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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

Institute launches Human Rights Desk
2013-10-22

 

Attending the launch of the first Human Rights Desk were from left: Prof Teuns Verschoor, former Vice-Rector: Institutional Affairs, Dr Leon Wessels, human rights activist and lawyer, and Dr Choice Makhetha, Vice-Rector: External Relations.
Photo: Huibrecht Hoffman
22 October 2013

The university has created another beacon for social justice and reconciliation with the launch of its first Human Rights Desk (HRD) on the Bloemfontein Campus. The HRD, which falls under the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, will promote, protect and monitor human rights at the university.

Speaking at the launch of the HRD, Prof Andre Keet, Director of the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, said the desk will investigate reported violations of human rights on campus. "It will investigate any cases that require investigation, as well as various other projects that serves the university and national and international imperatives as far as human rights is concerned.”

Prof Keet told students and staff in attendance that the desk is an expression of the university's commitment. "As a university, we have to own this particular desk, as a collective entity we should make it work and be proud of it. Our task is to build a new form of productivity into the language of rights, and build a culture of human rights among our students, which we can already see emerging."

Also speaking at the event, Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, said the HRD will be a place where people can come who are hurt. He encouraged students to speak on human rights anywhere in the world. "I want you to think of yourself as a borderless human being, for human rights are not geographically confined. I want you to also hurt when somebody in a mall in Kenya gets hurt."

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