About Cultivating Research and Teaching Excellence (CREATE)

CREATE is RUFORUM’s continuing professional development scheme for academics at member universities. The programme provides participants with opportunities to focus on their learning and teaching practice alongside developing their research/scholarship and leadership skills. University staff are re-engineered to provide quality teaching using pedagogical techniques that produce higher learning outcomes for students – to achieve a shift from subject-centred to student-centred learning; from passive to active learning; from memorisation to understanding and original thinking; from information and mental engagement to the development of the whole person; from academic and theoretical to life-centred knowledge; from fragmented to integrated knowledge; and from creating standardised products to fostering the development of resilience, individuality and creativity. Under CREATE, universities will adopt interdisciplinary and innovative approaches that integrate research, education and engagement activities in order to maximise university impact.

CREATE also aims to: (i) foster a culture of research excellence by offering a supportive environment for all aspects of the university agricultural research enterprise; (ii) galvanise member universities to institute processes for ensuring the continued upward trajectory of faculty with regard to research output and impact, by strategically pursuing funding and partnership opportunities, recruiting strong researchers, and providing opportunity and recognition through Research Impact Competitions in order to showcase high-quality projects that are making a difference to the community and nation alike; (iii) increase RUFORUM and university research impact by sharpening faculties’ research identity and leveraging the RUFORUM identity for fundraising and graduate-student recruitment; (iv) providing more capacity for research by engaging universities and partners to create and reconfigure physical and virtual spaces; and (v) increasing doctoral student enrolment by engaging faculty in proactive recruitment and by providing more competitive funding.