The University of the Free State (UFS) hosted its second Senate Conference on 19 and 20 May 2025 at its Bloemfontein Campus, drawing together the university’s leadership, senators, and key stakeholders from across three campuses.
Centred on the theme ‘A Call for Innovation: Reimagining Work-Integrated Learning at the UFS’, the two-day conference offered space for robust and critical dialogue on how work-integrated learning (WIL) can be deepened, diversified, and more purposefully embedded into the university’s academic project.
Over the two days, WIL was framed not as a supplementary offering but as central to shaping responsive, relevant academic interventions. In her address, UFS Vice-Chancellor and Principal Prof Hester C. Klopper, who is also Chairperson of the UFS Senate, urged members of the Senate to move beyond surface-level adjustments. “Real positive change will not come by merely panel-beating and tweaking what we already have, but rather by fundamentally reimagining work-integrated learning for the higher education landscape and the future we aspire to create,” she said.
Prof Reddy said the theme was a logical choice, as it incrementally builds upon another key component of UFS’s academic project, namely ‘engaged scholarship’ – which was the focus of the Senate Conference’s 2024 theme, ‘Making Change through Engaged Scholarship’. “WIL is known by many names – work placements, internships, practicums, cooperative education, field work, etcetera,” he said. “In fact, it represents a range of approaches and strategies that integrate theory and practice to explore self-identity, develop employability skills, and acquire professional acumen with deliberate and intentional action.”
Connecting learning and practice
“WIL is not additive, it is integral and must be integrated into our teaching, learning, research, and engaged scholarship,” Prof Klopper said. She emphasised a human-centred approach despite increasing digital integration: “Technology without human interaction is meaningless. We must ensure that we remain human-centred in all our endeavours, because being disembodied means that we are also disengaged.”
Prof Rhoda reflected on UFS’s potential to advance the conversation: “We have the human capital, the academic acumen, and the vast potential to take [WIL] to a new level, and to tangibly improve the quality and work-readiness of the graduates we produce.”
Faculties also shared their existing WIL practices through case studies, while structured group discussions on both days allowed participants to engage in smaller breakout sessions where they explored guided questions and provided feedback.
A key moment of the conference was the screening of Work Shoes, a documentary produced by Charlene Stanley, a UFS alumna and award-winning television producer. The film, commissioned by Prof Reddy and Lacea Loader, UFS Senior Director: Communication and Marketing, followed the WIL journeys of four UFS students from diverse disciplines, offering a student-centred perspective on how learning translates into community impact.
“The film, typical of all documentaries, offers a visual and cinematic format to spotlight opportunities to explore, reveal, interpret and understand and examine the errors of our world,” Prof Reddy said. He emphasised that “the film was not simply framing fault lines, but also captured connections and prospects for how we reflect on our teaching, learning and practice.”
Prof Rhoda added, “These were four very diverse students with very different stories, but what they clearly have in common is a keen sense that work experience is all about service and about making a difference and improving the lives of individuals and communities.”
Guest voices on innovation and integration
The programme included insights from four external guest speakers, each representing key areas of expertise (industry, academic, and practice), who addressed the evolution of WIL from different angles:
• Advocate Navilla Somaru, Director of Public Prosecutions in the Free State, shared insights into the ‘In the Shadow of the Prosecutor’ programme, a partnership between the NPA and the UFS Faculty of Law which enables final-year law students to shadow prosecutors, bridging the gap between academic theory and practice.
• Prof Joyce Nduna, Education, Training and Development Practices Sector Education and Training Authority (ETDP SETA) Research Chair at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), focused on designing innovative WIL practices that support transdisciplinary engagement. She spoke on the role of mutual learning, interdisciplinary teams, and curriculum flexibility in aligning academic goals with societal needs.
• Prof Per Assmo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation at Sweden’s University West, presented on rethinking WIL as an academic discipline. He highlighted University West’s Master’s in Work Integrated Political Studies (WIPS) – a two-year international programme combining theory with research internships – as well as the institution’s unique PhD in Work-Integrated Learning.
• Prof Henk de Jager, CEO of the Technological Higher Education Network South Africa (THENSA), discussed stakeholder engagement in the context of WIL. He shared key principles for strengthening collaboration and encouraged UFS to develop an engagement model suited to its own identity and institutional goals.
Reflections and forward momentum
Prof Rhoda noted the value of partnerships that create mutual benefit. Referring to Advocate Somaru’s presentation, she observed: “Not only has the ‘In the Shadow of the Prosecutor’ programme been a learning opportunity for our students, it has also been an opportunity for the relevant prosecutors to look with new eyes at their profession … and to maybe even recognise issues and shortfalls in their workplace environment that they have become used to.” She also noted the continuity of thought from last year’s inaugural Senate Conference and its focus on engaged scholarship. “I find it quite significant and beautiful how our discussions today actually dovetailed with many of the sentiments that transpired from that first conference,” she said.
Prof Reddy reflected that, “It was clear to me there was a greater level of intellectual and participatory energy demonstrated by our Senators, evident in their presence, ideas, and constructive engagement with the topic. It seems that our colleagues were curious to passionately explore how better to be innovative in our collective effort to further drive the teaching, learning, and research agenda triggered by the topic into the future.”
In her closing remarks, Prof Klopper stated that the reimagining of WIL connects deeply with the three pillars of the university’s Vision 130: “Academic excellence with quality and impact; maximum societal impact through sustainable relationships; and being a diverse, inclusive, and equitable university are the foundation on which our approach to WIL must be built.”
The 2025 Senate Conference reinforced that meaningful WIL cannot happen in silos. It demands shared responsibility, innovation through connection, and a clear commitment to putting students and society at the centre of the academic project.
Programme
UFS 2025 Senate Conference Programme
Documentary Film: Work Shoes
Presentations