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Prof Peter Rosseel delivers guest lecture during UFS visit

13 August 2024 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Sibahle Dayimani and Amandla Kulu

The Business School at the University of the Free State (UFS) hosted Prof Peter Rosseel, Managing Director of Management Consulting and Research – a spin-off of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium – for a guest lecture during his visit to the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS).

The guest lecture took place on 19 July 2024 in the Business School Auditorium and was attended by academics from the UFS.

Reflecting on the lecture

The lecture presented by Prof Rosseel focused on how combining strategy, strategy implementation, culture transformation, leadership, and learning successfully leads to sustainable growth, creates engagement, and delivers tangible results. Throughout the lecture, Prof Rosseel spoke about how experts tend to make bad leaders and therefore stop change from happening within an organisation. In fact, he highlighted that, “Experts stop change from happening within the workplace because experts, by definition, look through the eyes of their expertise, but you cannot reduce the world to different forms of expertise, as it is holistic.” As such, he argued that to change an organisation, one must see things from the point of view of others.

Furthermore, Prof Rosseel delved deeper into the hierarchical operating model within organisations. He indicated that the above model should be one community within organisations; however, unfortunately it is not. This is because organisations are made up of several departments such as finance and human resources. As such, he regards these departments to be silos that could prove to be detrimental to organisations, as each silo can create its own culture as opposed to an organisational culture. These are some of the points he discussed throughout the lecture.

After the lecture concluded, the audience had the opportunity to engage with Prof Rosseel on his viewpoints. In fact, Lyle Markham, Academic Head of Department and Lecturer in Industrial Psychology at the UFS, was one of the audience members and described the lecture as insightful.

News Archive

South Campus delivers out-of-the-box solutions

2017-11-07

The AIO device as deployed in an IBP school.
Photo: Elrieka van Dalen

The IDEAS Lab on our South Campus supports learners in 83 schools by means of academic videos transmitted via the Internet Broadcast Project (IBP) and its own custom-built All-in-One (AIO) device. The project is a collaboration between UFS and the Department of Education in the Free State. It includes support for Mathematics, Physical Science, Life Science, Economics, Accounting, and Geography.

The AIO was purpose-built by the team at IDEAS Lab to facilitate the delivery of video lectures from highly-qualified teachers to identified schools. It comprises a projector, speakers, and a computer, which are housed in a custom-made, hard-wearing frame. The AIO is then set up at each school to which lessons are broadcast.

On-the-job training for educators

Educators have not been overlooked, either. UFS was the very first university to provide an Advanced Certificate in Teaching in a fully digital format, the ACT Online programme. It is designed for practicing teachers to upskill themselves in order to better address the needs in the classroom, not only advancing their career, but strengthening their knowledge, competencies, and subject specialisation as well. Ultimately, this leads to an improved quality of education, which has a profound impact on multitudes of students around South Africa.

CSIR joint initiative

Coupled with these projects is a new joint initiative termed ICT For Education. This project sees the CSIR collaborating with the national Department of Education, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, and the UFS. For this project, 24 primary and secondary schools in South Africa were identified to promote technological advancement in the education sector. Tablet computers have been allocated and already deployed at these schools, to learners as well as nearly 400 teachers.

South Campus is involved in the training of the teachers and learners in the use of the tablets in the classroom and other educational opportunities. In addition, training for 48 unemployed young people who will be providing first-line support began in March at a school in Thaba Nchu. The course on IT support is structured in such a way that anyone in the community can take it, starting out with topics such as My role in the community.

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