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12 June 2024 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Sonia Small
Eco Vehicle Race 2024
This year's Eco-Vehicle Skills Programme saw remarkable participation. A total of 148 students completed the programme successfully.

For the past seven years, the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Kovsie ACT has proudly hosted the successful Eco-Vehicle Race. This event has grown into a major highlight, thanks to the significant support from MerSETA (Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services), which has enabled the development of a comprehensive skills programme focused on sustainable energy and eco-vehicle technology.

In 2020, MerSETA's funding allowed Kovsie ACT to create a detailed skills initiative culminating in the exciting 2021 eco-vehicle race. Over nine months, 150 students received extensive training in eco-vehicle technology. This programme provided students with both theoretical knowledge and practical experience, preparing them not only for the competition but also for real-world applications of sustainable energy solutions.

Dr WP Wahl, Director of Student Life, emphasises the value of this initiative, saying, “This effort provides students with a set of skills that will help position them in the labour market. They are equipped with basic knowledge and abilities in sustainable energy, enabling them not only to compete in the eco-vehicle race but also to comprehend the inner workings of the vehicle.”

CUT Team 4: Overall winner of Kovsie ACT’s Eco-Vehicle Race 2024

According to Teddy Sibiya from the Kovsie ACT office, this year's Eco-Vehicle Skills Programme saw remarkable participation and achievements. A total of 148 students - 118 from the UFS and 30 from the Central University of Technology (CUT) - completed the programme successfully. Additionally, 10 engineering mediators completed the Mediated Learning Experience course, providing mentorship essential to the students.

In the 2024 Kovsie ACT Eco-Vehicle Race, CUT Team 4 emerged as the overall winner. Kovsie Q secured second place and East College took third place. North College won the Spirit Cup and was announced as the pitstop winner alongside East College.

In the Obstacle Race, which tested teams' control over their cars through various challenges, CUT Team 4 claimed the winning title. They also came in first place in the Endurance Race, where the objective was to complete as many laps as possible using the least amount of energy in 45 minutes.

The race took place at the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus on Akademie Avenue, next to the George du Toit Administration Building, with spectators watching from the Red Square parking area.

Eco-Vehicle Sustainable Skills Programme 2.0 introduced

Sibiya announced the next phase of the journey - the Eco-Vehicle Sustainable Skills Programme 2.0. “With continued support from MerSETA, we have expanded our partnerships to include Nelson Mandela University and will continue to involve students from the Central University of Technology.”

“In the next phase, the focus is on developing a new eco-vehicle prototype and creating an advanced skills programme around it,” adds Sibiya. “We aim to debut and race this new eco-vehicle by 2025, continuing our commitment to innovation and sustainable energy education.”

Dr Wahl elaborates, “Students will be taught the same skills, but the learning experience will be deepened. The skills programme consists of five cycles. In cycle one, the students build a race car on a small scale that includes a charging station and a small solar panel. In cycle two, students learn to programme the small-scale racing car from their cell phones or laptops. In cycles three and four, they build the larger race cars with battery packs and solar panels. All of these come together in cycle five during the Eco-Vehicle race when the energy conservation of the cars is tested.

Support from sponsors

Several sponsors were involved in this year’s Eco-Vehicle Race. OFS Fire supported the race with equipment and certified training for all the participating students. Several of the teams also secured sponsorships: East College from Deluxe Grills, South Campus from SA Truck Bodies, West College from Mpeki Tsh Trading and Project, and the CUT Teams from the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE). Haval also exhibited a car at the event. 

News Archive

Position statement: Recent reporting in newspapers
2014-10-03

 

You may have read reports in two Afrikaans newspapers, regarding recent events at the University of the Free State (UFS). Sadly, those reports are inaccurate, one-sided, exaggerated and based not on facts, but on rumour, gossip and unusually personal attacks on members of the university management.

Anyone who spends 10 minutes on our Bloemfontein Campus would wonder what the so-called ‘crisis’ is about.

We are left with no choice other than to consider legal action, as well as the intervention of the South African Press Ombudsman, among other steps, to protect the good name of the institution and the reputation of its staff. No journalist has the right to launch personal and damaging attacks on a university and its personnel, whatever his or her motives, without being fair and factual. In this respect, the newspapers have a case to answer.

