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26 August 2022 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Supplied
Katleho Nkosi
Katleho Nkosi’s design, which won him second place in the national design competition during the Student Entrepreneurship Week 2022.

Katleho Nkosi, a fourth-year Education student at the University of the Free State (UFS), obtained second place in a national design competition hosted virtually by Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE). 

The national design competition formed part of the launch of the Student Entrepreneurship Week 2022, which took place at the University of Venda on 18 August 2022. As such, students from many of the universities in the country, including Nkosi, took part in designing a poster that would be used to advertise the event. 

Nkosi is delighted and excited about this accomplishment. “This win was really surprising and unbelievable for me, because obtaining the second-place position means that my work is good,” said Nkosi.

The participants were allowed to conceptualise and submit their final product between 28 June and 15 July 2022. “I had no experience in this space, I only designed content for fun, and I participated in this competition because I was motivated by a friend,” Nkosi highlighted. 

Click to view document  Click here to view poster in full size.


The motivation behind the design

Since the Student Entrepreneurship Week was held at the University of Venda, Nkosi used the vibrancy and colourfulness of Venda as inspiration for his design. “When I was designing the poster, the only thing on my mind was making sure that I put something together that was related to Venda,” he explained. In addition, the theme for the Entrepreneurship Week was ‘Move to Market’, and Nkosi asserts that he tried to integrate the theme with Venda, and this is how the design came about.

The outcome of the competition and future plans

Although Nkosi did not win the competition, he did receive a cash prize for being among the top three. Furthermore, given his accomplishment, Nkosi would like to take part in many more design competitions moving forward. “Now that I have realised that I have the potential to win, I think I can take this as a career path in the future,” he said. Nkosi is also looking at merging his love of teaching with his newfound love for design. “I’m going to try and find the connection between design and education, because I really love to teach, so I could perhaps become a design teacher,” Nkosi expressed

News Archive

Internationally renowned mycologist visits the UFS
2012-05-23

 
Here are, from the left, front: Prof. Pedro Crous and Dr Marieka Gryzenhout (Department of Plant Sciences); at the back: Prof. Zakkie Pretorius (Department of Plant Sciences), Prof. Wijnand Swart (Cluster Director) and Prof. Gert Marais (Department of Plant Sciences).
Photo: Stephen Collett
23 May 2012

The Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and Strategic Academic Cluster 4 (Technologies for Sustainable Crop Industries in Semi-arid Regions) recently hosted Prof. Pedro Crous, Director of the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS) in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

CBS is the institution which houses the largest collection of fungal cultures in the world and hosts several internationally renowned fungal systematists. 
 
Prof. Crous is one of the leading mycologists in the world and also one of the pioneers of the international fungal bar-coding movement. His work focuses primarily on plant pathogens of importance to a large number of diverse crops across the world. 
 
In his lecture, entitled “DNA bar-coding of fungal pathogens to enhance trade and food production”, he referred to constraints that face mankind’s quest for secure food sources and how DNA bar-coding can alleviate them. 

According to Prof. Wijnand Swart, Director of the Cluster, collaboration with Prof. Crous and his staff at CBS will hopefully lead to the establishment of a fungal systematics research platform in the Department of Plant Sciences that can provide funding for projects related to plant pathology. 

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