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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

Little Professors enrol at UFS
2012-01-20

 
Little Professors in the making: Archie Barclay, 3 years, (left) and Khanya Nondabula, 6 years.
Photo: Phelekwa Mpono

About 65 small children have taken up residence at our Bloemfontein Campus, joining the Kovsie family.

The little ones, whose ages range from three months to six years, are the first kids to enrol at The Little Professor Crèche on the campus. The crèche, with its motto Preparing little minds for greatness, opened its doors on 9 January this year.
 
Head of the crèche, Mrs Ricka van Kerkhof, says they received a flood of applications for the 105 available places and forty more kids will be taken in during the coming weeks. Van Kerkhof says the crèche is open to everyone, but preference is given to children of UFS personnel. Currently 90% of the kids are those of university staff.
 
The well-equipped crèche has enough toys to fill up a small shop and offers extramural activities such as piano lessons, swimming, chess and pottery classes. All classes have flat-screen televisions for kids to watch educational programs. The crèche caters for six classes, infants up to Grade R. The Pre-grade R Curriculum and Foundation Phase Grade Curriculum R-3 of the Free State Department of Basic Education are followed. The language of instruction is English and parents who want to enrol their kids will pay R 1150.00 per month.
 
Van Kerkhof, who calls her job the best in the world, says The Little Professor is not a care facility. Rather it’s a place where kids are taught to concentrate on education. “We are teaching kids to be clever.”

 

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