UV Jaaroorsig - University of the Free State

The growth in general research output during the past five
years also shows that the underlying research base of the
university has deepened tremendously, with a growing
cohort of young, female and black researchers adding to
one’s optimism that a robust academic capacity will
continue to develop. New projects like the continued rollout
of the blended learning model and the new academic
orientation of first-year (and senior) students are likely to
be decisive for the teaching-learning performance of the
UFS in the future. Our leadership in community engagement
continues to excite.
New initiatives such as a possible engineering faculty
adds to the sense of excitement about the future. The
regeneration of the arts departments and the “new” Odeion
String Quartet, and partnership projects like the Mangaung
Strings Programme are a source of pleasure and hope. Sport
commercialisation and development seem to be on the eve
of great things.
Compared to the financially depressing 1990s when
few people saw a university or academic career at the UFS
as an attractive option, a new era of hope appears to have
dawned in the hearts of our academic staff as well as
support staff. There is also a new sense of taking
responsibility for their own future visible amongst staff.
One can only be thankful for this change of attitude and the
new creativity that is apparent at the moment.
In general, taking a five-year perspective, a large
number of the building blocks of being a very good university
were systematically reconfigured, boosted and
modernised. The approximately R100 million of discretionary
funds for strategic application that became available
annually as a result of the financial Turnaround strategy,
was absolutely instrumental in this process – aided by welldisciplined
budgetary processes and financial management.
As surveyed in Chapter 1, the projects cover many
dimensions of the university in faculties, in support service
departments, and in student life. Most of the backlogs of
Annual Review • 2007 61
Looking back at the year 2007 and the many splendid achievements by the staff of this
University in such diverse areas of expertise, as well as in the support services, it clearly
was a good year for the UFS. Especially the progress with the conceptual design and
launch of the strategic academic clusters, and the significant number of academics
from many departments and centres already involved in them, bode well for the future. One
hopes that a growing number of academics will be drawn to the clusters, and that a growing
inflow of third-stream income will see these clusters develop into engines of academic growth
and robustness.
the financially depressing 1990s have been eliminated and
significant new advances made.
Today we are better off in almost all aspects of the
university than ever before, evidenced by the increasing
number of staff coming to the UFS from the large
universities, including the large English universities. This
also includes the remuneration of staff, where significant
real increases (above inflation) have been achieved since
2000, largely eradicating our earlier competitive dis advantages
vis-à-vis large metropolitan universities (despite
lower costs of living in Bloemfontein). And, of course, we
have grown from approximately 12 100 students in 2000 to
approximately 24 700 in 2007. And these students have
access to learning facilities as well as sports and leisure
facilities never available to students before.
We have indeed been blessed. And I wish to thank all
the staff and members of management who contributed to
the necessary change processes of the last five years.
Alongside the “academic project”, the other major
endeavour of the UFS has been comprehensive trans formation.
For many years the UFS has earnestly been tackling
this complex issue, taking the lead nationally in many
respects. The sequence of steps in this mega-project in the
past number of years was described in earlier chapters of
this review. Three major milestones were reached in 2007:
the draft Institutional Charter, the fourth-phase
Transformation Plan, and the breakthrough Employment
Equity Plan.
I wish to thank and recognise all the individuals who
worked hard to produce and finalise these documents. We
have much to be proud of. If we continue diligently and