Student Affairs Voice from South Africa, W.P. Wahl

SA Voices From the Field

This week on NASPA'a SA Voices From the Field podcast, we interviewed WP Wahl about his own experiences working in South Africa.

Dr W.P. Wahl has been involved in student affairs for 21 years, and currently serves as Director: Student Life at the University of the Free State (UFS), in central South Africa – a position he has occupied since October 2016. During the past two decades he has been involved in numerous transformation projects, involving highly diverse student communities. From 2017 to 2019 Dr Wahl directed, in collaboration with a co-director from the United States, the annual ACUHO-I Student Housing Training Institute in South Africa. During 2021 and 2022 Dr Wahl served as the principal investigator of a national research study on student-centred universities for the Transformation Strategy Group (TSG), Universities South Africa (USAf).

He is well published and his scholarly focus centres around creating campus environments that are conducive to student learning, development and success, especially students hailing from disadvantaged backgrounds. Dr Wahl served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology (JCEP) during 2021 and 2022, as well as editor of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) for the past seven years. He also supervises Masters and PhD students in the Faculty of Education, UFS. His most recent book, co-authored by Louis H. Falik, (Accommodating Marginalized Students in Higher Education: A Structural Theory Approach) will be published by Routledge in 2023. He is married to Siobhone and is the father of three children; Judah, Joshua and Milcah.

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