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UFS wins top awards at the 2024 Mace Excellence Awards

05 December 2024 | Story Dr Cindé Greyling | Photo Kaleidoscope

MACE Winners 2024 — From left to right: Burneline Kaars (Head: Employee Wellness and Organisational Development), Dr WP Wahl (Student Life Director), Linda Greyling (Senior Officer: Special Projects, Student Recruitment Services), Gerben Van Niekerk (Senior Officer: Kovsie Support Services), Malia Maranyane (Senior Officer: Undergraduate Marketing, Student Recruitment Services), Nomonde Mbadi (Student Recruitment Services Director), and Susan Van Jaarsveld (Senior Director: Human Resources).

On 28 November 2024, the University of the Free State (UFS) did it again – reigned as champions at the annual Marketing, Advancement and Communication in Education (MACE) Excellence Awards and walking away with two of the top awards: the MACE Award for Outstanding Research and the Severus Cerff Award for Consistent Excellence.

KovsieX was named the overall winner of the MACE Award for Outstanding Research. This award is made to the entry with the highest score in research, clearly demonstrating how research has supported the strategic objectives of the institution and the project. KovsieX is a multiplatform approach designed to leverage the strengths of diverse media channels. This digitalisation aligns with Vision 130, leveraging emerging technologies to enhance teaching and learning quality and efficiency of non-academic support structures and systems.

The UFS’ entries were of such high quality that the university won the sought-after Severus Cerff Award for Consistent Excellence. This award is based on the number of entries entered by an institution and the number and level of those entries winning awards. The award is therefore made to the institution with the highest success ratio.

Furthermore, the UFS Matriculant of the Year event received a Silver Award – entries scoring 5.75 or higher earn a Silver Award, placing this event among some of the top achievers in the events category. Three UFS entries received Gold Awards and were the winners in their respective categories: KovsieChat (Digital Channels), 2024 Women’s Day Breakfast (Events), and KovsieX (Stakeholder Engagement Campaigns). This is a magnificent achievement for the UFS.

"Winning a MACE award at this early stage is proof that KovsieX is not just meeting national standards – it’s setting them. If we can achieve this level of excellence now, imagine how we’ll compete on the global stage when the project is fully realised,” says Gerben van Niekerk, Student Media Manager.

Lacea Loader, Senior Director: Communication and Marketing and Coordinator of the MACE Excellence Awards, explained that a record number of entries were received for the Excellence Awards this year. “We are ecstatic about the direction of communication at the UFS and that the university has been able to maintain the quality of its entries in recent years,” says Loader.

The MACE Excellence Awards takes place annually as part of the MACE National Conference, recognising and celebrating excellence and the achievements of specialists and practitioners in marketing, advancement, and communication in the higher-education sector. This year, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) hosted the conference from 27 to 28 November 2024.

In 2023, the UFS won 11 awards, including the Chairperson’s Award of Excellence.

News Archive

Financial planners graduate

2011-06-10

Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the CFPL, and Gerhard Meyer, Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa.
Photo: Stephen Collett

At this year’s graduation ceremony, the Centre for Financial Planning Law (CFPL) at our university awarded 377 diplomas (305 to students in the Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning, and 72 to students in the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning).

Three students in the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma passed the diploma with distinction. They are David Grant, Stephen Grizic and Yashika Rambujan. Ruan Schroder, Daniel Venter and Adri Viljoen passed the Postgraduate Diploma with distinction. Adri Viljoen is also the overall top student in the Postgraduate Diploma, while David Grant is the overall top student in the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma.

During another highlight at this event, Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the UFS’s CFPL, was awarded the Chairman's Award for outstanding lifetime contribution to the Financial Planning Industry. This award is made by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa to a person who has made a significant and extraordinary contribution to the financial planning industry. As this is only the second year that the award is being made, it is an exceptional honour.

For five years, the UFS was the only institution to offer a full qualification in order to become a Certified Financial Planning Professional. The university is still the largest institution in this regard. The Centre for Financial Planning Law (CFPL) at the UFS is also the only institution in South Africa to offer the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning Law, which is a purely specialisation diploma.

To date, the CFPL at our universityhas awarded 3 657 Postgraduate Diplomas and 659 Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning.

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