Walking across the stage to receive his PhD in operational research was surreal for Piet Ntema.

The North-West University (NWU) statistics lecturer received his degree at a recent graduation ceremony on the Vanderbijlpark Campus.

Piet and his five siblings were raised in poverty by a widowed mother who was a domestic worker. However, they persevered and today all but one of them are graduates, with his older brother Lejone Ntema being a university professor. “The hardships I experienced while growing up gave me the resilience to earn a PhD eventually,” says Piet.

Miracle workers who have to dig deep to find magical solutions to solve problems – this is how Prof Elmien Truter describes the social work students the North-West University (NWU) send into the communities.

Prof Truter, an associate professor in Social Work and a researcher at the research focus area Community Psychosocial Research (Compres) on the Vanderbijlpark Campus, said this after witnessing the second-year students declaring that they will adhere to the ethics and standards of their profession.

Second-year social work students from the North-West University (NWU) are annually gaining much needed practical experience by participating in mock trials.

This year second-year students from the NWU’s Vanderbijlpark Campus participated in a mock trial practical on 26 and 31 October 2022 at the Vanderbijlpark Magistrate Children’s Court.

Prof Elmien Truter, an associate professor from Social Work and researcher at the research focus area Community Psychosocial Research (Compres), says the idea to expose social work students to mock trials started around 2014.

The North-West University’s (NWU’s) School of Management Sciences, in partnership with ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA), recently hosted a guest lecture for undergraduate BCom safety management students and lecturers at the Vanderbijlpark Campus.

Mr Dieter Sauer, AMSA senior manager for health and safety, together with Lesley Ramela, AMSA GMR 2.1 certificated engineer, presented the lecture titled “Safety Management and Legal Compliance within AMSA”.

Dr Luce Pretorius, an academic in the North-West University’s (NWU’s) Social Work subject group, was recently invited to be a speaker at the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) Tripartite Summit.

The event was attended by approximately 1 200 delegates and was also broadcasted online.

Dr Pretorius presented a session on “Mental Health in the Workplace”, which focused on mental health and the role of health and safety in the mining sector. She also spoke about collaborative strategies to address this often-overlooked theme. 

The North-West University's (NWU’s) Faculty of Humanities recently hosted its annual Recognition and Celebration Function, an event aimed at honouring support and long-serving staff members. 
The event took place onboard the Liquid Lounge boat on the Vaal River, where employees were treated to a delicious lunch.

Forty-eight staff members from all three campuses attended the event, which also provided them the opportunity to catch up and network. 

Sibongiseni Buthelezi, a third-year BSc computer science, mathematics and statistics student at the North-West University (NWU), has been chosen as one of the experts to train competitors taking part in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Future Skills Challenge that will take place in China from 1 to 6 November.

In this challenge, individuals and/or teams from BRICS countries work on real-world problems in their specific skill areas to develop solutions using their specialised skills and experiences.

Students and staff from the North-West University (NWU) recently attended a national gender-based awareness campaign, dubbed #UniversitiesAgainstGender-BasedViolence, hosted by Wits University.

Under the banner of Practitioners against Gender-based Violence (GBV) in South African Universities, Community of Practice (CoP) representatives – consisting of students and staff – marched to raise awareness about gender, gender-based harm, overall gender relations and queerphobia.

Like load-shedding, fuel price hikes in South Africa are so frequent that we have become desensitised to them. When a hike is announced, we hear of it and go about our daily lives. However, increases in fuel prices have an impact on more than just the ultimate delivery costs of products. Transport plays a crucial role in the supply chain. The concept of supply chain management refers to the comprehensive process of sourcing and transforming raw materials into a usable final product for retail sale.

The North-West University (NWU), in partnership with SAS DataFly, a free resource that offers a fun and engaging way to explore data with students in real time, recently hosted a Teachers4DataAnalytics workshop for mathematics and science teachers.

The event was held at the NWU’s Vanderbijlpark Campus and was organised by statistics lecturers from the NWU and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).