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02 September 2019 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Thabo Kessah
Eunice Lebona
Eunice Lebona sees herself as a ‘perfectionist procrastinator.’
She is literally the beginning and the end of students’ academic careers on the Qwaqwa Campus, as she welcomes each one of them with an application form when they arrive and ensures that they enjoy their moment in the Rolihlahla Mandela Hall when they graduate. She says she derives all the pleasure and creativity from ‘last-minute crunch’. For those who have interacted with her, she epitomises excellence in the execution of her duties, but many would not know that she is a procrastinator. 

She is Eunice Lebona, Assistant Director: Student Academic Services.

Childhood lesson

‘Ausi Eunice’, as she is affectionately known, credits her grandmother for valuing accountability, her most prized childhood lesson.

“My grandmother raised me and as the oldest grandchild, I learnt the value of accountability at an early age; this has been the cornerstone of my life and career.  Although it is valuable to have support around you, standing on your own two feet is critical, because you will not know when that support might not be available,” she said. 

Working with students comes naturally to her, as she is inspired by progression and achievement.

Personal inspiration

“Getting to higher echelons than previous accomplishments, is my inspiration.  My successes are energisers to achieve the next steps on unique and distinctly different notes than the previous ones. It is this same notion that builds my view, that – as the University of the Free State – we need to see women representation in leadership on a greater scale, as well as respect for their spaces of delivery.”

When asked about the one thing that very few people knew about her, she said: 
“I am a procrastinator. In fact, I am a perfectionist procrastinator. Although procrastination is not good, the last-minute crunch is stimuli to ideas that I would normally not dream of in my comfort mode,” Lebona insists.

What is success?

She defines success as “inner gratification which is the result of the outcomes I had to deliver on”.  She adds: “Witnessing the success and motivation of others from the small contributions I have made in their lives, is all the success that resonates with me. Respect and humility go a long way in attaining success. As indicated earlier, my grandmother played a crucial role in my upbringing and instilled in me the philosophy entrenched in Luke 6:31 that says: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That has been my motto since her passing away”.

News Archive

Harvard couple to present lectures on Biostatistics and Mathematics at the UFS
2015-12-07


Professor Donald Rubin

Prof Donald Rubin (John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics at Harvard University) and Elizabeth Zell (MStat - mathematical statistician in the Division of Bacterial Diseases) will visit the University of the Free State (UFS) where they will present lectures on their respective work.

Over his prestigious academic career, Prof Don Rubin’s 400 publications and 13 books have earned him around 180 000 citations at an h-index of 113. He is one of the most cited statisticians/mathematicians/economists/psychologists in the world over the last 10 -15 years. He has supervised 35 PhD candidates as sole-supervisor, 17 more as co-supervisor, with a further eight in the pipeline.

Prof Rubin who will meet with UFS academics in the Department of Mathematics and Actuarial Sciences will also deliver a lecture: Rerandomisation to improve covariate balance in experiments.

Randomised experiments are the “gold standard” for estimating causal effects, yet in practice, chance imbalances often exist in covariate distributions between treatment groups. If covariate data are available before units are exposed to treatments, these chance imbalances can be mitigated by first checking covariate balance before the physical experiment takes place. Provided a precise definition of imbalance has been specified in advance, unbalanced randomisations can be discarded, followed by a rerandomisation. This process can continue until a randomisation yielding balance according to the definition is achieved. By improving covariate balance, rerandomisation provides more precise and trustworthy estimates of treatment effects.

Prof Rubin received an honorary professorship from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.


Elizabeth Zell

The lecture will take place on:
Date: Tuesday 8 December 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus

Zell earned her Master’s degree in Statistics at North Carolina State University, and for more than two decades, was an active bio-statistical researcher in various offices of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Since 2013, she has been the Principal Statistician and President of Stat-Epi Associates, Inc. Her 150+ publications have earned her 14 500 citations at an h-index of over 50. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and, in 2010, she received the Statistics Section Government Award for outstanding contributions to statistics and public health by the American Public Health Association. During her career at the CDC, she earned more than 20 CDC research awards and honours.

She will deliver two lectures at the UFS. The first is entitled A Potential Outcomes Approach to Documenting the Public Health Impact of the Introduction of PCV13 for the Prevention of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease. The topic of her second lecture is: Assessing the Effectiveness of Intrapartum Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Prevention of Early-Onset Group B Streptococcus Disease through Propensity Score Design

Elizabeth’s lectures will take place on:
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2015
Time: 10:45 and 13:00
Venue: West Block 111, Bloemfontein Campus

For more information, please contact Dr Michael von Maltitz at VMaltitzMJ@ufs.ac.za.

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