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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

Now is the right time to talk, says Njabulo
2015-04-20


Njabulo Mabaso

Studying at a multicultural campus adds a lot of colour and spice towards every student’s experience, and it also offers some necessary challenges.

This belief is held by the Qwaqwa Campus SRC member responsible for RAG, Community Service & Dialogue, Njabulo Mabaso.

“Our multi-culturalism should be our uniting force, especially at this time in our country. What started as a one-person protest against the Cecil Rhodes statue at UCT should be used to broaden our view in relation to challenges that we are still facing as students and as a country. We need to talk more”, said Mabaso, a final-year BEd FET Languages student.

“Now is the right time for us to really talk about issues affecting us as young adults. Matters of collective interest like pregnancy rates, alcohol and substance abuse, sexism, crime, xenophobia, etc. need to be tackled”, added Mabaso, a weightlifting fanatic.

“As the student leadership, we intend working closely with community structures as we come from the very same communities. We must not wait for Mandela Day to do good.”

“My portfolio, together with Arts and Culture and Sports Affairs portfolios, can create that necessary social cohesion that we as students and our communities need so much.”

Mabaso said that all perceived taboos should be dealt with.

“Our programme this year encourages open dialogue. Nothing should still be treated as a ‘no-go area’ if we are to survive the scourge of HIV. We must talk openly, despite the cultural challenges that might restrict us. We must talk about homophobia. We must talk about rape. In fact, how many students – male and female – really understand what rape is? Does culture even recognise the ‘no’ factor associated with rape? It is important that we should not leave it until it is too late. We must not wait until it is his word against hers. We must deal with these matters now. The right time to engage is now”, he added.

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