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The superpowers of women scientists at the UFS

11 February 2022 | Story Leonie Bolleurs and Nonsindiso Qwabe | Photo Supplied

The University of the Free State (UFS) has implemented several interventions to increase the diversity of its researchers, including its women scientists. Actions have paid off and resulted in an increase in the percentage of rated female researchers, from 27% in 2016 to 34% in 2021.

The university is also host to a number of science leaders in the six National Research Foundation (NRF)-funded South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI). Four of these research chairs are held by women. These are the research chairs in Vector-borne and Zoonotic Pathogens; Disease Resistance and Quality in Field Crops; Higher Education and Human Development; and Pathogenic Yeasts.

Health, medicine, and food sustainability are but three examples of areas in society where the women of the UFS is playing a critical role in science today.

In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science instituted by the United Nations General Assembly on 22 December 2015, the UFS is honouring its women scientists.

The science of science expos

One of the researchers at the UFS who is using science to make a difference in the lives of learners in our country, is Dr Angela Stott, Researcher and Teacher Educator in the Division of Social Responsibilities Projects (SRP) on the UFS South Campus. Together with colleagues in the SRP, she is involved in numerous Maths and Science outreach interventions to teachers and learners.

Science becomes fun for learners through the different initiatives created by Dr Stott and her colleagues. These include the online Learn Science programme (a brainchild of Dr Stott), using tablets donated by ioT.nxt, and the Creative Clubs intervention started by Dr Joleen Hamilton, a colleague of Dr Stott. In the latter, learners can take part in a MathArt competition and coding sessions.

In this year’s Creative Clubs projects, 100 Grade 9 learners from township schools will be mentored to prepare science fair projects for participation in the Expo for Young Scientists.

But why all this hard work for an expo? For these learners, the expo is more than just a public platform to showcase excellence. According to Dr Stott, learners in South African township schools tend not to be stimulated in extracurricular programmes, since teaching in these contexts is typically restricted to exam training.

However, her research has shown that higher-achieving learners from contexts of poverty respond well to such programmes and gain valuable knowledge, skills, and values from them. “This year, 100 higher-achieving Grade 9 learners from township schools will benefit from this programme, and next year another 100,” she says.

She adds that literature on this subject points to the need for structure, while also supporting learners’ development of autonomy when mentoring a learner to produce a science fair project. Dr Stott explains that the online programme around which this year’s intervention is built, has been created in a manner informed by literature on what is most likely to work. “By us researching the process, we will improve our understanding of how to maximise the benefits and mitigate the weaknesses that learners from poverty gain from such participation. This knowledge could help improve the effectiveness of such programmes throughout the country, and in other parts of the world where similar conditions apply,” she says.

Fighting for stronger immune systems

An international student from Zimbabwe, Nakai Matongera, a PhD graduate in Plant Breeding in the Department of Plant Sciences on the Bloemfontein Campus, is playing a key role in food sustainability in Africa with her research. She is a maize breeder working at the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) in Harare, Zimbabwe.

The focus of her PhD thesis is on the development of high-yielding and nutrient-dense maize varieties enriched with provitamin A, zinc, and essential amino acids such as lysine and tryptophan.

“With my research, I aimed to develop zinc-enhanced maize varieties that have great potential to reduce zinc deficiency in maize-based developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” she says.

Matongera explains that zinc-enhanced hybrids were developed by crossing introduced zinc donors and locally adapted maize inbred lines from three nutritional categories (normal, provitamin A, and quality protein maize (QPM). The hybrids were evaluated for both agronomic and nutritional performance under optimum drought and low nitrogen conditions.

“Results indicated that zinc-enhanced QPM hybrids accumulated high zinc under all growing conditions. However, the zinc-enhanced normal hybrids had the highest yield potential, implying dilution effects.”

“I find my research rewarding, because this biofortification strategy to combat micronutrient deficiency is cost-effective and has wide coverage and sustainability compared to other strategies such as clinical supplementation and food fortification,” says Matongera.

The outcomes of her research will one day, when it is implemented, change the lives of thousands of children in Africa who are suffering from zinc and iron deficiency. The shortage of zinc and iron in their diets affects their cognitive development as well as their immune systems, making them susceptible to a number of illnesses, including diarrhoea.

According to Prof Maryke Labuschagne, Nakai’s supervisor for her PhD study, this research will have a practical impact in Africa, as it will contribute towards the nutritional value of food.

Saving generations of humans and animals

When she could not pursue her childhood dream of becoming a vet, Dr Nthatisi Nyembe forged a new path in zoology, and today she is working in the Department of Zoology and Entomology on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus, where she focuses on veterinary parasitology.

Dr Nyembe’s research looks at the treatment and epidemiology of parasitic diseases in animals and humans, because – as she says – if animals are healthy, then humans are healthy. She says the ripple effect could save generations to come. “I want to be remembered for creating a drug that will make life easier for animals, because if animals are healthy, then the food we consume will also be healthy,” she says.

Dr Nyembe completed her studies on the Qwaqwa Campus from undergraduate to master’s level, specialising in Zoology. She was then awarded a scholarship to complete her PhD studies in Japan, where she spent four years looking into creating compounds that can treat and prevent unwanted parasites in animals, with a specific focus on mice.

“If I can get to a point where I can find one compound that has various benefits on multiple micro-organisms, then I will be happy”, she says.

While acknowledging the wide gender gap that still persists in her field of science, Nyembe says it should not hinder young girls who are interested in pursuing all levels of science.

“Society still looks down on girls and women, especially in Africa. If I go to a farmer as a woman and try to advise them about animal health, very few of them are receptive. However, the majority believe that I need to come with a man in order to be taken seriously. I just want to tell young aspiring female scientists that it is possible.”

“Whatever you put your mind to, you can pull through and achieve. Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated.”

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

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