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27 August 2018 Photo Barend Nagel
WomenOfKovsies Arina Engelbrecht advocates healthy living nationally
Arina Engelbrecht’s vision is for all Kovsies to lead holistically healthy lives.

How do you start living a healthy lifestyle? Arina Engelbrecht, a wellness specialist in the Employee Wellness Division at the University of the Free State (UFS) says it only takes a few changes. Her passion is to motivate people to live a balanced life.  

Being active enables a person to live life to the full. “Aim to exercise 150 minutes a week, which equates to 30 minutes five times a week in order to experience health benefits like prevention of lifestyle illnesses, better sleeping patterns, decreasing stress or anxiety and feeling more energetic,” says Engelbrecht.

Some of the initiatives Engelbrecht and her team drive are the Healthy Lifestyle Challenge, Park Runs in Bloemfontein, and the Healthy4Life Pedometer Challenge, which encourage staff members to become more physically active. “Everything we do, think or feel is influenced by what we eat! It is therefore important to eat a balanced diet. Healthy food = quality fuel = good health = sustained energy = peak performance,” she explains. 
 
Pedometer Challenge

In the space of eight weeks 240 staff members from all campuses walked 54 000km as part of the Pedometer Challenge. Engelbrecht and her team mobilised 53 active teams from all three campuses. Three of these teams emerged as the winners as they exceeded the target of 1 300km which is the equivalent of walking to Cape Town. In September 2018 the Challenge is going national as the North-West University competes against UFS.

Celebrating women

This Women’s Month Engelbrecht’s message to women of Kovsies is: “We must start embracing who we are and start believing in ourselves, whether it is in the workplace, in business, or at home.” 

News Archive

Statement regarding pulping of books by the UFS Sasol Library
2017-12-07


With reference to reports in the media and social media since 5 December 2017 about the pulping of books by the UFS Sasol Library, the executive management of the University of the Free State (UFS) would like to put the matter into perspective.
 
The book collection of the library is governed by a Library Committee of Senate, and no books can be removed from the library without formal approval from the committee. The university values the wealth of knowledge preserved in the library, and will not act irresponsibly with its collection.
 
Although the executive management takes note of the comments of some concerned organisations and members of the public in the media and social media the past couple of days, no books were removed from the library and sent to be pulped – only bound journals of which the university has online versions. These are journals that have been removed from the journal section for quite some time, and have not been used for a considerable number of years.
 
The decision to reduce the size of the collection to at least 35%, and to secure remote storage in close proximity of the library in Bloemfontein for some of the collections, was taken after a thorough external review of the library in 2014 as well as a gap review this year.
 
Two aspects were actioned after the review: books which have not been used at all in the past 20 years were moved to a storeroom in the library; journals removed from the journal section which have not been used actively for quite some time and which are not available online or cannot be found elsewhere through any means, will be moved to a remote storage in Bloemfontein and be retrieved as the need arises.
 
The only journals sent for pulping were those readily available online through current subscriptions, journals that the library is not subscribed to but are freely available online, journals that have since become Open Access Journals, magazines that have popular titles and are of no academic value, annual reports of societies and associations, and some abstracts. Thorough and responsible evaluation of these bound journals was done before they were sent for pulping.
 
The move of the books to a store room in the library and the removal of the bound journals will provide space to implement recommendations by the task team assigned by the Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, to investigate repurposing the library into a world-class, state-of-the-art library where physical and virtual space is created to support multi-purpose learning spaces for students, collaborative and group learning, and providing space for more innovation in the library through technology, thus enhancing the overall student and user experience.

Released by:
Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Brand Management)
Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454
Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za
Fax: +27 51 444 6393

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