Jaaroorsig - University of the Free State

Dominant at conferencesQuite a number of individual departmentsdistinguished themselves by thesheer amount of papers read at conferences.In the Faculty of Economic andManagement Sciences 40 refereed paperswere read at national congressesand 27 at international conferences.The papers presented nationallymainly dealt with the challenges facingthe South African community. The Departmentof Economics presented nofewer than 20 papers at the biennial congressof the Economic Society of SouthAfrica. The Centre for Accounting, withseven selected papers, put its stamp onthe conference of the South African AccountingSociety. Particularly gratifyingwas the fact that younger lecturers wereamong those reporting research results.Internationally, lecturers from theDepartment of Public Management presentedsix papers at the annual conferenceof the International Association ofSchools and Institutes of Administrationin Italy. Staff members of the Centre forDevelopment Support were responsiblefor three international papers and theDepartment of Economics presented 12.Two departments in the Faculty ofNatural and Agricultural Sciences distinguishedthemselves. During the 43rdAnnual Conference of the AgriculturalEconomics Association of South Africa,13 of the 30 papers (excluding invitedpapers) were presented by students andstaff from the Department of AgriculturalEconomics. The Department ofPhysics also excelled by delivering thelargest number of papers of any participatinginstitution.Staff members from the Centre forHigher Education Studies and Development(CHESD) and the PlanningUnit read 13 papers and presented aworkshop at the conference of the SouthAfrican Association for Research andDevelopment in Higher Education inDurban.In the Faculty of the Humanities theDepartment of Afro-Asiatic Studies,Sign Language and Language Practicedelivered 38 papers, 15 at internationalcongresses. Topics included Biblical literaturefor children, a cognitive linguisticanalysis of the shepherd metaphorand the interpretation of deception.Two members of this department,Proff. Phillip Nel and Jackie Naudé, areamong the top ten publishers in the faculty.During the annual LanguageCongress of South Africa the prize forthe best paper by a newcomer at a linguisticsconference was awarded to MsSusan Lombaard from the Unit forLanguage Facilitation and Empowerment(ULFE). Her paper was titledTranslation from one medium to another: thetranslation of Biblical parts into SouthAfrican Sign Language.Akademiese beplanningDie sukses van die universiteit om sinvolte reageer op die realiteite en uitdagingsvan die Suid-Afrikaanse hoër onderwys, isgrootliks moontlik gemaak deur die werksaamhedevan die Beplanningseenheid,wat in 2004 op die been gebring is.As deel van sy beplanningsfunksiewas die eenheid intensief gemoeid metdie ontwikkeling, uitrol en moniteringvan die UV se strategiese plan en breëakademiese beplanningsraamwerk watbinne fakulteite en steundienste rigtinggewendis vir beplanning en implementering.23