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06 August 2018 Photo Sonia Small
Karen Lazenby WomenofKovsies
Dr Karen Lazenby strives for a stronger, rule-based, and consistent governance structure.
A transformed University of the Free State (UFS) will be one that promotes social justice in everything it does, a university where its diverse people feel a sense of common purpose and engagement. The UFS is developing this through its Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP) introduced in January 2017. 

“The majority of the current systems and processes in student administration at the university are still manual. This lack of automation leads to inconsistencies and service failures,” says Dr Karen Lazenby. As Registrar for Systems and Administration, Dr Lazenby is responsible for ensuring a smooth and efficient student lifecycle across all three campuses. 

With the ITP, the Governance: Systems and Administration work stream strives to have a stronger, rule-based, and consistent governance structure with a single line of accountability in student administration across all faculties and relevant support departments on the three campuses. By ensuring this ease of use and access there will be an integrated student experience and greater empowerment of students.

“Our focus is on automation and self-services for students (such as the time-table, requests for additional and ad hoc exams and appeals), to ensure transparency and accessibility of rules and policies, decisions relating to admission, progression rules, awarding of qualifications and graduation and faculty and general rules,” Dr Lazenby said.  It will also entail the optimisation of PeopleSoftCampus (the Enterprise Resource Planning system).

“Through this automation, I would also like to get the university’s student administration to such a level that academic staff can focus their energy on teaching and research and student administration staff can focus more on quality assurance,” said Dr Lazenby.

News Archive

Inspiration from an Olympic Champion for Spring graduandi
2012-09-20

Photo: Hannes Pieterse
20 September 2012

The guest list for the Spring Graduation ceremony of the University of the Free State included an Olympic gold medallist, a former Miss South Africa finalist and the Prime Minister of a neigbouring country.

The new graduates could draw inspiration from Olympic swimming champion Chad le Clos, who was the guest speaker at the event. Also attending was the Prime Minister of Lesotho, the Honourable Thomas Thabane, who came to watch his grandson graduating from Kovsies. Sharing a stage with Le Clos was Rolene Strauss, a medical student, who was among the top five contestants at last year’s Miss South Africa competition.

Le Clos, who became a national hero in July when he won a gold medal in the 200 m butterfly at the Olympic Games by beating American swimming legend Michael Phelps, told new graduates to strive for the impossible. Giving them insight into his remarkable achievement, Le Clos told them nobody had expected him to beat Michael Phelps. “Even I thought it was impossible to achieve. Always have a goal and work towards it,” he told them and said his ambition was to build up swimming in South Africa. Le Clos said he hoped that by 2016 there would be more swimmers making South Africa proud.

Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the university, delivered an Olympic-inspired message. Quoting the motto of the modern Olympic Games, ‘faster, higher and stronger’, Prof. Jansen told the new graduates that they had to be better than those who came before them. “I expect my students in a troubled country to learn how to be different, faster, higher and stronger. Faster means efficiency; it means to be responsive to those in need."

Drawing lessons for the country from Le Clos' victory, Dr Khotso Mokhele, Chancellor of the University, told the graduates to choose optimism. Referring to the Marikana mine tragedy, Dr Mokhele said the country was far from taking the last stroke. “Even if it looks as if the curtain is down; remember that final stroke of Chad le Clos and how the great Michael Phelps was defeated.”
 

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