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Embark on your Gateway to an exciting Kovsie life

23 January 2020 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa

Enrich your first University of the Free State (UFS) experiences with the annual Gateway first-year’s college. Form long-lasting friendships and memories with your fellow freshmen and gear up for a vibrant academic career at the UFS.

Gateway comprises an exciting series of student-life and learning experiences that are intended to introduce and acquaint students with their respective Kovsie campuses and overall UFS campus life.

The 2020 Gateway programme inducts first-year students into academic faculty life in order to help them adjust and settle into the university environment. It also aims to instil effective skills in them to thrive academically, and to develop into well-rounded, globally competitive graduates.

Want to experience Gateway? Here’s how

The Gateway Orientation programme on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus is conducted according to student colleges. First-year students who do not belong to an on-campus or day residence on the Bfn Campus, are assigned to a college in Exam Room 3 during their registration. This enables them to follow and be part of the series of events according to the colleges they are assigned to.

Get to know your UFS campus

UFS Campus Tours no longer form part of the Gateway Programme; however, Gateway mentors assigned to specific colleges are available for students to get in touch with, in order to arrange tours of the Bloemfontein Campus. Day-residence students and students residing on campus are paired with P3 mentors, who have been placed in their respective residences to facilitate campus tours for them.

KovsiesACTUP Performing Arts Competition

The UFS Arts, Culture and Dialogue office has partnered with the Kovsie ACT office for the 2020 Gateway programme, introducing the KovsiesACTUP Performing Arts Competition for all prospective and current students of the UFS. It is geared towards engaging students and enhancing the general social atmosphere on the Bloemfontein Campus during registration.

The competition comprises various categories, including dancing, singing, poetry, DJing, musical bands, and rap. The winner from each category will walk away with R1 500 in cash. The competition finale will be held at the RAG farm on 27 January 2020 at 14:00.

For more information on how to get involved with the Arts, Culture and Dialogue Office, students can visit the Callie Human Centre on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus. The office has set up a performance stage, where fellow Kovsies associated with the office are entertaining prospective students and parents who are waiting to register.

For enquiries about Gateway on each campus, see the details below:

Bloemfontein Campus: +27 51 401 9876 or email gateway@ufs.ac.za
Qwaqwa Campus: Dulcie Malimabe, +27 58 718 5041; malimabeDP@ufs.ac.za
South Campus: Tshego Setilo, +27 51 505 1362; SetiloT@ufs.ac.za

Visit the UFS Gateway page for more information on the 2020 programme and how you can get involved.

News Archive

Universities can contribute to economic transformation

2010-01-27

At the lecture were, from the left: Prof. Neil Heideman (Acting Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences), Prof. Hartmut Frank (University of Bayreuth, Germany), Prof. Bianchi and Prof. Jan van der Westhuizen (professor in Chemistry at the UFS).
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe

Universities have a role to play in economic transformation and industrial development according to Prof. Fabrizio Bianchi, the Rector of the University of Ferrara in Italy.

This was the core message of his lecture on the topic Globalisation, Agriculture and Industrial Development that he delivered at the University of the Free State.

He said after the collapse of the agricultural industry in Italy as a result of the subsidies that the farmers were receiving from the government, the university had to step in.

“This was meant to maintain high prices and maximize the production but in the long run this approach created problems because the farmers were no longer producing high quality products but large quantities in order to receive subsidies,” he said.

“The result was that the government itself had to destroy those poor quality products. This was a completely unreasonable way to manage the economy”.

He said they had to abandon that approach and concentrate on quality because they realized that Italy could not match the prices and the quantity, in terms of production, of countries like China and the USA.

He said “knowledge and human resources” were the key factors that could get them out of that crisis; hence they came up with what he called “the Made in Italy approach”.

“We were working on the idea that food is part of culture and that it is not just simply for refueling the body,” he said.

“One of the fundamental ideas was to come back to the idea that production is the centre of the development process.”

“Quality is a very complex, collective issue,” he said. “You cannot understand development if you do not understand that you have to base it on strong roots”.

This approach resulted in the formation of several companies with specialized niche markets producing high quality products.

His visit to the UFS coincided with that of the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Prof. Richard Ernst from Switzerland, who was also part of the fourth presentation of the Cheese fondue concept.

The main thrust of this concept is that technical advances alone are insufficient for an agreement to be reached on the minimum respect between the various groups and individuals within a society. It proposes that for this to be achieved there has to be a concurrent development of empathy and emotional synergy.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
27 January 2010

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