University of the Free State inspiring excellence, transforming lives throu

University of the Free State inspiring excellence, transforming lives through quality, impact and care

The University of the Free State (UFS) was founded in 1904 with six students in the Humanities, making it one of the oldest universities in South Africa. It has grown into a well-respected, highly internationalised, and regionally engaged institution, with around 42 000 students in seven academic faculties, spread across three diverse campuses in Bloemfontein and Qwaqwa in the Eastern Free State.

Its vision is to be a research-led, student-centred, and regionally engaged university that contributes to development and social justice through the production of globally competitive graduates and knowledge.

The university offers a vast array of high-quality and internationally accepted degrees, diplomas, and certificate courses in the following faculties: Economic and Management Sciences, Education, Health Sciences, the Humanities, Law, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, and Theology and Religion. It also houses a Business School as well as various Open and Distance Learning offerings and Short Learning Programmes. On the South Campus in Bloemfontein, the University Access Programme provides alternative access to higher education for promising students who did not obtain the required marks in their final school examinations.

The UFS creates opportunities and growth through leading learning and teaching, focused research, and impactful engagement with society. Students are holistically supported to achieve some of the highest success rates in the country and they are therefore highly employable. It produces research with industry, social impact, and real-world application. Its culture promotes equity, ubuntu, and accountability. Challenges and issues are addressed as they emerge and are dealt with openly in a way that promotes social justice and human rights.

MAJOR MILESTONES AND SUCCESSFUL PROJECTS

One of the factors that sets the UFS apart, is its high levels of student success through several well-crafted, holistic student support initiatives – enabling the institution to raise its general success rate by about 15% over the past ten years.

The academic success initiatives developed by its Centre for Teaching and Learning have earned the institution international recognition. These include language and literacy development and well-supported tutorial programmes. The UFS is also playing a leading role among South African universities in the field of academic advising, where students’ educational paths are aligned with their career dreams.

Among its centres of excellence is the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU) situated on the Qwaqwa Campus, which is doing groundbreaking work to empower vulnerable mountain communities with uplifting environmental, social, and economic knowledge. In addition, the Academy for Multilingualism is doing ground-breaking work to develop unique multilingual pedagogic strategies across the institution.

The UFS is also a leader in various fields of knowledge, such as cancer research, cardiothoracic surgery, indigenous knowledge systems and agriculture, city-region economies, and agroprocessing, to name but a few.

CELEBRATING GENDER EMPOWERMENT

The UFS has a significant representation of women in its management, lecturing, and research structures, with women occupying two of its four vice-rector positions, as well as four of its six SARChI Research Chairs.

The Gender Equality and Anti- Discrimination Office (GEADO) – as part of the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice – runs programmes that seek to harness the talents, creativity, and skills of the broader UFS community. These programmes support a commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and include advocacy work on gender equality, gender sensitisation, gender inclusion, and gender representation. Not only do they challenge gender biases, but also constitute a call to action, forging a path towards change.

On the academic front, the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies advances gender empowerment through focused research initiatives.

From a human resource perspective, the UFS Leadership and Development Division provides female employees with the opportunity to enrol for the Women in Leadership Training Programme and other management training initiatives presented by the UFS Business School. The Diversity and Inclusivity Programme on the UFS Blackboard (HR hub) is specifically designed to provide a respectful and inclusive workplace culture, something that is critical for gender equality at work.

The UFS Employment Equity Plan has set specific targets to increase the number of specifically black females in leadership and senior academic positions, which has led to a welcome growth in the number of female managers. The transformation of the professoriate programme (43% female) provides support to academics to develop their scholarly identities and to build the necessary competencies to achieve the performance standards expected for promotion to professional level, and also include a mentoring programme. There has been a notable increase in the number of academic female staff in senior academic positions (senior lecturer, associate professor, professor), from 131 in 2017 to 169 in 2021.

Executive coaches assist newly appointed female line managers, encouraging self-awareness and allowing them to make more conscious use of their skills, while masterminding their own professional development and growth.

The UFS has also taken a firm stance against gender-based violence, with regular awareness campaigns on all three of its campuses. Another initiative, the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART), which is made up of business units across campuses, works according to a set process flow to provide victims of gender-based violence with legal, medical, and counselling services. Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, also often uses public platforms and opinion pieces to speak out against gender-based violence in higher education.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Engaged scholarship is one of the institution’s core principles and is the vehicle for its corporate social responsibility initiatives. Through engaged scholarship, the UFS uses its scholarly and professional expertise with an intentional public purpose and benefit. In this spirit of serving society, each of its seven faculties has a service-learning component, enabling students to make a real, practical difference in surrounding communities while obtaining their degrees. The UFS strongly believes in collaboration and has longstanding relationships with 150 community organisation partners in order to achieve its engaged scholarship goals.

Various UFS school support initiatives have not only contributed to the Free State’s excellent 2021 matric pass rate of 85,7%, but also to making it the top-achieving province in South Africa for the third year in a row. Initiatives include the very successful Internet Broadcast Project, where lessons in certain subjects are broadcast from the UFS South Campus to around 71 000 learners in more than 80 different schools every week. The popular Science-for-the-Future initiative features different school programmes, targeting not only gifted learners who excel in Natural Sciences, but also involve teachers and even parents in workshops where the mysteries of Science and Maths are unlocked.

Among its other projects that encapsulate its society-focused role, is the Agribusiness Transformation Programme, whereby black commercial farmers and sustainable black-owned businesses in the Free State were identified in a developmental programme leveraging expertise, skills, and infrastructure of the UFS and strategic business partners.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

The UFS vision of Visibility and Impact extends to the African continent and the rest of the world, as close collaboration with industry partners ensures that it delivers graduates who are equipped for and sought-after in workplaces all over the world.

The university is successfully developing an ecosystem where the institution, the private sector, industry, commerce, government, and communities co-create and collaborate to provide humancentred solutions, which are digitally supported to respond to the challenges of society. One of the ways in which this finds expression is through its newly established Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures, initiating projects with a multi-disciplinary approach that combines social, natural, and digital sciences to find solutions to relevant societal needs.

The UFS has developed a comprehensive Digitalisation Plan to find the best way of using information and communication technology as a tool for enhancing learning, research, collaboration, and decision-making.

It plans to roll out more unique academic support programmes and to use the experience gained during its shift to emergency online tuition over the past two years to advance online and blended learning pedagogical systems in the rest of the country and the continent.

The UFS aims to build on its highly internationalised character by further widening and improving its international collaborations, guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Tel: Bloemfontein Campus: +27 51 401 9111 Qwaqwa Campus: +27 58 718 5000 South Campus: +27 51 401 9111

Email: info@ufs.ac.za

Website: www.ufs.ac.za