Our colleague, Dr Cyrill Walters, senior lecturer at the Stellenbosch Business School and a Research Fellow in Higher Education passed away on Thursday, 28 December 2023.
Prof Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor in Education at SU, described Walters as an exceptional postdoctoral scholar and research associate who provided leading research in gender, higher education and pandemic effects.
“Her passion and concern for women’s progression in higher education through on-time data and publication ensured that she became a featured speaker at several university forums throughout the country, a role which she cherished and for which she was widely respected,” Jansen noted. “She quickly mastered all the disciplines of advanced research in higher education and published quality books and articles with top publishers around the world in a relatively short period of time since achieving her PhD. It is rare for a scholar of her capacity and potential to gain prominence so quickly in international higher education at a relatively young age. Her loss to SU and the academy more broadly is immense,” he concluded.
Walters will be fondly remembered as a remarkable woman who transcended the boundaries of professional success, said Dr Armand Bam, Head of Social Impact at the Stellenbosch Business School. “Above all, Cyrill will be remembered for her humanity, decency, loyalty and integrity. Cyrill was a beacon of inspiration within our community and has left an indelible mark on both her students and colleagues alike. Her exceptional scholarly achievements were matched only by her passion for uplifting others through her teaching, particularly in the realm of decision-making, where she challenged and enlightened countless MBA and other postgraduate students,” Bam said.
She was also our dear friend and an irreplaceable and respected colleague and friend of the FPP programme. She will be sorely missed but not forgotten.
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Dr Walters graduated with an MBA from the USB in 2012 and completed her doctoral coursework at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in 2015-2016, before graduating with a PhD from the Graduate School of Business at UCT.
She also taught on the MBA and PGDip Business Administration programmes at the University’s Business School. She was working on projects examining the decolonisation of knowledge in South African universities, the impact of COVID-19 on the academic work of women scholars, and the application of complexity theory in decision-making and higher education leadership. https://cyrillwalters.co.za/