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27 August 2018 Photo Barend Nagel
WomenOfKovsies Prof LenkaBula foresees transformation at UFS
Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement, Prof Puleng LenkaBula, takes the lead in transforming Student Experiences at the UFS.
“It’s important to think about transformation in ways that are responsive to the challenges which students have raised,” said Prof Puleng LenkaBula. She thinks of transformation as constitutive of deliberative processes, actions, reflections, writings, and literary expressions aimed as a response to the ecological, economic, political, and social context and questions which undergird the learning, research, and engagement of UFS students, staff, and stakeholders.

Prof LenkaBula is Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement at the University of the Free State (UFS). 

Committed to knowledge production, novelty, and the advancement of socio-economic development in South Africa, Prof LenkaBula assumes position as work-stream leader for Student Experience in the Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP). The plan aims to identify areas of transformation that the UFS marks to revolutionise and implement in its pursuit of delivering quality graduates who will be able to contest in a global realm of competitors.

Importance of revolutionising Student Experience at the UFS

“My job is to ensure that students flourish academically and are cultivated holistically as human beings who bring embodied knowledge and experiences which will enable them to succeed in life,” detailed Prof LenkaBula. 

She also contributes towards change in the Engaged Scholarship as well as the Names, Symbols and Spaces work streams of the ITP. Prof LenkaBula has been deemed powerful in her ability to traverse disciplinary parameters, research, stakeholder cultivation, and development.

“It is important to navigate symbols and spaces as a co-aspect of Student Experience to enrich the diversity of know-hows at the UFS and map a university that will represent a value-system that prioritises inclusivity and diversity,” urged Prof LenkaBula with reference to the significance of her role in the implementation of the ITP. 
 
ITP deemed an integral mechanism of growth for Kovsies

Ensuring that UFS graduates are locally adept, knowledgeable, active, and globally competitive in imperative areas of interest, highlights the general importance of the ITP for Prof LenkaBula.

The Vice-Rector underlined that the UFS has had historical challenges within its existence which have demonstrated a need for change that promotes dignity for all and respect for the diversity of its people, in an effort to secure social cohesion.

“Open dialogue and participation are mechanisms that the university needs to make use of to engage the past in order to create constructive directions for the future,” said Prof LenkaBula.

She concluded by stating that the UFS is a key global resource, as we live in a state of economic globalisation. “Knowledge is an essential imperative in knowledge-economies that breed skilled labour, and the ability to think critically in order to formulate ideas that will change the world”, said Prof LenkaBula.

News Archive

UFS study finds initiation does not build character
2015-06-24

Photo: Canva.com

Initiation at schools and school hostels does not build character or loyalty. On the contrary, it is a violation of human dignity and the rights of children.

This is the opinion of researchers from the University of the Free State’s Faculty of Education after an exploratory study of initiation practices in schools.

Although the use of initiation in schools and school hostels is forbidden by the Regulations to Prohibit Initiation Practices in Schools, the study found that this practice is still widely evident in schools. The study also found that, in some cases, teachers and/or principals take part.

In the study, led by Dr Kevin Teise from the Faculty of Education, it was found that physical deeds and even violence and emotional degradation were inflicted under the guise of ‘initiation’.

The study was discussed recently during a panel discussion between the Faculty of Education, the Faculty of Law, and the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice.

The ‘initiation activities’ that take place during school hours ranged from carrying senior learners’ bags or doing other favours for them, handing over their food or food money, doing senior learners’ homework, and looking down when they speak to senior learners.

In school hostels, it was found that learners were expected to do humiliating things, and were also subjected to physical demands and even violence. Learners pointed out that they were smeared and beaten, their heads pushed into toilets, they had to bath or shower in cold water, they had to eat strange things, and they were prevented from sleeping.

Dr Teise says initiation practices are a general phenomenon in the schools and school hostels that took part in the investigation. Newcomers were subjected to silly and innocent practices, but also to physically and emotionally degrading, and even dangerous ones, before and after school, and during breaks and sports- and cultural gatherings.

“The study’s findings give every indication that the constitutional principles on which the policy document, Regulations to Prohibit Initiation Practices in Schools, is modelled, are not being put into practice and respected at these schools. Policy documents and school rules are pointless if learners, old pupils, parents, teachers, and the broad community consider initiation an acceptable behaviour that is, ostensibly, an inseparable part of school or hostel tradition and of the maturation and/or team-building processes.”

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