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25 March 2024
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Story Anthony Mthembu
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Photo Lutendo Mabata
Prof Nompumelelo Zondi, the newly appointed Vice-Dean: Research and Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of The Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS).
Prof Nompumelelo Zondi has been appointed as Vice-Dean: Research and Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of The Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS). Prof Zondi assumed this new role on 1 March 2024 after serving as the Head of Department for African Languages at the University of Pretoria for seven years. “I consider this appointment as an opportunity of growth and learning more about higher education and the Faculty of The Humanities at large,” she said.
Prof Zondi indicates that part of her role is to spearhead the UFS Vision130 within the Faculty of The Humanities, and to ensure that the faculty assists the institution in becoming research-led, student-centred, and globally impactful.
Motivation for assuming this role
One of the primary reasons that led her to consider this role is sharing the knowledge she acquired as part of the Fulbright South African Research Scholar Programme. As a result of that experience and exposure, which went beyond the Ohio State University, she felt it befitting to implement some of the insights she acquired on a bigger scale. Therefore, even though she was impactful in her previous role, Prof Zondi believes that this is an exceptional and more desirable platform to do so. “I feel that I will have easier access to departments within the faculty, while also encouraging and supporting interdepartmental and faculty collaborations,” she explained.
A significant component of Vision 130
He believes that the elements that make up Vision 130 are interrelated. While she considers research central to Vision 130 – as she begins her journey at the UFS, she feels students deserve to be nurtured to further contribute to the university’s impactful research. Thus, student-centredness is the way to go. “I believe that students must be major role players in this Vision130; we must include them in the interactions and discussions that are part of the university’s strategic plan as well as in decision-making processes,” she said. As such, according to Prof Zondi, the more the faculty and the institution care for the students and involve them in Vision130 and in collaborations, the more research outputs the university will achieve.
Transformation in higher education discussed at colloquium
2013-05-16
16 May 2013
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The University of the Free State hosted the Higher Education Transformation Colloquium earlier this month on the Bloemfontein Campus.
On Monday 6 May 2013 till Wednesday 8 May 2013 the event brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including some members of university councils; vice-chancellors; academics and researchers; leaders of student formations and presidents of student representative councils; transformation managers; executive directors with responsibility for transformation in various universities, members of the newly established Transformation Oversight Committee and senior representatives from the Department of Higher Education and Training.
The event examined and debated some of the latest research studies and practices on the topic, as well as selected case studies from a number of public universities in South Africa.
Delivering a presentation at the colloquium, Dr Lis Lange, Senior Director of the Directorate for Institutional Research and Academic Planning at the UFS, said transformation in South Africa has been oversimplified and reduced to numbers, and the factors that might accelerate or slow the process have not been taken into account.
Dr Lange was delivering a paper, titled: The knowledge(s) of transformation: an archaeological perspective.
Dr Lange argued that “in the process of translating evolving political arguments into policy making, the intellectual, political and moral elements that shaped the conceptualisation of transformation in the early 1990s in South Africa, were reduced and oversimplified.”
She said crucial aspects of this reduction were the elimination of paradox and contradiction in the concept; the establishment of one accepted register of what transformation was and it is becoming sector-specific or socially blind. This means that the process was narrowed down in the policy texts and in the corresponding implementation strategies to the transformation of higher education, the schools system, the judiciary and the media, without keeping an eye on the structural conditions that can influence it in one way or another.
Dr Lange said the need for accountability further helped with reduction of transformation. “Because government and social institutions are accountable for their promises, transformation had to be measured and demonstrated.”