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07 March 2024
Photo Lunga Luthuli
Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director at the Centre for Teaching and Learning and Simphiwe Kunene, the first African DREAM scholar and a master’s student from the Faculty of Education.
The University of the Free State (UFS) received recognition for its commitment to student success at the 2024 Achieving the Dream (ATD) conference which celebrated its 20-year anniversary. Simphiwe Kunene, an Education master's student originally from the Qwaqwa campus, was selected to represent South Africa as the first DREAM scholar from Africa as part of the conference.
The Achieving the Dream network of over 300 institutions, which is one of the largest movements in US higher education aims to transform colleges and universities so that students of colour and a lower socio-economic status are supported to earn a degree. The UFS is a leading partner in the Siyaphumelela Network, which has been working for 10 years with ATD to enhance the success of students in South Africa. Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director at the Centre of Teaching and Learning (CTL), accepted the award on behalf of the institution.
Prof Strydom said that collaboration with the ATD and Siyaphumelela institutions has helped the UFS to develop cutting-edge approaches to “level the playing field” and support Kovsies to earn their undergraduate degrees.
The first African DREAM scholar
Kunene was selected as the first African DREAM scholar from the Siyaphumelela network. To select the DREAM scholar, each Siyaphumelela partner institution nominated one student as a preferred candidate. From the proposed candidates, the DREAM scholar was selected by the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) based on the following: demonstrating resilience, academic excellence, and a deep commitment to making a positive difference in universities and personal communities.
He addressed the conference of over 2 000 delegates and shared with them his hopes and dreams. Many members of the South African delegation said Simphiwe did his country proud. He had the following to say about his opportunity to be a DREAM scholar: “Being a DREAM scholar was life changing for me, exposing me to an array of opportunities I never knew were possible and available for me. It was as if, for a moment, the world had stopped to just listen to what I had to say."
The way forward
The UFS will continue its work as a partner of the Siyaphumelela network for the 2024-2026 cycle. The multi-stakeholder project team is focused on enhancing undergraduate students’ time, and to position the UFS as a thought and research leader in the area of student success as part of Vision 130.
UFS International Studies Group makes history come alive globally
2015-07-15
The UFS International Studies Group comprises students who are top achievers drawn from South Africa, Southern and Central Africa and even further afield.
Photo: Charl Devenish |
Headed by Prof Ian Phimister, the UFS International Studies Group comprises six master’s, twelve PhD and twelve postdoctoral fellows who concentrate their research endeavours on African, Imperial and Global History. All of these students are top achievers drawn from South Africa, Southern and Central Africa and even further afield. This group, now only in its third year, presents a phenomenal research output with an international reach.
In the course of the past year alone, five PhD students secured fully-funded invitations to conferences and research seminars in South Africa, Britain, as well as the Netherlands. Our researchers have been publishing articles globally and securing visiting fellowships and research awards.
Dr Clement Masakure and Dr Rosa Williams won funding to present papers at the International Network for the History of Hospitals. Tinashe Nyamunda won a prestigious three-month Cadbury Fellowship at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Anusa Daimon has been selected as a 2015 Harry Guggenheim award winner, which covers workshop attendance in Nairobi, Kenya.
From among the group, twelve articles have been published or accepted for publication in refereed scholarly journals, as well as four chapters in edited books. Book reviews written by these highly-motivated graduate students, have appeared or will appear in leading national and international academic journals. Remarkably, seven book reviews appearing in one particular issue of African Studies Review, were written by this group. Four scholarly monographs have recently been published, or soon will be. One PhD student is the joint editor (with a senior Canadian academic) of a forthcoming study on Zimbabwe’s controversial Marange diamond mining industry.
Another outstanding researcher, Dr Lindie Koorts, won the award for the best debut writer at the 2014 Woordfees for her book ‘DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism’ – the first non-fiction writer to achieve this. Her book now appears on the longlist for the 2015 Alan Paton Award.