Page 27 - Unisa CSET Mid Year Highlights 2025 Digital

Q&A
Prof Ednah Onyari (Position: Chair of Department, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Building Science)
A quote or bible verse that you live by:
I have many verses that uplift my spirit daily, however I will share my childhood verse that has carried me through.
Psalms 121:1-2: I lift up my eyes to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
Reflect on your upbringing and how you ended up in the sciences?
My parents believed in us, that we would do anything.
I am the fourth child in my family, and so I saw my older siblings go to school. I never knew that there was anything else other than doing well in school, no matter what the subject was. In fact, Math and Science were my favourite subjects while in school.
Reflect on your journey to becoming a Chair of Department at Unisa
I did not plan to become COD, I volunteered to support the then COD as a portfolio champion. After the departmental split in the school of Engineering, I was asked to act as COD and finally committed to the leadership role.
Reflect on Balancing Research and leadership in the college.
Balancing of research and leadership is not easy, due to the amount of time that each aspect requires, however, I have learnt to seek support whenever possible. Leveraging on the support of team members in the department does assist.
Are there any Unique challenges experienced by being a female leaders? If so, how have you learnt to overcome them?
I didn’t have much challenges per se. But I think the issue of stereotyping about gender will always be there. We may not overcome stereotyping, but we will continue to do the right thing.
Successes or wins that you want to share in your journey as a researcher and leader within the portfolio that you lead?
Our department was officially started after the split in 2021, and we had quite a lot of challenges from the tuition space and limited human resource capacity. However, over time we have streamlined our programmes, our staff have obtained their postgraduate qualification although still some are busy.
With research, we increased our research capacity through the recruitment of postdoctoral fellows and collaborations both internally and externally. I can say that there is a vibrant spirit among staff members to achieve higher qualifications and collaborate on various research projects.
Any interesting projects that you are currently working on that you wish to highlight?
Currently, I am working on projects where we are using remote sensing and numerical modelling to address water quantity and water quality issues in some catchments within South Africa.
Define tomorrow.
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