The Student Voice | Three Students on What Success Actually Costs
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Recorded on Tuesday 4 August 2026.
In the first episode the people who built Stellenbosch University's Student Success Initiative explained how it works. This week the students explain what it is like to need it. A gap year spent delivering pizzas. Nine modules in one semester. A first-generation student who assumed being an adult meant figuring it out alone. None of these journeys ran in a straight line.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the second in a series of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by Ms Anne Havemann-Serfontein, Manager: Student Success Programmes, and Ms Nasiphi Mdlulwa, Programme Coordinator: ISFAP, alongside three ISFAP students: Martino Baartman (BAccLLB, third year), Ponatshego Madonsela (BAcc, final year) and Lwandisile Mhlanga (MEng in Industrial Engineering, Logistics and Supply Chain).
What we cover in this episode:
- The ecosystem, recapped: Ms Havemann-Serfontein describes student success as far more than reaching graduation. It is about supporting students across the whole university journey so they can learn, grow, overcome setbacks and thrive academically, personally and socially. The integrated ecosystem is a safety net woven around each student, connecting the people and services that support them so they work together rather than in silos.
- Where the Student Success Programmes team sits: Part of Learning and Teaching, the team provides holistic support to students on three programmes: Dell Young Leaders, ISFAP and the Carl & Emily Fuchs Foundation. Each has a dedicated support team on the Stellenbosch and Tygerberg campuses, working alongside the university's broader support network.
- Ubuntu as the biggest contributor to success: Ms Mdlulwa identifies belonging as the single greatest factor. A person is a person through other people, and success is bound up with the wellbeing of those around you. Her point is practical: students who feel valued and safe are the ones who reach out for help, and the ones who reach out are the ones who thrive.
- What success means to students themselves: For Ponatshego it is work-life balance, graduating with stories to tell and a life outside the books. For Martino it is a line from a law faculty lecturer during orientation week that he has carried since: remember why you are here. For Lwandisile it is leaving Stellenbosch with the skills, confidence and networks to serve the community he returns to.
- The balance nobody warns you about: Martino is carrying nine modules this semester and is candid about the discipline it demanded. Removed from home and the structure it provided, he had to build his own. He is equally clear about the opposite failure: students who bury themselves in the books burn out before year end.
- Why students wait too long to ask: Lwandisile names it plainly. Students arrive believing they are adults now and must figure it out alone, and as a first-generation student he had nobody at home who had walked the road. It took a House Committee referral to the CSCD before he learned the resources existed at all.
- Advice from students who have been there: Take it day by day, because looking at everything at once makes it worse. Find your people. If you are one of 500 in a lecture hall feeling lost, several hundred others feel exactly the same. And you do not know what you can carry until you try, so stop selling yourself short.
Where to find support:
Visit www.sun.ac.za and select the Students tab for all student support contact details.
Reach out to your faculty academic adviser, a mentor, your residence or cluster, or your bursary programme team.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
In the first episode the people who built Stellenbosch University's Student Success Initiative explained how it works. This week the students explain what it is like to need it. A gap year spent delivering pizzas. Nine modules in one semester. A first-generation student who assumed being an adult meant figuring it out alone. None of these journeys ran in a straight line.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the second in a series of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by Ms Anne Havemann-Serfontein, Manager: Student Success Programmes, and Ms Nasiphi Mdlulwa, Programme Coordinator: ISFAP, alongside three ISFAP students: Martino Baartman (BAccLLB, third year), Ponatshego Madonsela (BAcc, final year) and Lwandisile Mhlanga (MEng in Industrial Engineering, Logistics and Supply Chain).
What we cover in this episode:
- The ecosystem, recapped: Ms Havemann-Serfontein describes student success as far more than reaching graduation. It is about supporting students across the whole university journey so they can learn, grow, overcome setbacks and thrive academically, personally and socially. The integrated ecosystem is a safety net woven around each student, connecting the people and services that support them so they work together rather than in silos.
- Where the Student Success Programmes team sits: Part of Learning and Teaching, the team provides holistic support to students on three programmes: Dell Young Leaders, ISFAP and the Carl & Emily Fuchs Foundation. Each has a dedicated support team on the Stellenbosch and Tygerberg campuses, working alongside the university's broader support network.
- Ubuntu as the biggest contributor to success: Ms Mdlulwa identifies belonging as the single greatest factor. A person is a person through other people, and success is bound up with the wellbeing of those around you. Her point is practical: students who feel valued and safe are the ones who reach out for help, and the ones who reach out are the ones who thrive.
- What success means to students themselves: For Ponatshego it is work-life balance, graduating with stories to tell and a life outside the books. For Martino it is a line from a law faculty lecturer during orientation week that he has carried since: remember why you are here. For Lwandisile it is leaving Stellenbosch with the skills, confidence and networks to serve the community he returns to.
- The balance nobody warns you about: Martino is carrying nine modules this semester and is candid about the discipline it demanded. Removed from home and the structure it provided, he had to build his own. He is equally clear about the opposite failure: students who bury themselves in the books burn out before year end.
- Why students wait too long to ask: Lwandisile names it plainly. Students arrive believing they are adults now and must figure it out alone, and as a first-generation student he had nobody at home who had walked the road. It took a House Committee referral to the CSCD before he learned the resources existed at all.
- Advice from students who have been there: Take it day by day, because looking at everything at once makes it worse. Find your people. If you are one of 500 in a lecture hall feeling lost, several hundred others feel exactly the same. And you do not know what you can carry until you try, so stop selling yourself short.
Where to find support:
Visit www.sun.ac.za and select the Students tab for all student support contact details.
Reach out to your faculty academic adviser, a mentor, your residence or cluster, or your bursary programme team.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
