Archive for November, 2008

The University of New England has chosen Martha Saw as the CEO of its fundraising arm, the UNE Foundation, and director of the newly created Office of Advancement.

Ms Saw, who will take up the role on November 17, brings with her a wealth of fundraising experience, having previously worked for McKillop Family Services, Questacon, and the Canberra Region Medical Foundation. Most recently, she held a senior role with MontroseAccess, a Queensland support service helping children and young adults with disabilities.

Ms Saw said she was looking forward to the challenge of encouraging greater private investment in the University, and especially in UNE’s research efforts, which she described as having “global implications”.

“Fundraising is important for all universities because government funding only goes so far,” Ms Saw said.

“But more than that, I think we as a community have a responsibility to ensure that the next generation has access to the finest education possible.”

UNE’s Chief Development Officer, Chris Patton, said: “As UNE joins many universities in Australia in seeking greater expansion in its alumni management, university development and philanthropic activity, Martha will lead an expansion of UNE’s efforts in this area.”

Noting that Ms Saw already had a connection with UNE, as one of its students, Mr Patton continued: “We are pleased that Martha has chosen to move to Armidale from Brisbane, having already gained a close affiliation with UNE as one of our distance education students.”

The UNE Foundation, which Ms Saw will head, is an independent not-for-profit company established to support the University of New England in ways that benefit the University, its students, and the wider community. Money raised by the foundation goes primarily towards scholarships, endowments, and research, and is used with strict regard for the donors’ wishes. Because the University underwrites the foundation’s operating costs, every dollar the foundation receives goes to support these activities. The foundation’s board of directors give its time for free.

Anyone wishing to contribute to the foundation should contact the UNE Office of Advancement on (02) 6773 2870 or visit http://alumni.une.edu.au/?page=support to donate online.

A young botanist at the NSW Seedbank has won a national award for the research project at the University of New England that prepared her for her exciting career.

After graduating from UNE in 2004 with an Honours degree in science, Leahwyn (Leah) Seed gained a position with the Botanic Gardens Trust Sydney, working in the NSW Seedbank at the Trust’s Mount Annan Botanic Garden.

For her UNE Honours project, funded by an Honours Scholarship from the Cooperative Research Centre for Australian Weed Management (Weeds CRC), she investigated the inter-breeding potential of two forms of the weed Hibiscus trionum – the native “broad-leafed” form and the introduced “narrow-leafed” form. To the relief of Australian weed managers, her research clearly demonstrated that the two varieties were not able to produce a fertile hybrid, and thus posed a less serious threat than had been feared.

“My results also had implications for taxonomy,” Leah said, “in that the two forms of Hibiscus trionum turned out to be more distantly related than people had thought.”

Recently, at the end of its latest cycle of government funding, the Weeds CRC named the best Honours project conducted over the years by a recipient of a Weeds CRC Honours Scholarship. The award went to Leah, who travelled to Armidale to receive it from the hands of her Honours supervisor at UNE, Dr Glenda Vaughton.

She says it was her experience in plant reproductive biology at UNE – one of the few universities still training students in specialised botanical skills – that gave her the background she needed for her work at the Seedbank. “There are few opportunities in this field, and you need experience to be able to take advantage of them,” she said.

The NSW Seedbank currently holds more than 9,000 collections of fully-documented, wild-sourced native seed. These collections support a wide range of research and conservation projects. At the moment, some of the seeds are even being used in space research – orbiting the earth in the International Space Station.

Leah believes Australia has an important role to play in the preservation of the world’s botanical biodiversity – because, as she said, “Australia contains incredible plant diversity”. “And compared with some other countries,” she continued, “we in Australia know much about our flora”.

There is still, however, a great deal to learn. “I do a lot of germination work,” she explained, “providing new information on how to germinate native seeds – often the first time this has been looked at for many species.”

In one of its current projects – “SeedQuest NSW” – the NSW Seedbank is collaborating with the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) in the UK. “SeedQuest NSW” gathers collections from 250 different NSW species a year, with half of each collection remaining at Mount Annan and half going to the MSB. The MSB aims to have 10 per cent of the world’s dryland flora species held in seed conservation collections by 2010.

Leah is enthusiastic about the practical applications of the Seedbank’s work, and would like to see an ever-expanding role for it in conservation research. “It’s all about gaining a broader understanding of native species so that we can not only reintroduce any that become extinct, but also support greater protection of native plants in the wild,” she said.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Leah banking seed collections in cold-storage. (Photo credit: Botanic Gardens Trust, Simone Cottrell.)

A University of New England academic was among the prominent writers and literary scholars from Australia and overseas who came together at the National Library of Australia last month to discuss the importance of ‘place’ in Australian writing.

Dr Anne Pender (pictured here), a Senior Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies, researches and writes about Australian authors who have chosen to live abroad. She has published a book on the novelist Christina Stead, and is working on a major study – funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) – of the life and work of Barry Humphries.

The event in Canberra, on the 24^th and 25^th of October, was a public colloquium, titled “Home and Away – Writing about Place”, at which the 28 invited speakers explored the influence of places on their own and others’ writing, and engaged with an audience of about 200 people.

The London-based poet Peter Porter – Australia’s most eminent poet living abroad – and the novelist Helen Garner were special invited guests, and among the other speakers were the novelists Robert Drewe, Marion Halligan and Michael Wilding.

