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26 July 2022
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Story Bulelwa Moikwatlhai
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Experiencing the UFS in person for the first time are from the left: Sandor Potjer (VU Amsterdam), Bulelwa Moikwatlhai (UFS OIA), Ricarda Kochems (Bremen University, Germany), Froukje Pronk (VU Amsterdam) and Matome Mokoena (UFS OIA)
As the UFS COVID-19 Regulations and Required Vaccination Policy has been lifted with immediate effect – allowing 100% capacity of both students and staff members and a fully operational campus – the
Office for International Affairs welcomes its first physical exchange cohort after two years. The cohort of students hail from the various international partners of the UFS, namely the
University of Bremen in Germany, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Sciences PO Bordeaux in France. The students will be hosted in the UFS faculties of the Humanities, Economic and Management Sciences, and Natural and Agricultural Sciences, respectively.
These students have been paired with
Umoja Buddy Programme ambassadors to help ensure their smooth transition and integration into student life at the UFS. Furthermore, the students received an invitation from the President of the
International Student Association (ISA), Courtney Madziwa, to join their association, thus exposing them to students from other countries to learn about the various cultures.
On 18 July, the Office for International Affairs (OIA) arranged a hybrid orientation programme for the exchange students, including those students who have not yet arrived on the Bloemfontein Campus. The students took part in an icebreaker activity, where they had the opportunity to learn from and teach other participants about their home countries. Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director of the OIA, welcomed the exchange students to the Bloemfontein Campus, and expressed excitement to have physical exchanges again. Furthermore, the guest presenters ranged from student leadership, staff members, and service providers.
The presentations were practical, demonstrating, among others, how to create a password on the institutional website – presented by Mr Molemo Mohapi from UFS ICT. The presentation on how to fully utilise Blackboard was facilitated by Ms Vuthihi Mudau from the UFS CTL division. We take the safety of all our students seriously, so Ms Elise Oberholzer from the UFS Protection Services has given the students some tips on how to safeguard themselves.
Transformation in higher education discussed at colloquium
2013-05-16
16 May 2013
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The University of the Free State hosted the Higher Education Transformation Colloquium earlier this month on the Bloemfontein Campus.
On Monday 6 May 2013 till Wednesday 8 May 2013 the event brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including some members of university councils; vice-chancellors; academics and researchers; leaders of student formations and presidents of student representative councils; transformation managers; executive directors with responsibility for transformation in various universities, members of the newly established Transformation Oversight Committee and senior representatives from the Department of Higher Education and Training.
The event examined and debated some of the latest research studies and practices on the topic, as well as selected case studies from a number of public universities in South Africa.
Delivering a presentation at the colloquium, Dr Lis Lange, Senior Director of the Directorate for Institutional Research and Academic Planning at the UFS, said transformation in South Africa has been oversimplified and reduced to numbers, and the factors that might accelerate or slow the process have not been taken into account.
Dr Lange was delivering a paper, titled: The knowledge(s) of transformation: an archaeological perspective.
Dr Lange argued that “in the process of translating evolving political arguments into policy making, the intellectual, political and moral elements that shaped the conceptualisation of transformation in the early 1990s in South Africa, were reduced and oversimplified.”
She said crucial aspects of this reduction were the elimination of paradox and contradiction in the concept; the establishment of one accepted register of what transformation was and it is becoming sector-specific or socially blind. This means that the process was narrowed down in the policy texts and in the corresponding implementation strategies to the transformation of higher education, the schools system, the judiciary and the media, without keeping an eye on the structural conditions that can influence it in one way or another.
Dr Lange said the need for accountability further helped with reduction of transformation. “Because government and social institutions are accountable for their promises, transformation had to be measured and demonstrated.”