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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

Australian academics present research seminar on education
2012-11-14

At the research seminar were, from the left Prof. Marie Brennan, Prof. Melanie Walker and Dr Lew Zipin.
Photo: Amanda Tongha
14 November 2012

The Research Centre on Higher Education, Development and Capabilities recently hosted two international visitors, Prof. Marie Brennan and Dr Lew Zipin from Victoria University in Australia. They discussed future visits and research collaboration with Prof. Melanie Walker, Professor of Higher Education and Human Development. They presented a well-attended research seminar on ‘Educating for futures in marginalized regions: a sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations’.

Prof. Brennan and Dr Zipin have been involved in researching education for social justice in teacher education and higher education in Australia for many years. Most recently, they have been researchers on prestigious Australian Research Council projects. These include: (i) Capacitating Student Aspirations in Classrooms and Communities in a High Poverty Region, 2012-2014; and (ii) Pursuing equity in high poverty rural schools: improving learning through rich accountabilities, 2010-2012. They recently co-edited Re-positioning University Governance and Academic Work that was published by Sense Publications in 2010.

 

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