we were running the project efficiently".
Merle has recently returned from another Erasmus Mundus Road show where the team travelled to different universities to tell them about the programme. Here she stands pictured with the team: (from back row from left to right) Anouk de Weerdt, Goldmarks Makamure and Elvis Nkoana and (front row from left to right) Zinzi Nkalitshana, Dr Mabaza and Annelien Dewinter.
"We want to show people they can do it so they can go on and show other people they can do it," she says, "There is a physical change I see in people when they study overseas, the confidence exudes. It's not just a change in knowledge but a personal metamorphosis. I want to keep on building people like that. And it's not just our students; European students also transform in their development and learn skills like real empathy and understanding that life is not the same for everyone".
"The biggest challenge is that South Africans actually don't want to travel," she explains, "I have to do a lot of work behind the scholarship offer to make them want to go. I think it's because there is a lack of confidence, they're worried about language or that their content knowledge isn't good enough, they're just afraid of the unknown". Merle says this is a problem particularly for female students. "Women disadvantage themselves by being too responsible for everyone else and not investing in themselves" she says, "You need to see people where they actually are and create generational growth".
Merle also believes that it's important to build infrastructure and a broad base of people to train and teach. "It must be about institutional development and people development," she says.
"I'll be 63 this year and want to retire in two years' time but I can't just let it go," says Merle, "So I will continue voluntarily. I want to go back into the institutions and schools and teach the skills that I've learnt about training and teaching. I will keep on my journey as long as I can. So this is not the end of Merle but just the beginning!"
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