College of Business and Economics Annual Report 2017 25 Despite our accomplishments in increasing the quality of our research outputs, the CBE will need to engage in new strategies to achieve our growing research target of 500 units by 2021. This will require expanding on our research fellows, research associates, and postdoctoral research fellows including supporting our emerging researchers on knowledge production and creating a more enabling research environment. This has already begun with the Vice-Dean: Research visiting departments to ascertain the level of (tailored) research training required by our emerging researchers. Tailored workshops have been planned for rollout in 2018 and will be continually assessed and adjusted as required. Mentoring of our emerging researchers and junior academics will also be a key focus moving forward to expand on our research output. The CBE is also strategically engaging to establish a CBE postgraduate research space to accommodate our doctoral and PDRFs so that they are stimulated by their fellow colleagues and do not work in isolation. Our PDRFs grew from just two PDRFs in 2013 to a total of 25 in 2017. The future plans for the CBE research space will also be to create a ‘think-tank’ platform where our research fellows and international visiting academics may also engage in intellectual debates on key topics for discussion. Long-term plans will be on expanding the research space to also accommodate our master’s students together with our doctoral and PDRFs. Through collaborative engagement, this will also assist in motivating students along through the postgraduate CBE pipeline to complete their studies on time and reduce the student dropout rate. There is also much opportunity to increase the number of African visiting scholars and postgraduate students to expand on research output and increase the profile of African academics. This will also increase our intellectual footprint in Africa and create a platform for more African voices to emerge. Thus, a combination of strategies will be required in order to improve on our research and avoid the risk of not meeting future targets.
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