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UFS Postgraduate Education students attend orientation programme
Postgraduate students from the Faculty of Education at the World of Work teacher orientation held at the university.
Postgraduate students in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Free State (UFS) were subjected to an enlightening theoretical orientation of what to expect in the actual world of teaching.

Delivering an address to the students, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Prof Loyiso Jita, said the annual World of Work session was meant to ensure that “our students are not surprised when they enter the working environment, but are prepared and are able to make their own calculations.”

Qualities of a best teacher

In his speech that sought to evoke the conscience of students about the qualities of the kind of teacher they should be, Prof Jita encouraged them to learn from the best model teachers they had seen during their schooling days and to do away with the habits of the bad teachers they had met.

Prof Jita outlined five features that characterise a good teacher: a love for children; a love for books; a love for helping others; developing expertise in your subject area; and remembering that you have a role to play in developing the country’s leaders of tomorrow.

Teachers have to undergo development programmes

The Provincial Director of the South African Council of Educators (SACE), Marupi Marumo, took the students through a series of ethics, morals, and development programmes for teachers which include internet, digital content, and broadcast ways of teaching. “Teachers have to be members of SACE and government has made it mandatory for teachers to undergo educational programmes as constantly as possible,” he said. 

Marumo warned that the teaching profession is nowadays infested with fraudsters who fake their educational qualifications, from a matric certificate up to a tertiary qualification.

“It is on this this premise that all incoming teachers will have to register with us and have their qualifications verified,” he said.

The session was attended by officials from the provincial Department of Education, Labour, Xhariep District, local school principals, and teachers’ unions.

News Archive

Four modernised controlled environment cabinets inaugurated
2006-07-27

Photographed in a controlled environment cabinet were at the back from the left:  Mr Adriaan Hugo (head of the UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division), Prof Herman van Schalkwyk (Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS) and Prof Koos Terblans (lecturer at the UFS Department of Physics).  In front is Mr Koos Uys (engineering consultant from Experto Designa who helped with the cooling systems of the cabinets).
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

Different look for research in controlled circumstances at the UFS  

Research in controlled circumstances at the University of the Free State (UFS) turned a new page today with the inauguration of four modernised controlled environment cabinets of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences.

“The controlled environment cabinets, which are situated next to the glass houses on the eastern side of the Agriculture Building on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein, were installed in the early 1980’s.  The cabinets, used for research purposes in controlled circumstances by the UFS for many years, became dysfunctional and needed to be repaired and put into use again,” said Prof Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.

“The cabinets are used by the agronomics, horticulture and soil science divisions of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences to control factors such as the temperature, the intensity and quality of light, synthesis and humidity.  This is done 24 hours a day, with hourly intervals,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

The cabinets are ideally suited to determine the joint and separate effects of these factors on the growth of plants.  The adaptability of plants to climate can also be investigated under controlled circumstances.  All of this leads to a better understanding of the growth and development process of plants, more specifically that of agricultural crops. 

“The effect of these environmental factors on the effectiveness of insect killers such as fungus killers, insecticide and weed killers can also be investigated and can help to explain the damage that is sometimes experienced, or even prevent the damage if the research is timeously,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

A new cabinet can cost between R2-3 million, depending on the degree of sophistication.  “Although controlled environment cabinets have been used for agricultural research for a long time, it has become costly to maintain them     and even more impossible to purchase new ones,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the cabinets were re-built by die UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division.  Some of the mechanisms were also replaced and computerised.   

“The re-building and mechanisation of the cabinets were funded by the faculty and because the work was done by our own staff, an amount of about R1 million was saved.  The maintenance costs will now be lower as the cabinets are specifically tailor made for our research needs,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Where all monitoring was done manually in the past, the cabinets can now be controlled with a computer.  This programme was designed by Prof Koos Terblans from the UFS Department of Physics. 

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the modernisation of the cabinets is part of the faculty’s larger strategy to get its instruments and apparatus up to world standards.  “With this project we have proved that we can find a solution for a problem ourselves and that there are ways to get old apparatus functional again,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
26 July 2006

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