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11 April 2019 | Story Zama Feni | Photo Supplied
School of Nursing 50 year anniversary
From the left: Mrs Cheslyn Petersen; Prof Magda Muller, Head of the School of Nursing; and Prof Francis Petersen, UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor.
The University of the Free State (UFS) Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, hailed the institution’s School of Nursing as one of the flagship entities and prime examples of community engagement.

Addressing attendees at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the school on 6 April 2019, Prof Petersen said: “I believe that you have managed to find a balance between being at the scientific forefront in terms of research output and state-of-the-art simulation and other training technologies, and the values of care, service, and selflessness. 

History of the School of Nursing

Taking the guests down memory lane regarding the history of the school, Prof Petersen said the university accommodated Nursing students within the Department of Social Work in the then Faculty of Social Sciences from the year 1967. The Department of Nursing was subsequently created in 1969. At that point, there was no Faculty of Health Sciences, and the Department of Nursing remained in the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Growing from strength to strength

He said the School of Nursing has over the past 50 years gone from strength to strength, affecting the landscape of nursing in South Africa through its achievements and its alumni.

“In celebrating 50 years of nursing scholarship and education, it is important to understand that the discipline of nursing is firmly rooted within the community it serves.” 
“Without our stakeholders across many services, both public and private, we would not have been here tonight,” said Prof Petersen.

Head of the School of Nursing, Prof Magda Mulder, said the 50th celebrations were an important milestone which commenced with the appointment of Professor Idalia Loots as the first Professor of Nursing in 1969 in the erstwhile Department of Nursing.  
“Prof Loots’ views on graduate nurse education were visionary and saw the relatively small intake of students soar from between 16 and 20 to more than 80. Today, there is ample evidence in literature to support nursing education at graduate level, resulting in better nursing care, and fewer errors and lawsuits,” she said. 

News Archive

Extending new discoveries in the deep subsurface – UFS paper published in Nature Communications
2015-11-30



Scanning electron microscopy of some of the Eukarya recovered from two different mines. (a) Dochmiotrema sp. (Plathyelminthes), (b) A. hemprichi (Annelida), (c) Mylonchulus brachyurus (Nematoda), (d) Amphiascoides (Arthropoda). Scale bar, 50 µm (a,b), 100 µm (c), 20 µm (d).

Following the discovery of the first Eukarya in the deep subsurface (Nature, 2010) by a research group from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State (UFS) and their international collaborators, intense interest has developed in understanding the diversity of more complex organisms living in these extreme environments.

Prof Gaetan Borgonie from Extreme Life Isyensya, together with a group of UFS researchers, took this research further, resulting in a paper on this research released in Nature Communications – impact factor 11.47.  This paper is an extension of the first reports of more complex life at great depths, and their abilities to survive these harsh conditions.

Ten authors from the UFS contributed with the array of expertise needed to define this discovery. The group was supported by staff from the different mining groups, long-term leading collaborators from the USA and Canada, and the idea specialist driver of the paper, Prof Borganie.

“After a sampling campaign that lasted more than two years, we identified that Platyhelminthes, Rotifera, Annelida and Arthropoda are thriving at 1.4 km depths in fissure water up to 12,000-years old in the South African mines of Driefontein and Kopanang,” said Prof Borgonie, who was appointed as associated researcher in the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology.

This paper really opens a “can of worms” so to speak. According to Prof Esta van Heerden from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS they extended to define protozoa and fungi. “However, they are present in low numbers,” she said.

Characterisation of the different species reveals that many are opportunistic organisms. In house-adapted video equipment was used to film inside the fissure for the home of the organisms.

This is the first-known study to demonstrate the in situ distribution of biofilms on fissure rock faces using video documentation. Calculations suggest that food, not dissolved oxygen, is the limiting factor for population growth. The discovery of a group of complex multicellular organisms in the underground has important implications for the search for life on other planets in our solar system.

More articles

The strange beasts that live in solid rock deep underground
A microscopic ‘zoo’ is found deep, deep underground

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