Students at The IIE School of Hospitality & Service Management (IIEHSM) should consider themselves very fortunate indeed. The learning institute – with campuses in Newlands, Cape Town and Rosebank, Johannesburg – has recently brought on board Nande Sulelo to be the school’s Teaching and Learning Manager. Sulelo is a firm believer in South Africa and the good that can be achieved when people work for a common purpose, and says that as education can be an instrument for social justice she is always striving to ensure that as many South Africans get the opportunity to chart their paths in this world through careers they can be proud of.

Born and raised in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape, the 33-year old Sulelo now lives in Randpark Ridge but is considering moving closer to Rosebank to avoid the traffic.

“I love spending time in my car, and I don’t mind the drive but loadshedding makes it such a pain, so I am seriously considering a new haven not too far from work,” she laughs.

We sat down with Sulelo to talk about her impressive career path and her new role at IIEHSM

Can you tell us about your career path and why you chose to be in the career you are in.

I matriculated from Butterworth High School where I took the science and maths route. However, my passion for literature and writing saw me veer towards a more artistic career in the creative arts. I went to Wits for my undergrad in Humanities where I majored in English Literature, Media Studies, and African Languages. I loved it so much that I stayed until my MA, and completed research projects that were close to my heart under the overarching theme of South African media representations of Blackness through film and television.

From there I worked briefly at Oxford University Press as a Managing Editor. This was my first job and I managed about ten authors and two project managers – everything I am as a leader today was cultivated through that experience, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I then spent all my time in higher education, working first as an academic manager and then later as a Head of Department at one of South Africa’s private fashion institutions.

Nande Sulelo

Before joining IIEHSM as a Teaching and Learning Manager, I had the great privilege of spending a year at Oxford University, completing my MSc in Education (higher education). Although the UK is great, for me there is no place like sunshiny South Africa and so I found myself back here and working at IIEHSM. I am proud of the career I have chosen – ever since my first job as a Managing Editor I have never not worked in education. It quickly became a field I saw as a gateway to contributing to a better South Africa for all.

What does your new role at IIEHSM entail?

In a nutshell, my job is about ensuring a quality service to our students through the improvement and management of the IIEHSM teaching and learning. This means continuous development of our lecturing team, developing an enriching student journey through service-led customer experience, establishing relationships with industry partners and ensuring that we are offering an internationally comparable experience for our students who are being prepared for careers within our borders or wherever the seas may take them. As we have good relations with recruitment agencies within our field it is important to balance that with quality education to ensure we produce the calibre of graduates the industry expects from us. As you know, there is no better ambassador than a well-trained graduate who is proud of their alma mater, and so my role really is about guaranteeing students the highest quality of education through robust teaching and learning strategies.

Based on your previous experience, what do you think you will be able to bring to this role?

I’m very excited to be joining a team of young and eager academics who want to learn so much about teaching as a profession but are also finding their place in the world through their work. The goal is to expose both students and faculty to the best opportunities in hospitality and service management. You could say I am the epitome of a disciplinarian who is obsessed with the growth of her team, and so I’m very excited to be leading the research efforts of this IIEHSM team.

I’m also a policy buff and a moderate nerd so I believe in principled teaching and learning, but having worked in higher education for about ten years I also know that learning is a journey with many routes. So, it is very important to me and crucial to my role that we avail as many avenues as we can to both teach and assess students through different methods. I do not subscribe to the notion of assessing for the sake of it, I think we need to carefully understand our students’ learning capabilities and how the knowledge and skills will be used in industry and then develop meaningful plans of teaching and evaluation.

I may represent the ‘law and order’ in terms of teaching and learning within my role, but I am also very passionate about both students and lecturers being sufficiently equipped to manage their own learning through a myriad of resources and channels available. School is not for the select few but for anyone with a desire to learn and a work ethic to make it happen – and so higher education must be flexible enough to bend accordingly.