NWU teaching experts among SA’s cream of the crop

Two NWU lecturers find themselves among the cream of the teaching crop of South Africa after winning national teaching excellence awards.

The two experts are Ms Hunadi Rakhudu of Nursing Science at the Mafikeng Campus and Mr Hannes du Toit of Engineering at the Potchefstroom Campus.

They received awards that are annually made by the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) in partnership with the Council on Higher Education (CHE).

Hunadi is one of five recipients of the National Teaching Excellence Award and Hannes is one of nine recipients of a Commendation for Excellence in Teaching.

For the awards, South African higher education institutions were invited to submit the names of teaching experts, resulting in a total of 38 participants.

NWU helps swimming stars

On Friday 12 October 2012 the North-West University (NWU) gave Swimming South Africa (SSA) a R360 000 sponsorship to ensure that the 25-strong team can represent the country during the FINA World Short Course Championships in Istanbul, Turkey, in December.

When the university management heard about SSA’s financial predicament, such as that swimmers would have to fork out R8 000 each to participate in the event, the decision was made to intervene.

According to Dr Theuns Eloff, Vice-Chancellor of the NWU, it is unfortunate that the country’s top athletes have to bear the brunt because of financial constraints.

“We at the NWU realise how important sport is as an educational medium. We invest a great deal in sport and it is sad to see when our premier athletes can't attend an event. This sponsorship is made in the interest of the country,” says Dr Eloff.

NWU athletes conquer Comrades

The sweat ran in streams, their legs were buckling under them and every grain of perseverance was stretched to the limit for 89 km. However, for 15 athletes from the North-West University (NWU) sweet reward awaited: being able to say “I completed the 2012 Comrades marathon.”

Messrs James Botha, Fanie Swanepoel, Cliff Wallace, Koos Degenaar, Henro Erasmus, Kaizer Phakathi, Willie Lubbe, Ockie de Kock, Werner Coetzee, Ettiene Pretorius, Stefan Pienaar, Jaco Barnard, Ms Hilde Kemp, Ms Erichia Nel, and Ms Rika Huyser were all able to drag their weary bodies over the finish line before cut-off.

If not for a pulled calf muscle, Mr Paul Harmse’s name would also have been on the list.

Jaco Barnard finished the route in the fastest time of 07:23:37.
 

NWU accountants balanced the figures

Institutional Office - Taking into consideration the student numbers and the pass rate of 88%, the North-West University’s (NWU) chartered accountant (CA) students who have recently completed their studies, fared better than ever in 2012 in Part 1 of the national qualifying examination of the South African Institute for Chartered Accountants (SAICA).

This pass rate was significantly higher than the national average of 78%. In a question about Financial Management and Management Accounting the NWU students did the best in the country. In doing so, they built on the achievements of previous NWU students who did the best in a variety of subjects on a number of occasions in the past.

The results put the NWU overall sixth in the country, with the University of Cape Town, Rhodes, Pretoria, Wits and Stellenbosch in the first five places.