Dr Molete through her research project on the Reform of curricula: creating the language practice entrepreneur was awarded the DHET University Staff Doctoral Programme: Junior Research Fellowship, aimed at supporting grant recipients over a maximum period of two years to increase their research productivity. During the fellowship, Dr Molete will undertake a research project that reviews the current Language and media studies curriculum offered by the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT).

With the recent changes in the global market and demand for language solutions, the curriculum needs to equip graduates with skills to identify current needs in language services and design creative language solutions for local and global language users. The current curriculum is mainly based on the theoretical and conceptual understanding of language and language learning theories.

This is suitable for a traditional corporate culture, where language application is still trapped in conventional methods language application. It aims to bring fought transformation and development of the current curriculum, to ensure a fit-for-purpose program that speaks to the needs of the industry by including entrepreneurship as a module. Her project will focus on final year (third year) students and use participatory action research and focus groups as methods of collecting data, which will comprise experts in the field of language practice, entrepreneurship, and curriculum developers to come up with a suitable curriculum. The Kemmis and McTaggart (2004) spiral model will be used to collect data and data processing for the continuous development of the project outcomes.

Dr Mantoa Contravetra Molete holds a Diploma in dressmaking and design, National Diploma, BTech, Master’s and Doctorate in Language Practice.  She is a Lecturer and Departmental Manager in the Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities.

She has received numerous accolades, including the NRF Black Academics Advancement Programme Postdoctoral Grant for 2024-2025, the UCDG Research Grant, and participation in the International Transformation Teachers’ Week held in Belgium. She was also awarded Erasmus European funding for International Teachers’ Week in Turkey and was named Best Conference Presenter at both the 11^th and 12^th Global Conferences for Business and Social Sciences, held in Malaysia and Thailand respectively.

Dr Mantoa co-supervised two master’s graduates and has supervised one doctoral graduate and master’s graduates. She is currently supervising two doctoral and three master’s students. She is the Chairperson of CUT’s Institutional Forum, member of Senate and internal council member. Furthermore, she is the Interim Chairperson of the Goldfields TVET College Council and the Chairperson of the African Language Association of Southern Africa (ALASA).