The UCT GSB has introduced two new roles to bolster the school’s management structures, whilst streamlining its research and academic activities.
Following the appointment of Dr Catherine Duggan as the new Director at the UCT Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), the school has appointed Dr Kutlwano Ramaboa to the role of Deputy Director, and Associate Professor Sean Gossel as Assistant Deputy Director of the school.
Both roles are new within the UCT GSB and are designed to create efficiencies that enable the school to better support its key stakeholders — staff, students, alumni and corporate clients and partners.
Dr Duggan, who assumed the directorship on 1 September, envisages that the UCT GSB is uniquely positioned to drive change in the post-pandemic era. “In the months ahead, we will be looking to build on the school’s record of academic excellence and relevant teaching and expand its use of technology to enhance the scope, reach and flexibility of its offerings. We will also be working hard to increase its engagement across the African continent and beyond, to build new narratives and drive positive change,” she said.
The new management structure will support this vision by aligning existing capacity at the school more effectively and allowing for better integration between research activities, academic programmes, operations, and governance. Both Associate Professor Gossel and Dr Ramaboa are long-serving members of faculty at the school who have worked at management level.
Ramaboa joined the school in 2012 as a senior lecturer in research methodology and quantitative methods. Since 2017 she has held the role of Director of International Relations, heading up the burgeoning international relations team, which manages key global partnerships and relationships, and oversees the school’s critically important international accreditation process. On her watch the UCT GSB has successfully retained its triple-crown accreditation (AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS) status — one of just three African business schools to have this honour. She has a PhD in Statistics from UCT and an MA in International Relations from Tufts University. She had previously worked in marketing research before embarking on her academic career.
Gossel joined the school a decade ago as a senior lecturer in the areas of financial economics and financial globalisation. As Research Director since January this year, and Chair of the GSB Research Ethics Committee since 2019, he has worked to elevate the school’s research profile by designing a UCT GSB research website that will facilitate easier promotion, publicity, and dissemination of the school’s published journal articles and case studies. In addition, he has streamlined the PhD procedures, and refined the PhD admission process to attract and enrol top PhD candidates. Before pursuing an academic career, he acquired over a decade of local and international management consulting experience in the areas of financial and econometric analysis, economic forecasting, financial modelling, and valuations.
The newly appointed Deputy Director and Assistant Deputy Director will retain their existing Directorship and Committee roles but will also integrate the academic and research activities of the school more closely with UCT GSB Director Dr Duggan’s strategy and vision. As Ramaboa explains, “my role as Deputy Director is one of strengthening and reinforcing the synergies between our programmes, faculty, and academic and student affairs at the school, particularly in the areas of academic governance” while Gossel sees the Assistant Deputy Director position as enabling him “to raise the profile of the UCT GSB’s research activities while also facilitating better integration with the UCT GSB’s academic activities and strategic vision by working closely with the DD and UCT GSB Director.”
