YESA Founding Board Members

Mrs Jansie Niehaus

Executive Director at National Science & Technology Forum

Jansie Niehaus is Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF), since 2006. She is responsible for all activities of the NSTF, which is a Section 21 company and NPO, and she reports to the NSTF Executive Committee, consisting of elected representatives of the broader South African science and technology community. Projects of the NSTF include: the annual NSTF-BHP Billiton Awards for scientists and innovators;  regular discussion forums for NSTF membership and stakeholders on current Government policy issues in science and technology; and a bursary website to make bursary information easily available to learners and teachers:  www.sciencebursaries.org.za.
Jansie worked at Department of Science and Technology, in Pretoria, for 3 years, where she was responsible for coordinating and establishing Informatics learnerships for young people, and participated in developing a Technical Skills Strategy for the Department.
She was a Mathematics Teacher for 5 years in the Johannesburg area, including St Barnabas College. She taught Mathematics to Grades 7 to 10 learners, and to first year university students. She also worked as an Education Consultant and provided teacher in-service training, in the Johannesburg and Cape Town areas.

She wrote Learning materials and ran teacher courses and workshops in Mathematics. Among other jobs, she worked for COUNT, an NGO which promoted Mathematics Teaching among farm school teachers. Jansie trained with and briefly worked for the Freudenthal Institute at Utrecht University, in The Netherlands. The Freudenthal Institute does mathematics curriculum development and research. She worked as research assistant and project manager for a curriculum development project at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) from 1994 to 1996. She served on the Western Cape Executive Committee of the Association for Mathematics Educators in Southern Africa (AMESA).
Jansie carried out underground tasks for the African National Congress when it was banned, and was a Political prisoner (Johannesburg/Pretoria) from 1983 to 1987.

She holds a Bachelor of Education (B Ed) degree, from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a Higher Education Diploma, and Bachelors degree from the University of Johannesburg (UJ, previously known as RAU) majoring in Mathematics and Psychology. She has studied various subjects at tertiary level (from Development Administration to Fine Art), and has a keen interest in a wide range of disciplines.