But here are the facts in relation to the reports:

  1. No staff member, whether junior or senior, is ever suspended without hard evidence in hand. Such actions are rare, and when done, are preceded by careful reviews of our Human Resource Policies, labour legislation and both internal and external legal advice. Then, and only then, is a suspension affected. A suspension, moreover, does not mean you are guilty and is a precautionary action to allow for the disciplinary investigation and process to be conducted, especially where there is a serious case to answer.
  2. At no stage was the Registrar instructed to leave the university; this is patently false and yet reported as fact. We specifically responded to the media that the Registrar does outstanding work for the university and that it is our intention for him to remain as our Registrar through the end of his contract in 2016.
  3. The Rector does not make decisions by himself. Senior persons, from the position of Dean, upwards, are appointed by statutory and other senior committees of the university and finally approved by Council. No rector can override the decision of a senior committee, and this has not happened at the UFS even in cases where the Rector serves as Chair of that committee. The impression of heavy-handed management at the top insults all our committee structures, including the Institutional Forum – the widest and most inclusive of stakeholder bodies at a university – which reports directly to Council on fairness and compliance of selection processes.
  4. In the case of senior appointments, Council makes the final decision. Council fully supports the actions taken on senior appointments, including a recent senior suspension. The fact that one Council member resigns just before the end of his term, whatever the real reason for this action, does not deter from the fact that the full Council in its last sitting approved the major staffing decisions brought before it. The image therefore that the two newspapers try to create of great turmoil and distress at the university, is completely unfounded.

Even if we wanted to, the university obviously cannot provide details about staffing decisions, especially disciplinary actions in process, since the rights of individuals should be protected in terms of the Human Resource Policies and procedures of the UFS. But that does not give any newspaper the right to speculate or state as fact that which is based on rumour or gossip, or to slander senior personnel of the university. For these reasons, we have been forced to seek legal remedy and correction as a matter of urgency.

Make no mistake, underlying much of the criticism of the university has been a distress about transformation at the UFS; in particular, the perception is created that white colleagues are losing their jobs. The evidence points in the opposite direction. Our progress with equity has been slow and we lag far behind most of the former white universities; that is a fact. More than 90% of our professors are white; most of our senior appointments at professorial level and as heads of department are still overwhelmingly white. Reasonable South Africans would agree that our transformation still has a long way to go and only the mean-spirited would contend otherwise. But based on the two Afrikaans newspaper reports, an impression is left of the aggressive rooting out of white colleagues.

In the past few years the academic standard of the university has significantly improved. We now have the highest academic pass rates in years, in part because we raised the academic standards for admission four years ago. We now have the highest rate of research publications, and among the highest national publication rate of scholarly books, in the history of the UFS. We have one of the most stable financial situations of any university in South Africa, with a strong balance sheet and growing financial reserves way beyond what we had before. We now attract top professors from around the country and other parts of the world, and we have the highest number of rated researchers, through the National Research Foundation, than ever before. And after the constant turmoil of a number of years ago, we now have one of the most stable campuses in South Africa. Those are the facts.

The UFS is also regarded around the world as a university that has become a model of transformation and reconciliation in the student body. The elections of our Student Representative Council are only the most visible example of how far we have come in our leadership diversity. Not a week goes by in which other universities, nationally and abroad, do not come to Kovsies to consult with us on how they can learn from us and deepen their own transformations, especially among students.

Rather than focus on what more than one senior journalist, in reference to the article in Rapport of 21 September 2014, rightly called ‘a hatchet job’ on persons and the university, here are the objective findings of a recent survey of UFS stakeholders: 92% endorse our values; 77% agree with our transformation; 78% believe we are inclusive; and 78% applaud our overall reputation index.  Those are very different numbers from a few years ago when the institution was in crisis.

This is our commitment to all our stakeholders: we will continue our model of inclusive transformation which provides opportunities for study and for employment for all South Africans, including international students and colleagues. We remain committed to our parallel-medium instruction in which Afrikaans remains a language of instruction; we are in fact the only medical school in the country that offers dual education and training in both Afrikaans and English for our students - not only English. We provide bursaries and overseas study opportunities to all our students, irrespective of race. And our ‘future professors’ programme is richly diverse as we seek the academic stars of the future.

We are not perfect as a university management or community. Where we make mistakes, we acknowledge them and try to do better the next time round. But we remain steadfast in our goal of making the UFS a top world university in its academic ambitions and its human commitments.

END

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