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UFS forging national pathways for Academic Advising

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

Research into surrogate milk important to wildlife conservation

2017-05-08

Prof Gary Osthoff from the UFS Department of
Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology,
will soon work on a milk formula for elephants.
Photo: Supplied

Research is being done at the University of the Free State (UFS) to analyse and synthetically imitate the unique milk of various wildlife species. This research is not only of scientific value, but also serves the conservation of South Africa’s wildlife species. At the forefront of this research is Prof Garry Osthoff from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology.

Orphaned rhino calf pulled through with surrogate milk
“There is still a lot of research to be done. Naturally the research is of scientific importance, but with surrogate milk having the same composition as the mother’s milk of a specific species, orphaned calves or cubs of that species could be pulled through during a difficult time of weaning. Bearing in mind that exotic animals fetch thousands and even millions of rands at auctions, it goes without saying a game farmer will do everything possible to provide only the best nourishment to such an orphaned animal. In such a case, synthetically-manufactured milk would be the right choice,” says Prof Osthoff.

The fruits of his research were recently demonstrated in Germany when a rhino calf was left orphaned in the Leipzig Zoo. Prof Osthoff’s article: “Milk composition of a free-ranging white rhinoceros during late lactation” was used as a directive for applying surrogate milk for horse foals (which is already commercially available), since the composition of horse and rhino milk largely corresponds. The surrogate milk was used with great success and the rhino calf is flourishing. He mentions that such an orphan is often given the wrong nourishment with the best intentions, resulting in the starvation of the animal despite the amount of cow’s milk it devours.

With surrogate milk having the same
composition as the mother’s milk of a
specific species, orphaned calves or
cubs of that species could be pulled
through during the difficult time
of weaning.

Milk formula for baby elephants in the pipeline
With baby elephants left orphaned due to the increase in elephant poaching for their ivory, several attempts have been made to create a milk formula in order to feed these elephants. To date, many elephants have died in captivity from side effects such as diarrhoea as a result of the surrogate formula which they were fed.

Prof Osthoff recently received a consignment of frozen milk which he, together with researchers from Zimbabwe, will use to work on a milk formula for elephants. They are studying the milk in a full lactation period of two years. During lactation, the composition of the milk changes to such an extent that a single surrogate formula will not be sufficient. Four different formulas should probably be designed.

Prof Osthoff says that of the different species he has researched, elephants are the most interesting and deviate most from the known species.

Although his research to develop surrogate milk is adding much value to the wildlife industry, and although he finds this part of his work very exciting, his research focus is on food science and nutrition. “What is currently authentic in milk research is the study of the fat globules with content, the structure and composition of the casein micelle, and the prebiotic sugars. The knowledge which is gained helps to improve the processing, development of new food products, and development of food products for health purposes,” says Prof Osthoff.

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