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UFS launches its first-ever Student Toolkit

27 August 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Xolisa Mnukwa

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

Prof Habib addresses inequality at public lecture

2014-08-06

One of South Africa’s leading political commentators, Prof Adam Habib, gave a public lecture and launched his latest book on the Bloemfontein Campus on Wednesday 30 July 2014. The event was hosted by the Department of Philosophy in association with Wits University Press and The Southern African Trust.

Prof Habib started his lecture by summarising his book, ‘South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects’. “It is basically about: how did we get where we are today, and how do we get out of the mess we are in?” he said.

His book focuses on South Africa’s transition into democracy and the country’s prospects for inclusive development – which formed the basis of his talk. Prof Habib stressed the issue of inequality facing South Africa and discussed the different approaches to addressing the matter.

“The one approach is that it is simply something we have to live with,” he said. “People who believe this live in a bubble. For example, service delivery protests do not happen because of poverty – it happens because of inequality.”

Prof Habib cautioned against not taking the matter seriously. “Inequality went up consistently in South Africa over the last 20 years. This is however not solely a national challenge, but a global challenge. And South Africa is the frontline of the war on inequality.”

He proposed that the expectations of the rich, rather than the poor, should be addressed.
“We need to moderate expectations. But we can’t moderate the expectations of the poor, if not the rich. We can’t ask the poor to sacrifice what the rich won’t.

“South Africa is once again at a moment of reckoning, where we are forced to make hard choices – in order to make the right choices.”

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