As Academic Dean and Acting President at St Augustine College of South Africa, Professor Terry Sacco has adopted an eclectic mix of philosophies in her approach to education. A self-confessed and much-published academic, activist, and educator, Prof Sacco has dedicated her career to include
and challenge exclusion. This dynamic powerhouse joined St Augustine College at the beginning of 2017, where she
completed her doctorate in Philosophy. “I was attracted to the academic freedom and spirituality of St Augustine College”, she explains.
Published Author
Before joining St Augustine, Prof Sacco was involved with Research/Education/Human Development from 2012 to 2016 during which time she wrote several papers on qualitative research methods as well as reconciliation and social justice. And prior to that, Prof Sacco was a lecturer at the University
of Johannesburg where she developed curricular and educated masters students. This was after she had worked as a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand where she developed curricular and educated post graduate students.
She has written several academic articles including:
Peer sexual harassment and peer violence: South African children at risk Access to Health Care for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities from Minority Backgrounds.
Mental Retardation: The South African truth & reconciliation commission: Submission by social work educators
Social work and spirituality in a South African context
Humanising the accused: The social worker's contribution in mitigation of sentence
Prof Sacco has also written chapters in many reviewed books, including:
Loving what is: Engaging with unaccompanied minors and young migrants in Soweto
Inequality, health, wellbeing, and South Africa
Site of Memory: A reconciliation project with displaced people in Johannesburg, South Africa
"Princesses" and others: Parental and sibling perceptions of black pupils attending a Roman Catholic, non-racial primary school
She has also written professional articles, community documents, and delivered many papers. All of these can be viewed here.
Post and Undergraduate Modules
Prof Sacco has created, designed and taught postgraduate and undergraduate modules. Her postgraduate courses have embraced topics such as reconciliation and nation building, contemporary social issues, professional development, violence in the South African context, and elements of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Undergraduate modules cover subjects like social work with children and families, and anti-discriminatory practice.
Prof Sacco’s Studies
Her post graduate studies began with a B.A. Honours in School Social Work from the University of the Witwatersrand for which she received the M. C. O'Dowd Award for Excellence in School Social Work Practice. Prof Sacco then continued her interest in education and obtained a M.Ed. from the University of the Witwatersrand. She then joined St Augustine College where she obtained her D. Phil, focussing on transitional justice and reconciliation. In her LinkedIn profile, Prof Sacco states: “My desire is to bring together the discourses and practice of education, social justice, spirituality, development and reconciliation so that the human community moves into the future with hope and a concern for each other and the earth.”
Closing Thoughts
In closing, Prof Sacco leaves us with these thoughts: “My enduring pain is experiencing, witnessing, and colluding with exclusion: be it educational, personal, political, social or spiritual. My life’s work as a being, as well as an academic, activist, educator and professional is to include, and to challenge,
exclusion.
"My hope for students who I have the privilege of encountering is that they take delight in their thinking, connect with their truth and social agency, think critically and forge lives that make the world a better place”.
