Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
13 May 2022 | Story Alicia Pienaar
Prof Vetrik
Prof Tomas Vetrik.

The Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Prof Danie Vermeulen, has the pleasure of inviting you to the inaugural lecture of Prof Tomas Vetrik. 

Topic: Extremal graph theory 

Event Details:
Date: 19 May 2022
Time: 17:30
Venue: Equitas Auditorium, UFS Bloemfontein Campus

RSVP:  Ms Marinda Venter on +27 51 401 2691 or email: VenterSM@ufs.ac.za  on or before Tuesday 17 May 2022.

Light refreshments will be served after the inaugural lecture. 


More about the speaker:

Tomas Vetrik received two scholarships from foreign countries during his PhD study. He spent one semester of his PhD study at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, and two semesters at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He was the only postgraduate student from Slovakia to receive a scholarship from the Israeli government in 2006. Tomas Vetrik joined the University of the Free State in 2014, after his postdoctoral research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and working at the UniversityPretoria. His research area is graph theory. He is mainly focusing on the degree-diameter problem, graph indices, and metric dimension of graphs. He is an NRF-rated researcher and has produced about 75 research papers (approximately 25 of them as a single author).

Three PhD students and three MSc students have completed their studies under his supervision. He has presented seminar talks at 24 universities from 15 different countries. Please take note of our COVID-19 health and safety protocols (https://www.ufs.ac.za/return-to-campus ) when visiting the UFS campuses.


Please take note of our COVID-19 health and safety protocols (https://www.ufs.ac.za/return-to-campus ) when visiting the UFS campuses. 

News Archive

A bridge to the future for school leavers
2009-03-04

 
Ms Merridy Wilson-Strydom, Research Consultant at the Centre for Higher Education Studies and Development at the UFS. 
 Photo: Supplied)

Thousands of learners in the country’s high schools fail to qualify for post-school education and training. Now a unique project funded by the Ford Foundation and being piloted at the University of the Free State (UFS) seeks to provide such learners with a lifeline.

The 2008 Grade 12 results showed once again that the schooling system is – and has been for a long time – in the throes of a severe crisis. The most disturbing feature of this crisis is that the system does not produce learners with the required level of literacy, numeracy and other cognitive skills to further their education or to become part of the country’s workforce.

Clearly this situation is untenable in a developing country such as ours, facing the immense challenges of a severe skills shortage, poverty and unemployment. We cannot afford to have hundreds of thousands of young people walking the streets without any prospect of a decent living and a future of opportunity.

The UFS and partners in the Free State Higher Education Consortium (FSHEC) have devised a unique programme to help underprepared and even unprepared school-leavers who have fallen through the cracks of the school system.

“We are hoping to make a meaningful contribution to the challenging field of creating educational opportunities for post-school study and the world of work through the generous support of the Ford Foundation,” says Ms Merridy Wilson-Strydom, Research Consultant at the Centre for Higher Education Studies and Development at the UFS.

“The Skills for a Changing World Programme is specifically aimed at removing barriers to educational opportunities for school-leavers who are not able to access higher education – mainstream or extended degrees. At the moment there are few, if any, meaningful opportunities for those learners who come through the school system un/underprepared,” she says.

The primary target group for the NQF Level-5 Programme is young people between the ages of 18 and 25 who are currently excluded from post-schooling educational opportunities. The duration of the programme is one year.

According to Ms Wilson-Strydom, the core modules of the activity-driven curriculum are English Literacy and Language Development, Mathematical Literacy, Information and Communication Technology and Your Global Positioning System (YGPS), which focuses on study skills and critical life skills, e.g. dealing with diversity. Students will also be supported to make informed choices about their future study or career directions.

“The development of the core-module materials is almost complete and from the second semester we plan to test the programme by means of a pilot project, which will be conducted on the UFS’s South Campus in Bloemfontein,” says Ms Wilson-Strydom.

“The pilot study will involve a group of 20-50 learners who have finished Grade 12 but do not qualify for the UFS bridging programme known as the Career Preparation Programme or any other higher-education programmes,” says Ms Wilson-Strydom.

Although not yet accredited, the project team aims to have the programme accredited as a Higher Certificate and is also exploring the possibility of registering the programme as a Short Learning Programme.

“One of the challenges with access and bridging programmes in the country is that students do not obtain a formal qualification for their bridging year. Hence those who do not continue with higher-education study (or cannot continue for various reasons such as finances), do not gain the recognition they should get for what they have learnt during their bridging year.”

“Our focus on developing the Skills for a Changing World Programme as a qualification in its own right is a key innovation in the current education and training landscape,” says Ms Wilson-Strydom.

Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za  
4 March 2009
 

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