About Us

The School of Computing cherishes many milestones that date back to its origins in 1967 when it was still known as The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems. In 2004, after the merger between Unisa and Technicon Southern Africa and the incorporation of the distance education component of Vista (VUDEC) to form the new Unisa, the department changed its name to the School of Computing (SoC). In 2013 SoC moved to the Unisa Science Campus in Florida, Johannesburg.

The SoC has established itself, and gained a reputation as a leader in Computing for various reasons:

• More than 80,000 module registrations from all over the world
• More than 300 active Master's and Doctoral students
• Well qualified and experienced staff
• Internationally recognised research publications annually in four main research focus areas: Applied Research in Computer Science (ARCS), Educational Technology, ICT4D (a flagship research group), Information Systems, Security4U and Software Engineering.
• 9 NRF-rated researchers
• Hosts the Centre for Software Engineering (CENSE) that offers a number of specialised short learning programmes

Two noteable milestones are:

SoC became the first South African university to offer HCI (Human Computer Interaction) courses at post- and undergraduate level.
In 2007 Prof Paula Kotze (B3 NRF) became the first woman researcher in the college to receive an NRF B rating.