Start main page content

Road to Success Programme

The Road to Success Programme is the Faculty’s student success and support unit. It consists of four Academic Advisors and 15 Peer Advisors. The work of the RSP is informed by an Ethic of Care and revolves around providing intentional and holistic support to CLM students, by being responsive to their expressed needs. 

Each Academic Advisor has a number of academic programmes assigned to them, which means they are able to provide dedicated support to students enrolled for those programmes. This is important, as forming a meaningful relationship with a person in the university has been shown to improve students’ chances of persevering and being successful.

The Academic Advisors’ work is supplemented by the Peer Advisors, who are senior undergraduate students from within the faculty. Collectively, the RSP advisors work to form a net of support for CLM students and to guide them throughout their academic journey at Wits.

What we do

The Road to Success Programme (RSP) uses an integrated network of tutorials, interactions with Success Advisors and Success Tutors, one-on-one consultations, online support, and toolkits for success, which serve to help CLM undergraduates achieve their short, medium, and long-term goals.

The RSP also provides personal, emotional, food/clothing, and funding-application related support, to ensure the unique needs of each CLM student are addressed. The continued development and effective implementation of these support structures is geared at helping students succeed from the start, and allows them to take responsibility for their own success and eventually give back to the next generation of Wits graduates.

List of support services we provide:

Academic
Health/ Wellness
Material Needs
Personal Development
- Career guidance
- Academic skills and literacies
- Curriculum advice
- Subject support
- Research skills
- Advising
- Peer support
- Information and awareness
- Gender related support
- Disability support
- Medical Support
- Safety
- Food/ clothing bank
- Accommodation
- Funding
- International student logistics
- Childcare
- Life skills
- Work experience
- Employability
- Extra-curricula activities
- Leadership and skills development
- Transitions 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How we do it

Since its inception in 2015, the RSP has implemented numerous initiatives:

  1. CLM Pre-University School for new first years entering higher education;
  2. CLM-specific fact-finding expedition during the university’s Orientation Week programme;
  3. CLM Boost my Break initiative during the first study break;
  4. Integrated network of group tutorials and one-on-one consultations with RSP Success Tutors for undergraduates progressing through the system;
  5. A focus on excellence skills for psychosocial, food/clothing, and funding-application-related support;
  6. A cross-faculty Enquiry-Based Learning course with the university’s Faculty of Humanities; and
  7. Academic and curriculum advising by RSP Coordinators.

The continued development and effective delivery of these initiatives are geared at helping students succeed and allow them to take responsibility for their own success and eventually give back to the next generation of Wits students. Moreover, these practices are underpinned by ongoing data analytics and evidence-based research in the area of student success and support, thus grounding initiatives in local and global best practice while also contributing to new knowledge areas.

Share