The metallurgical engineering degree programme offered by the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT), has been ranked the best of its kind in South Africa for 2020 by the Minerals Education Trust Fund (METF).
Students from UP’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering.
This is the second consecutive year that the department has achieved this feat after being ranked number one in 2019 as well.
The METF, which was established in 1999, supports tertiary education institutions that provide the minerals and mining industry with a pipeline of talent. It seeks to ensure that academic departments of this nature remain sustainable by providing funding which is used primarily to augment the salaries of academics with expertise in geology, metallurgical and chemical engineering.
The head of department, Professor Roelf Mostert, was elated about what his team had achieved under the trying circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing national lockdown.
“I am obviously delighted by this ranking result,” Prof Mostert said. “Each year the METF goes through a rigorous process to collect data on all of the six participating national metallurgical programmes and concludes the process with a presentation and interview with the full metallurgical sub-committee being present. To be awarded the number one spot for the second year in a row is indeed a great honour.”
Professor Sunil Maharaj, Dean of UP’s EBIT Faculty, said the fourth industrial revolution and move toward Society 5.0 “demand innovation and change to stay relevant in an ever-changing future. EBIT graduates are being trained in skills for jobs that don't yet exist. We are proud of this achievement by the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, as this is a testimony to the Department's ability to reinvent itself to stay relevant. Achievements like this confirms EBIT's role as a global competitor.”
UP Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Tawana Kupe commended the Department for the sterling work it had done over the past few years, and highlighted how it had also gone against the grain in the way it had embraced transformation.
“It is no secret that the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics remain relatively untransformed,” he said. “The World Economic Forum, in its Global Gender Gap Report 2020, estimates that only around 14% of the country’s engineers are women. It is encouraging to see that not only is UP’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering developing some of the country’s best engineers, but it is also advancing the nation’s transformation agenda. Prof Mostert can be proud of what the department has achieved in the past few years.”
