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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

Research grant holder first to be graded at UFS in NRF’s Thuthuka Programme

2007-11-17

In the picture, from the left are: Ms Gudrun Schirge (National Research Foundation), Mr Nico Benson (Directorate Research Development at the UFS), Prof Heidi Hudson (Department of Political Science at the UFS) and Dr Annelize Venter (Co-ordinator of the Thuthuka Programme at the UFS)
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe

Research grant holder first to be graded at UFS in NRF’s Thuthuka Programme

Prof. Heidi Hudson, Departmental Chairperson at the University of the Free State's (UFS) Department of Political Science, recently received a C1 grading from the National Research Foundation (NRF).

With this grading she became the first researcher and grant holder in the Thuthuka Programme for young researchers at the UFS to be graded by the NRF.

“The Thuthuka Programme is a capacity building initiative from the NRF which prepares young researchers for grading and provides them with a good grounding for research,” said Dr Annelize Venter, researcher at the UFS Research Development Directorate and co-ordinator of the Thuthuka Programme.

According to Dr Venter, the UFS currently has 44 researchers who receive funding from the Thuthuka Programme for their postgraduate studies. The results of possible entrants to the programme in 2008 are awaited.

”The UFS also received ten researchers additional to the current 69 who have a valid evaluation status. The results of an additional 11 applications are also awaited. Some of these are first applications,” said Dr Venter.

Over and above the grant holders in the Thuthuka Programme, any researcher can apply to be evaluated by the NRF’s Evaluation Centre. The evaluation status of a researcher serves as the norm determinator and the quality of research at a university is measured according to this.

Ms Gudrun Schirge from the NRF presented a workshop today at the UFS to researchers who wanted to apply for grading and evaluation.
Researchers who wished to apply for the re-evaluation of their current evaluation status also attended the workshop.

Ms Schirge was one of the founders of the evaluation system and has been a manager at the Evaluation Centre for the past 20 years. She will be retiring this year and will be involved with the centre on a part-time basis.

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
16 November 2007

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