Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

The New Face of Student Mental Wellness at the UFS

08 February 2022 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Charl Devenish

Dr Munita Dunn-Coetzee has joined the University of the Free State as the new Director of Student Counselling and Development. This is after an eleven-year stay at Stellenbosch University as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Student Structures and Communities, and later as the Director of the Centre for Student Counselling and Development.

Dr Dunn-Coetzee’s role at the UFS

As leader of the department, Dr Dunn-Coetzee sees her role as one in which she is responsible for moving her team forward. “My role is to really look at what the team needs. This is from infrastructure right through to their own personal development, and to making sure that they have what they need to get their jobs done,” she stated. In addition, Dr Dunn-Coetzee’s responsibilities include, “looking at our strategic intent, aligning with what the university wants, being relevant in terms of our service delivery, and connecting enough with the students”. In fact, one of the things she is excited about is learning from the students at the University of the Free State. “The big thing for me is to make contact with students and to engage with them about what is going on at ground level; the one thing I don’t want to be is someone who sits in the office, sends emails, and think I know what’s going on,” she explained.

A commitment to the mental health of UFS students

Although her two predecessors were internal appointments, Dr Dunn-Coetzee argues that being an external appointment allows her to have a fresh perspective. As such, one of her main priorities for the year is looking at student leaders, day residences, residences on campus, and residential heads, and analysing whether they are empowered enough to have conversations about mental-health issues with students. “The one thing that concerns me is that we have been online for two years, and now that we are telling students to come back to campus, it might evoke a level of anxiety in some students,” she explained. Therefore, ensuring that the department is student-centred in everything it does is very important to Dr Dunn-Coetzee. This varies from the way in which students are dealt with, how emails are responded to, and how students are treated when they walk into the Kovsie Health Building.

A long-term vision for the department and the university

Even though she has not been at the University of the Free State for very long, Dr Dunn-Coetzee has some long-term goals that are bound to positively impact both the students and the staff in her department. “I would like to have a research focus within our department; it is very easy to say that we are doing good work and that we have an impact on our students, but we need to have something that proves it,” she said. Therefore, an evidence-based approach is one of the directions she would like to pursue in her department. In addition, Dr Dunn-Coetzee argues that there is a need for a space in which intern psychologists can be trained. “It keeps your current staff on their toes, and it helps you to really play a role in developing psychologists in South Africa,” she expressed. Therefore, opening this space for young psychologists is something she hopes to make a reality in her time at the university. Furthermore, developing her staff and ensuring that they grow their skill set is an important goal she would like to achieve. “My focus is not to have people work here for thirty years; I need to empower them so that they can develop as much as they can. Of course, I love having them here, but in the event that they want to work somewhere else I need to make sure that they are skilled,” she said. Lastly, a goal she is adamant to achieve is to ensure that the service delivery by Student Counselling and Development is of a high standard on all three campuses.

As such, Dr Dunn-Coetzee would like to be viewed by the student community as accessible and approachable. “I would like for students to walk in here and feel comfortable; it doesn’t matter what you identify as – there is a space for you here,” she said.

News Archive

Dialogue between Science and Society series looks at forgiveness and reconciliation

2013-03-24

Taking part in the discussion on forgiveness and living reconciliation, were from left: Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993; Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process.
Photo: Mandi Bezuidenhout
24 March 2013

How do you, as a mother who lost her only daughter, forgive the man who claimed responsibility for the attack that killed her? How do you forget his crime while travelling with him across the world?

These were some of the questions posed to Jeanette Fourie at a Dialogue between Science and Society series on forgiveness and living reconciliation. Jeanette, whose daughter Lyndi was killed in an attack on the Heidelberg Pub in Cape Town in 1993, was one of three people telling their stories of forgiveness while dealing with traumatic experiences.

Sitting next to Letlapa Mphahlele, the man who owned up to the attack that killed her daughter, Jeanette spoke about their story of forgiveness traveling the world together, spreading the message of forgiveness and conciliation.

"Don't ever think you can forget, because that’s not possible. What you do with the pain is to find peace, and that's what forgiveness does. Forgiveness allows you to stop all the dialogue in your head on why he did it. You don't forget, you confront it and you deal with it."

Letlapa, Director of Operations of Apla, the military wing of the PAC at the time of Lyndi's death, spoke about dealing with the response to his crime. "Sometimes you wish that you were not forgiven, because now you have the great burden of proving that you are worthy of forgiveness."

Also telling her story of forgiveness was Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993 in which four people were killed and sixty-seven others injured. Four people were sent to prison. In 2009 Olga met one of the perpetrators, Stefaans Coetzee, and what came out of that meeting, is her story.

"When I met Stefaans I was very angry, but when you sit down with somebody and listen to him or her, you find out what the reasons were that made him or her do something. I can say that I forgave him."

Facilitating the conversation, Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor on Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, said the seminar was meant to get in touch with the truth that forgiveness is possible.

"Before we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, the experts always said that forgiveness was not possible in these stories of the past. And then the TRC came into life as a response to mass atrocities. For the first time in the history of these traumatic experiences, of political traumas, we witness something that we have never seen. Even us on the TRC, although it was framed as reconciliation, we never imagined there would actually be stories of forgiveness emerging out of that process, and then we witness that this too is possible."

Others who took part in the two-hour-long seminar, were Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process. They spoke about the dynamics behind the processes of engagement between victims/ survivors and perpetrators.

The Dialogue between Science and Society series was co-hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

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