Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
31 July 2020 | Story Lacea Loader
Moderator and Panellists

As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the 3rd UFS Thought-Leader Series in collaboration with Vrye Weekblad as part of the Vrystaat Literature Festival’s online initiative, VrySpraak-digitaal.

This year, higher-education institutions globally are placed in the challenging context of COVID-19. Aware and grounded in the reality that the world will not return to the normality of pre-COVID-19, our responsibility as scholars still remains to contribute to public discourse and to offer innovative solutions that will impact the lives of people nationally and globally in order to help them understand and adapt to a new world order.

Against this background and context, this year’s debates focus on ‘Post-COVID-19, Post-Crisis’, with Health and Modelling, Politics, Economy, and Predictions for 2021 as the sub-themes. Placed in a COVID-19 context, and in lieu of the Vrystaat Arts Festival, the series will be presented virtually in the form of one webinar per month during the period August 2020 to November 2020.

Date: 13 August 2020
Topic: Health and Modelling
Time: 11:30-13:00
RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za

Facilitator:

Max du Preez
Editor: Vrye Weekblad
Biography

Introduction and welcome:

Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS

Panellists:

Prof Salim Abdool Karim
Director: Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
Chair: South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19
Biography

Prof Glenda Gray
President and CEO: South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)
Biography

Prof Felicity Burt
NRF-DST South African Research Chair in vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens research
Biography

 

 

News Archive

Students applaud Prof Jansen one last time
2016-08-11

Description: The Talk To Me  Tags: The Talk To Me

Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the
University of the Free State, talks to a student outside the
Library of the South Campus on Tuesday 26 July 2016
during the Talk To Me session.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

“The Talk To Me session made me feel like I mattered.”

This was one of the compliments the University of the Free State (UFS) and Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, received after the last Talk To Me sessions for the year.

On 25 and 26 July 2016, Prof Jansen gave staff and students on the Bloemfontein and South Campuses a chance to pull up a chair and have a chat with him on issues that mattered to them.

The students commended Prof Jansen on this great initiative as they felt their voices were being heard. It allowed them an opportunity to speak to him directly, as well as to make suggestions on things they were concerned about. “I really appreciate this manner of allowing students to have a chat with Prof Jansen,” a student said, giving feedback on the session.

Students were very pleased with the professionalism and organisation of the whole session, but requested that it be held more often, therefore giving more students the opportunity to converse with Prof Jansen. The majority of the students suggested that the session with Prof Jansen should run longer than just an hour as there were a large number of students who would appreciate a heart-to-heart chat with Prof Jansen.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept