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Dr Shezree Tiel graduates top of her class

13 December 2023 | Story André Damons | Photo Charl Devenish

As she achieved the goals she had set for herself, Dr Shezree Tiel, one of the latest graduates from the University of the Free State (UFS) Faculty of Health Sciences (FoHS), developed the courage to not only define her goals, but aim for even more. This is the reason she graduated not only summa cum laude, but as the top student in her year group.

Dr Tiel was one of 459 students who graduated on Friday (8 December 2023) during the FoHS’s December graduation ceremony. She graduated with a MBChB degree and is one of eight students to do so summa cum laude. During her five years of studies to become a medical doctor, she was the top student in each of her year groups.

“I feel very excited and still in disbelief, because it has been my dream since first year to graduate cum laude, but there were moments I felt I may have to accept that it may not be possible. So, I am very delighted that despite all the challenges I faced, my dream was realised,” she said.

According to her, she decided to study at UFS as it is the only university in South Africa that offered a five-year medical degree.

Building healthier and happier communities

Talking about how she achieved this, Dr Tiel, who will be doing her community service year in her home province of Mpumalanga, said what was consistent throughout her years of study, was the need to avoid a uniform approach to studying. Instead, she continued, she embraced different ways to learn.

Said Dr Tiel: “I embraced different ways to acquire knowledge and used these to identify a method of study that would be best suited for each module, chapter and sometimes each day. Everyday courage, resilience, patience, and perseverance played a vital role in accomplishing all my achievements. In spite of all of this, I will always attribute my achievements to my trust in Christ.”

Her desire to make the best possible use of every opportunity she gets to gain knowledge and the hope to use that knowledge to be useful to people and communities, motivated her on her journey to become a doctor. She decided to study medicine because she aspired to work with people in the pursuit of building healthier and happier communities. She believed that medicine would provide a great foundation and platform to accomplish this.

Though she is yet to decide in which field she would like to specialise one day, she believes it would be in internal medicine because it has always been one of her favourite rotations. “I do hope whichever one I go into will provide me with an opportunity to teach because that is one of the things I delight in.”

News Archive

Universities can contribute to economic transformation

2010-01-27

At the lecture were, from the left: Prof. Neil Heideman (Acting Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences), Prof. Hartmut Frank (University of Bayreuth, Germany), Prof. Bianchi and Prof. Jan van der Westhuizen (professor in Chemistry at the UFS).
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe

Universities have a role to play in economic transformation and industrial development according to Prof. Fabrizio Bianchi, the Rector of the University of Ferrara in Italy.

This was the core message of his lecture on the topic Globalisation, Agriculture and Industrial Development that he delivered at the University of the Free State.

He said after the collapse of the agricultural industry in Italy as a result of the subsidies that the farmers were receiving from the government, the university had to step in.

“This was meant to maintain high prices and maximize the production but in the long run this approach created problems because the farmers were no longer producing high quality products but large quantities in order to receive subsidies,” he said.

“The result was that the government itself had to destroy those poor quality products. This was a completely unreasonable way to manage the economy”.

He said they had to abandon that approach and concentrate on quality because they realized that Italy could not match the prices and the quantity, in terms of production, of countries like China and the USA.

He said “knowledge and human resources” were the key factors that could get them out of that crisis; hence they came up with what he called “the Made in Italy approach”.

“We were working on the idea that food is part of culture and that it is not just simply for refueling the body,” he said.

“One of the fundamental ideas was to come back to the idea that production is the centre of the development process.”

“Quality is a very complex, collective issue,” he said. “You cannot understand development if you do not understand that you have to base it on strong roots”.

This approach resulted in the formation of several companies with specialized niche markets producing high quality products.

His visit to the UFS coincided with that of the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Prof. Richard Ernst from Switzerland, who was also part of the fourth presentation of the Cheese fondue concept.

The main thrust of this concept is that technical advances alone are insufficient for an agreement to be reached on the minimum respect between the various groups and individuals within a society. It proposes that for this to be achieved there has to be a concurrent development of empathy and emotional synergy.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
27 January 2010

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