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UFS on track to revolutionise student success and boost sustainability

14 August 2025 | Story Onthatile Tikoe and the Centre for Teaching and Learning | Photo Supplied

CTL — From the left: Dr Jenny Glennie (SAIDE), Gugu Khanye (Director: Student Success – UFS), Prof Matete Madiba (Deputy Vice-Chancellor – UWC), Prof Francois Strydom (UFS Siyaphumelela Lead), and Prof Nthabiseng Ogude (Siyaphumelela Institutional Coach) at the 2025 Siyaphumelela Conference. The group played a key role in advancing conversations around student success, collaboration, and innovation in higher education.

The University of the Free State (UFS) is advancing a transformative approach to student success that positions it to become a national leader in enhancing social mobility. This vision was underscored at the 2025 Siyaphumelela Conference, where the university shared details of its groundbreaking collaboration with the National Institute for Student Success (NISS) at Georgia State University (GSU) in the United States.

Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director: Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), explained that the initiative builds on lessons from GSU’s remarkable achievements. “The success of Georgia State University has been truly inspiring,” he said. “The NISS approach, which focuses on using data to dismantle systemic barriers and improve graduation rates, has transformed outcomes for a predominantly low-income and diverse student body. By contextualising this data-driven model for our environment, the UFS is proud to be the first university on the African continent to implement it.”

Building on proven success

GSU’s success in eliminating equity gaps in retention and completion among different racial groups was achieved through a redesign of its support structures and processes. Drawing on its own established track record of narrowing equity gaps in success rates, the UFS aims to replicate these outcomes in a way that is tailored to its unique context.

At the conference, the UFS Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) launched a new national report on student engagement trends and presented papers on a range of topics. These included innovative strategies for improving performance in high-priority modules, the use of predictive analytics to provide proactive student support, and research into gender differences in academic performance and class attendance in a post-COVID world.

Prof Strydom also led an exploratory panel discussion on strengthening collaboration between universities, business, and philanthropy to drive large-scale student success initiatives. “By facilitating a deeper understanding between philanthropic organisations, businesses, and universities, we can develop innovative and impactful approaches to funding and student support,” he said.

Driving innovation and sustainability

The UFS’ contributions at the conference were further reinforced by institutional projects focused on the evidence-based integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into student learning and success. These initiatives reflect a clear commitment to transformation that is both research-led and data-driven.

Looking ahead, Prof Strydom emphasised the opportunity before the institution: “We have a unique opportunity to leverage the lessons learnt from our student success initiatives to guide further research, deploy technology in ways that optimise human connection, and help create responsible societal futures while contributing to the sustainability of our university.”

News Archive

‘Language central to multidisciplinary society’

2012-03-22

Dr. Neville Alexander (right) discussed the role of language and culture in creating tolerance in South Africa. On the left is Prof. André Keet, Director of the UFS' International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconcilliation and Social Justice.
Photo: Johan Roux
22 March 2012

A multilingual state and culture could lead to more tolerance in South Africa, and schools and universities could play a leading role in the creation of a multilingual culture.

This is according to Dr Neville Alexander, one of South Africa’s foremost linguists and educationalists.

Dr Alexander spoke during a discussion session on language issues in a new South Africa at the University of the Free State’s (UFS) International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice.

He said in a multidisciplinary society, language is central to everything we do.

“Language has the ability to empower people or to disempower them. Yet the present government failed to value the other official South African languages, apart from Afrikaans and English.”

Dr Alexander said it is “convenient and cheap” for the government “to only govern in English”.

Government officials and academics often used the shortage of terminology and glossaries in various African languages as an excuse to use only English as the medium of instruction. This tendency puts young children in the South African school system at a disadvantage since it deprives them of their right to mother tongue education.

According to Dr Alexander, this is similar to the problems that academics experienced centuries ago when only Latin terminology existed for certain disciplines.

“It is the task of educationalists and experts to develop the necessary word lists and terminology to offer more economic value to all our official languages.”

If multilingualism was promoted at school level, a multilingual culture would become more acceptable in future. In this way, we could have an isiZulu of isiXhosa dominant university in South Africa in 30 years time.

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