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21 May 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Charl Devenish
Bloem Campus Open Day 2019
2020 Prospective Students get a taste of varsity life at UFS Bloemfontein Campus Open Day.

Photo Gallery

Matric learners from all over South Africa, together with their parents, teachers, and some Grade 11 learners, attended the University of the Free State (UFS) Bloemfontein Campus 2019 Open Day on 11 May, to investigate whether the UFS can meet their expectations and spark a dream concerning their careers.

A glimpse of what prospective first-years can expect in 2020

The UFS has seven faculties: Economic and Management Sciences, Education, Health Sciences, the Humanities, Law, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Theology and Religion, and an additional Open and Distance Learning on its South Campus, and the Business School. On Open Day, learners had the opportunity to attend faculty exhibitions offering course information, teaching aids, models, and much more, demonstrating the high calibre of teaching and learning facilities at the UFS, as well as innovation and technology-based education. Learners were also exposed to interaction with academics and the deans of the faculties, motivational talks by senior students in the respective faculties, as well as members from the Student Representative Council (SRC), Kovsie FM, Student Wellness, the UFS Student Library, and Student Recruitment Services.

Why study at the UFS?

According to an honours lecturer in the UFS Department of Architecture (Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences), the UFS, just like any other South African university, would be an obvious choice of study for students interested in architecture, because it is accredited by the South African Council for the Architectural Profession, as well as internationally. However, what sets the UFS apart, is the fact that lecturers have close working relationships with their students in the department, allowing them to track and understand their students’ work, academic progress, and skills development. The Department of Architecture, just like other departments in the seven faculties of study offered at the UFS, pride themselves on selecting top-tier learners to pursue their studies and moulding them into competitive professionals who will thrive in the working world. 

The UFS prides itself on being a research-led, student-centred, and regionally engaged university that aims to produce globally competitive graduates through a renewed and transformed curriculum.
 
Seventeen-year-old Zwelethu Ndabezitha from Phoenix in KwaZulu-Natal, who wants to become a quantity surveyor, said: “I want to apply everything I’ve learned into rebuilding and transforming my home town”. Learners such as Zwelethu stand a chance to realise their dreams and develop by means of dynamic scientific education, as well as independent and critical thought-enhancing education provided by the UFS.

For more information about pursuing studies at the UFS, visit the UFS prospective students’ website where learners can also apply online.

 

News Archive

Rhodes professor calls for accountability in teacher education
2013-11-14

 

 Prof Jean Baxen of Rhodes University and Prof Dennis Francis, Dean of the Faculty of Education of the UFS.
Photo: Stephen Collett
15 November 2013

 



Lecture (pdf)

 

“Our education system needs quality teacher education.”

This was the message from Prof Jean Baxen, Deputy Dean of Research at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She delivered the Education Public Lecture on ‘The lives of children, citizenship and teacher education: challenges and opportunities’ at the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus.

Growing up in White River, the rural areas of Eastern Transvaal (as it was previously known), Prof Baxen took the audience on a journey of the imagination. She shared stories of how she and fellow learners walked miles to get to school and how her son found himself in a situation of being unsure about his own racial identity, questioning what it meant to be ‘coloured’. She also related stories of how teachers are not sufficiently prepared to mediate information on HIV/Aids.

These stories revealed how little teachers cared, and also how difficult and challenging it is for learners to cope in such teaching and learning environments – thus calling for quality teacher education.

She stressed the fact that quality teacher education is needed in South Africa to assist in curbing the challenges children and fellow citizens come across in our broader society. “It is important that, as teacher educators, we should groom teachers to find and understand their identity, sexuality, and also the world they live in. There is an urgent need for us to hold ourselves and others accountable and to not distance ourselves and make it someone else’s responsibility – it is our joint responsibility as citizens,” she said.

We need a pedagogy that would navigate and start formulating a language that we could use to face these challenges, she proposed.

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