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28 January 2020 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Pexels
Conference
At the meet-and-greet last night, were from left Prof Ruad Ganzevoort, Diversity Officer and Dean of Theology and Religion at VUA, Prof Francis Petersen and Dr Gene Block, Chancellor of UCLA.

The Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice at the University of the Free State (UFS) is hosting a colloquium on Fragility and Resilience: Facets, Features and Transformation in Higher Education which started on 29 January, with the official progamme concluding on 30 January 2020.

The colloquium is a annual collaborative partnership between the UFS, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA).

Apart from the overarching themes the colloquium also placed some focus on mental health, within this context as all three regions are witnessing a spike in mental health issues among students and staff as well as a deficit in terms of being able to sufficiently address the crisis.

“All three universities are committed to discussing global developments in diversity and transformation in higher education to discussing global developments in diversity and transformation as it may constitute itself in higher education circles around the globe,” says Dr Dionne van Reenen, convener of the 2020 colloquium and research fellow at the unit.  

The idea is to discuss what has and has not worked and, hopefully, access best practices in a variety of contexts. The partnership between the three universities spans over six years starting in 2014 when the UFS first hosted the research colloquium. It is the third time the UFS has hosted the colloquium.
 
Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, along with other members of the UFS Rectorate, attended a meet-and-greet on Monday 28 January 2020, and was joined by Dr Gene Block, Chancellor of UCLA, Vice Provosts Cindy Fan, Patricia Turner, Charles Alexander, Professors Abel Valenzuela, John Hamilton and Dr Shalom Staub, director of Community Learning, as well as Prof Ruard Ganzevoort, Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Theology and Religion at VUA 

News Archive

Yeast genus named after UFS scientist
2012-02-21

 
Prof. Lodewyk Kock

 

A yeast genus has been named Kockiozyma in honour of Prof. Lodewyk Kock of the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State for his contributions to yeast systematics.

A genus is a category of classification ranking below a family and above a species and generally consists of a group of species exhibiting similar characteristics.  
 
Prof. Kock says: “This event was a big surprise and honour which is usually only bestowed on scholars at the end of their career.” 
 
The manuscript proposing the new genus name, titled "Kockiozyma gen. nov., for Zygozyma suomiensis: thephylogeny of the Lipomycetaceous yeasts" was accepted for publication on 7 February 2012 by the ISI journal Annals of Microbiology.
 
This genus is a member of the family called the Lipomycetaceae which is regarded as a primitive group of yeasts. This family is usually studied for their evolutionary status and development.
 
The scholars that did the research and bestowed the honour are Dr S. Jindamorakot and Dr P. Yukphan from the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) in Thailand. The senior author was Prof. Y. Yamada, Professor Emeritus at Shizuoka University at the town of Shizuoka in Japan.

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