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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 academic joins an elite league of achievers
2010-04-14

Prof. Dingie van Rensburg, Director of the Centre for Health Systems Research  Development at the University of the Free State
Prof. Dingie van Rensburg
Prof. Dingie van Rensburg, Director of the Centre for Health Systems Research & Development at the University of the Free State (UFS), has joined an elite list of a only few distinguished individuals who have been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Antwerp (UA) in Belgium.

He is only the third South African to be honoured in this way by the UA, following in the footsteps of Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs (2000) and former State President, Nelson Mandela (2004).

He is the first social scientist from South Africa to receive this honorary doctorate from the UA – the highest academic distinction of that university. The university has previously only awarded three honorary doctorates to social scientists: Prof. Raymond Boudon, sociologist at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1995); Prof. Robert Putman, political scientist at Harvard University (2000); and Prof. John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame), mathematician and economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton.

The award ceremony will take place on 29 April 2010 in Antwerp.

Prof. Van Rensburg has authored, co-authored and was editor of many books/volumes, chapters in books, monographs, research reports and articles in scientific journals. He has also presented and co-presented at numerous national and international conferences; and supervised a significant number of master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral students.

In his 17 years as director of the Centre he has initiated, managed and led approximately 50 research and development projects, several of them large and long-term projects, and many of an inter-institutional and multidisciplinary nature.

In 2002 he became an NRF-rated researcher and in 2007 his rating as an established researcher was renewed. In the past two decades he received several research grants simultaneously from both the National Research Foundation and the Medical Research Foundation of South Africa, mostly for projects on Tuberculosis, HIV/Aids and antiretroviral treatment.

Prof Van Rensburg holds membership of both the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns and the Academy for Science of South Africa; he also served for varying periods on the Councils of both these academies. He was also a member of various health bodies of the Free State Province and the National Science and Technology Forum.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za  
14 April 2010
 

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