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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

Arts and Social Justice festival brings creativity and academia together
2013-08-28

 

Photo: Linda Fekisi
14 August 2013



Who really benefited from the post-1994 democratic dispensation in the sports arena? What happened to the heroes of non-racial sport? Did the 1992 transition to unification wipe out an entire history of black sport in rugby and replaced it with a sanitized version of the sport?

These are some of the questions film producer Mark Fredericks explores in his thought-provoking documentary film ‘Injury Time’. The film is one of several documentaries screened as part of the second annual Artistic and Social Justice Week, hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice from 19 to 31 August 2013.

Extended from last year's one-week run, this year’s programme is packed with great productions, exhibitions and intellectual encounters celebrating freedom of expression. A highly-anticipated event on the programme is the open-air film screening of the documentary 'Dear Mandela' on Friday 30 August. This film follows the journey of three young people from their shacks to the highest court in the country as they invoke Nelson Mandela's example and become leaders in a growing social movement.

Speaking at the opening of the festival, Prof André Keet, Director of the Institute, said the purpose of the two week programme is to explore new and different ways of understanding social relations. "It’s an endeavour which is crucial to the Institute's objective of confronting the histories, policies and practices that has shaped and constrained the intellectual and social mandate of universities across the country and world."



“The role of art and literature in reflecting on society, has overtaken – in terms of substance, quality and relevance – the function of critical commentators, political analyst, sociologists and philosophers. Artists are, simply put, better political commentators than political commentators themselves. Better political commentators than philosophers, better political commentators than political analysts. Uniquely positioned to engage with social reality, art and literature demand that we experience artistic work as political acts.” Prof André Keet

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