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27 August 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Xolisa Mnukwa
Student Toolkit
The First Edition of the UFS Student Toolkit is now available on Blackboard.

Download the toolkit here

A common question first-time entering first-year students often ask themselves when they come to university, is: ‘How will I deal with the pressure?’

The University of the Free State (UFS) Department of Student Counselling and Development (SCD) – with the vision to promote, enable, and optimise students’ self-direction – has launched the first edition of the Student Toolkit on Friday, 23 August 2019.

The toolkit, which is now available on Blackboard, is intended to assist students in dealing and coping with challenges they face in their personal lives during their period of study at the UFS.

Students will be exposed to a variety of topics, pressing issues, and phenomena that they will encounter on a daily basis in their lives, such as academic and personal challenges, time management, procrastination, goal setting, anxiety, effective studying, stress management, mindful meditation, self-love, loneliness, relationships, sexual orientation, family frustrations, overthinking, death, and suicide. 

Present at the launch was the UFS Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement, Prof Puleng LenkaBula; the UFS Dean of Student Affairs, Mr Pura Mgolombane; the UFS Director for Student Counselling and Development, Melissa Barnaschone; Counselling Psychologist and compiler of the UFS Student Toolkit: Lize van den Bergh.

In addition, BCom Marketing honours student and poet, Thuthukani Ndlovu, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Next Chapter, Tshepang Mahlatsi, three students who have benefitted from SDC services, delegates from the department, and other affiliated students were all in attendance. 

For more information about the Student Toolkit, contact the Department of Student Counselling and Development at scd@ufs.ac.za or call +27 51 401 2853.


News Archive

UFS represented at international congress
2009-11-06

From the left are: Ms Van Rooyen, Ms Pretorius and Dr Stephen Walker, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the UFS.
Photo: Supplied

Three staff members of the University of the Free State (UFS) recently attended the 39th Annual Congress of the European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (EABCT) in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Dr Stephen Walker, Ms Chrisma Pretorius and Ms Marnelle van Rooyen, all from the Unit for Professional Training and Service in the Behavioural Sciences (UNIBS) represented the UFS at the congress.

The title of Dr Walker’s presentation was “The applicability of the maladaptive cognitive schema construct to the multi-ethnic South African context”.

Ms Pretorius, a Ph.D. student in Psychology, gave two presentations, namely “Ethnic differences in worry: A South African perspective” and “Worry, meta-cognitive beliefs and intolerance in a non-clinical multi-ethnic sample of university students” respectively.

Ms Van Rooyen, also a Ph.D. student in Psychology, presented “Cognitive schemas as predictors of disordered eating in a multi-ethnic sample of female university students”.

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