The colloquium was in honour of Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett, a distinguished literary scholar with whom Dr Pender is collaborating on another of her research projects – a three-year, ARC-funded study titled “Reverse Diaspora: Australian Expatriate Writers in Britain since the 1830s”. (Professor Bennett’s book on Peter Porter, Spirit in Exile: Peter Porter and his Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 1991.) The third member of the research team working on the “Reverse Diaspora” project is Dr Ian Henderson, who grew up in Sydney and now teaches Australian literature at King’s College London. Dr Henderson flew to Canberra for the colloquium, where he joined Dr Pender, Michael Wilding, and Associate Professor Kate Rigby from Monash University in presenting a session titled “Expatriatism, location and creativity”.

In her talk about Australian expatriate writers in the UK, Dr Pender speculated about possible differences between those of Barry Humphries’ generation and the younger generation – including their reasons for leaving Australia and their reasons for staying away. “The younger writers seem to be not as concerned about their ‘expatriate’ status,” she explained, “whereas the older generation often felt that the label ‘expatriate’ was applied to them almost as an insult.”

In the context of her own research, she said, Peter Porter’s talk about London as a working city for writers – and as a meeting place for speakers and writers of English – had been illuminating.

“But the whole event was both useful and enriching for me,” she added, “with its revellations about the influence on a writer’s work of their childhood memories of place. For example, Helen Garner spoke brilliantly about how almost all of her work is set in Melbourne – no matter where in the world she’s writing it.”

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England, Professor Alan Pettigrew, delivered the Occasional Address at UNE Partnerships’ second biennial graduation ceremony last Saturday.

Graduands travelled from as far away as Melbourne and Brisbane to attend the ceremony at the C.B. Newling Building (the “Old Teachers’ College”) in Armidale, where their family and friends joined them in celebrating their success.

Richard Doyle, the Managing Director of UNE Partnerships, welcomed the graduands, and Professor Pettigrew presented them with their certificates and diplomas. A special guest at the ceremony was Richard Torbay, Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly and Member for Northern Tablelands, who has had a long association with the University of New England.

Almost 2,700 students have graduated from UNE Partnerships – the education and training company of the University of New England – over the past two years, with another 2,000 currently enrolled. The programs the students undertake include Business Administration and Management, Facilities Management, Frontline Management, Government, Medical Reception, Practice Management, Project Management, and Training and Assessment.

During last Saturday’s ceremony Debra Jenner, who graduated on the day with an Advanced Diploma of Business Management (and who also holds a Diploma of Business – Frontline Management from UNE Partnerships), responded on behalf of the graduates, thanking the staff of UNE Partnerships for their support throughout her studies.

“As a wife and mother, and working full-time, finding the time to study meant taking my notes to cricket, soccer, netball and any other extracurricular activity my kids are involved in, so that I could make the most of every spare minute,” she said. “There were lots of late nights, but in the end I achieved what I set out to achieve – with the support of my family and friends, and the encouragement of work colleagues as well as staff and assessors from UNE Partnerships.”

Ms Jenner, who works as Administration and Finance Officer for the UNE-based National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, is considering further study. Students who gain a Diploma or Advanced Diploma qualification from UNE Partnerships are eligible for advanced standing in higher-award programs at the University of New England and can join the ranks of UNE alumni.

UNE Partnerships, with its head office in Armidale, is a successful model of a regionally based business delivering educational services and opportunities to individuals and organisations throughout Australia.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here, showing Professor Alan Pettigrew (left) and Richard Doyle, was taken at last Saturday’s graduation ceremony and expands to include Richard Torbay.

A team of researchers from the University of New England has produced a report explaining why the benefits expected from Australia’s National Water Initiative are not being fully realised.

The Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative, signed at a Council of Australian Governments meeting in 2004, committed governments across Australia to a more cohesive national approach to water management.

“The National Water Initiative was designed to achieve environmental and economic goals by freeing up markets for water,” explained Professor Paul Martin, who led the UNE team that included Dr Jacqueline Williams and Christopher Stone. “We spent two years investigating why these benefits are not yet being fully realised.”

Professor Martin, Director of the UNE-based Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, said the study showed that, “unless water reform is integrated with broader environmental reform and institutional reform, the benefits aren’t likely”.

“With regard to water trading,” he said, “it was expected that the water would go to the most efficient users, or the ones who could produce most value from that water. In Sydney, however, political competition and overlapping planning and environmental laws have meant that the scope for a market to operate has been negligible. And in rural southern Queensland the market hasn’t worked because overlapping requirements and excessive complexity of administration have meant that trading opportunities have not been seized.”

“Many of the farmers who helped us with our research want to demonstrate that they can be excellent environmental stewards, and are frustrated that they can’t get on with things that will achieve that,” said Dr Williams, who conducted the majority of the research.

The results of the study, which was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures, are presented in a report titled “Transaction costs and water reform: the devils hiding in the details”, and available at: http://www.irrigationfutures.org.au/news.asp?catID=9&ID=768.

“The study demonstrates that, whether our focus is environmental, agricultural or social matters, institutional reform is absolutely essential if we’re to get what we want out of our irrigation systems,” Professor Martin said.

He said that, as a result of the study, he and his team were already working with local, State and Commonwealth government agencies, irrigators, and industry and environmental bodies in pursuit of institutional reform in peri-urban and rural regions. “There’s been a lot of interest in our findings and our proposals for the way forward,” he said.