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31 December 2018 | Story Charlene Stanley
Advising pic
Aligning your study field with your career aspirations can be challenging. Academic advising provides solutions.

Over the past few years, institutions of higher learning have experienced an explosive growth in student numbers. Student volumes are often more than campus administrations can effectively deal with. On the students’ side, coming to grips with and transitioning into university and navigating the academic-content processes and technology can be an overwhelming experience – especially for so-called ‘first-generation’ students. Many students often have fixed career dreams, but not a clear knowledge of what they need to get there. This is where academic advising can be a guiding light.

 How Academic Advising works

 Academic advising fosters the development, engagement, and support of students and provides guidance towards academic, personal, and career success. “Through academic advising we basically make sure that students’ career prospects align with their academic programme,” explains Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), which houses the UFS Academic Advisement Unit. It is also not only the academic needs of students that are addressed. He describes advising as a ‘hub of the wheel’ that connects students to different departments and services across campus, depending on their needs.

Evolution of Academic Advising

Prof Strydom explains that some type of advising has always existed on university campuses in the form of career counsellors and faculty managers assisting with student queries. But with many institutions virtually doubling in size over the past few years, many students started ‘falling through the cracks’. “There’s been a great need to professionalise this service and to have a clearly defined structure in place with dedicated advisers to assist students quickly and efficiently,” he says. The UFS academic advising team has been playing a leading role in securing a seven-institution collaborative University Capacity Development Grant (UCDG) in 2017 to professionalise the practice in South Africa. 

“We focus on communicating with and serving Kovsie students in ways that really speaks to them, for instance through the Academic Advising Facebook page, email (advising@ufs.ac.za), the electronic magazine (Kovsie Advice), plus face-to-face interactions in the faculties, the Sasol Library in Bloemfontein, and in the TK Mopeli Building on our Qwaqwa Campus,” says Gugu Tiroyabone, who heads the Academic Advisement Unit within CTL. She emphasises that advising is a shared responsibility. “Advisers can never decide for the students but are there to assist them to make informed decisions themselves.”

Data collected from the 1 456 students who utilised continuous academic advising services at the UFS during 2017, has irrefutably shown that these students have a higher probability of passing most of their modules with over 70% – a clear indication that academic advising really works.

Paving a professional path for advisers

Drawing on eight years of ongoing development in academic advising, the UFS piloted the first nationally contextualised Short Learning Programme for advisers in order to guide the development of this practice.

The pilot of the fully accredited Academic Advising Professional Development (AAPD) Short Learning Programme (SLP), which will be presented twice a year, was presented by the CTL early in October 2018 and represented all seven institutions forming part of the UCDG collaboration (UFS, NMU, Wits, UCT, DUT, MUT, and UP).

With the SLP’s ultimate goal to build and cultivate the practice and its practitioners, this national initiative is likely to be one of the enablers for the development and enhancement of student success in South Africa.

 

News Archive

Stem cell research and human cloning: legal and ethical focal points
2004-07-29

   

(Summary of the inaugural lecture of Prof Hennie Oosthuizen, from the Department of Criminal and Medical Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of the Free State.)

 

In the light of stem cell research, research on embryo’s and human cloning it will be fatal for legal advisors and researchers in South Africa to ignore the benefits that new bio-medical development, through research, contain for this country.

Legal advisors across the world have various views on stem cell research and human cloning. In the USA there is no legislation that regulates stem cell research but a number of States adopted legislation that approves stem cell research. The British Parlement gave permission for research on embryonic stem cells, but determined that it must be monitored closely and the European Union is of the opinion that it will open a door for race purification and commercial exploitation of human beings.

In South Africa the Bill on National Health makes provision for therapeutical and non therapeutical research. It also makes provision for therapeutical embryonical stem cell research on fetuses, which is not older than 14 days, as well as for therapeutical cloning under certain circumstances subject to the approval of the Minister. The Bill prohibits reproductive cloning.

Research on human embrio’s is a very controversial issue, here and in the rest of the world.

Researchers believe that the use of stem cell therapy could help to side-step the rejection of newly transplanted organs and tissue and if a bank for stem cell could be built, the shortage of organs for transplants would become something of the past. Stem cells could also be used for healing of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spinal injuries.

Sources from which stem cells are obtained could also lead to further ethical issues. Stem cells are harvested from mature human cells and embryonic stem cells. Another source to be utilised is to take egg cells from the ovaries of aborted fetuses. This will be morally unacceptable for those against abortions. Linking a financial incentive to that could become more of a controversial issue because the woman’s decision to abort could be influenced. The ideal would be to rather use human fetus tissue from spontaneous abortions or extra-uterine pregnancies than induced abortions.

The potential to obtain stem cells from the blood of the umbilical cord, bone-marrow and fetus tissue and for these cells to arrange themselves is known for quite some time. Blood from the umbilical cord contains many stem cells, which is the origin of the body’s immune and blood system. It is beneficial to bank the blood of a newborn baby’s umbilical cord. Through stem cell transplants the baby or another family member’s life could be saved from future illnesses such as anemia, leukemia and metabolic storing disabilities as well as certain generic immuno disabilities.

The possibility to withdraw stem cells from human embrio’s and to grow them is more useable because it has more treatment possibilities.

With the birth of Dolly the sheep, communities strongly expressed their concern about the possibility that a new cloning technique such as the replacement of the core of a cell will be used in human reproduction. Embryonic splitting and core replacement are two well known techniques that are associated with the cloning process.

I differentiate between reproductive cloning – to create a cloned human embryo with the aim to bring about a pregnancy of a child that is identical to another individual – and therapeutically cloning – to create a cloned human embryo for research purposes and for healing human illnesses.

Worldwide people are debating whether to proceed with therapeutical cloning. There are people for and against it. The biggest ethical objection against therapeutical cloning is the termination of the development of a potential human being.

Children born from cloning will differ from each other. Factors such as the uterus environment and the environment in which the child is growing up will play a role. Cloning create unique children that will grow up to be unique individuals, just like me and you that will develop into a person, just like you and me. If we understand this scientific fact, most arguments against human cloning will disappear.

Infertility can be treated through in vitro conception. This process does not work for everyone. For some cloning is a revolutionary treatment method because it is the only method that does not require patients to produce sperm and egg cells. The same arguments that were used against in vitro conception in the past are now being used against cloning. It is years later and in vitro cloning is generally applied and accepted by society. I am of the opinion that the same will happen with regard to human cloning.

There is an argument that cloning must be prohibited because it is unsafe. Distorted ideas in this regard were proven wrong. Are these distorted ideas justified to question the safety of cloning and the cloning process you may ask. The answer, according to me, is a definite no. Human cloning does have many advantages. That includes assistance with infertility, prevention of Down Syndrome and recovery from leukemia.

 

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