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30 December 2019 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Thabo Kessah

Gavin Dollman is one of the young researchers selected for the international research programme funded through the US-SA Higher Education Network. This prestigious programme is aimed at giving PhD candidates and their supervisors the opportunity to regularly travel to the USA and spend time at participating US universities where their co-promoters will be based.

“The University Staff Doctoral Programme (USDP) has allowed me to bring my idea of collaborative science to fruition. It’s an exciting opportunity,” Dollman said.

Dollman added that his PhD studies would focus on the machine and deep learning for prospecting for palaeontology. He is studying with the Appalachian State University. Other participating universities are Montana and Colorado State.

He has also had the privilege to work alongside a team of Geologists and Paleontologists from the universities of Birmingham, Zurich and Oxford in a project under the auspices of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Evolution Studies Institute (ESI) on a site in rural Eastern Cape.

“My role within this massive project is to perform a detailed survey of the sites and the surrounding area for later analysis. I used a drone known as the DJI Phantom 3 Pro with which I took hundreds of pictures that were later put together to create a detailed map,” he said.

“The maps allowed for virtual prospecting by the team and will in the long term serve as the basis for a predictive fossil model for the area.”

Dollman is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics on the Qwaqwa Campus.

News Archive

Highlights of South Campus

2017-01-18

We look back on 2016 to pick out the outstanding achievements of our three campuses. Here is a selection of headlines from the South Campus.

Fully online Advanced Certificate in Teaching (ACT)
In July 2016, the South Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS) became the first in South Africa to introduce an online platform for teachers to obtain the Advanced Certificate in Teaching (ACT). This unique platform, entirely online, provides teachers the opportunity to complete these certificates faster than before.

First residence for UFS South Campus
In the second semester of 2016, a new residence, named Legae, was opened on the South Campus, with 146 double rooms and 17 kitchens. The new residence accommodates 250 undergraduate and 20 postgraduate students and has 270 beds, 20 single-bedroom flats, 12 additional single rooms, as well as eight laundry rooms and a drying area. Since the UFS strives to cater for differently-abled people, this residence has two rooms available on the ground floor of Block C for differently-abled students.

The residence is also the first at the university that has a grey-water system installed. This water will then be reused for toilet flushing as well as for irrigation purposes on the campus.

South Campus supplementary schools foster future Kovsies
The Monyetla Bursary Project, in partnership with the UFS and other sponsors, presents an annual Winter School for Grade 12 learners on the South Campus. In addition, a Saturday school for Grade 12s has been in operation since 2007.

“Champion teachers in the district assist learners”

Each Saturday, 650 learners attend the classes. Chris Grobler, a science teacher at Navalsig High School in Bloemfontein, who organises both schools, says: “The 1 200 learners at the Winter School came not only from the Free State but from as far as the North West province, Gauteng, and Eastern Cape. We are very pleased about this, as it means that the image of the UFS is being carried further afield.”

A special feature included in this year’s programme was interpreting services in South African Sign Language (SASL) for deaf students.

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