Archive for November, 2009

A declaration drafted at an international conference in Phitsanulok, Thailand, organised by the University of New England and Thailand’s Naresuan University, emphasises the importance of high-quality education and training for health service managers.

The “Phitsanulok Declaration” says that the conference – the 1^st International Conference on Health Service Delivery Management – was “the first opportunity in the South-East Asia and Asia Pacific regions to emphasise the importance of leadership and health management as essential precursors to health systems working to achieve high-quality health care for all”.

“The 450 delegates from 17 countries and 14 health and education organisations recognise the importance of a revitalised primary health care system – particularly in rural areas and at the local district level,” it continues. “This requires well trained professional health managers to be effective.”

The declaration is being circulated to all the conference delegates with a request that they translate it into their own languages and distribute it as widely as possible. “The delegates to this conference seek implementation of this declaration and pledge to continue to work together and expand the collaboration on which this declaration was founded,” it says.

Dr David Briggs, a Senior Lecturer in UNE’s School of Health who was one of the conveners of the Phitsanulok conference, held in October, explained that the declaration had been drafted through a process of extensive discussion during and after the conference. It is available in its final form at: http://www.health.nu.ac.th/hdm2009/declaration.php

“The University of New England is committed to raising issues of relevance to rural communities at a global level,” said UNE’s Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Graham Webb. “This landmark declaration signals the importance of training health managers to meet the challenges of providing effective leadership, and for planning integrated services for populations who require health care in rural communities, where health needs are often underserviced.”

Dr Briggs is one of several UNE staff members who are acting as advisers to Naresuan University’s Centre of Expertise on Leadership in Health Management. “The South-East Asia Regional Office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) was one of the major partners in the Phitsanulok conference,” he said, “and a significant outcome of the conference is that the Naresuan University Centre is now undergoing designation as a WHO Collaborating Centre of Expertise.”

Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, is another of UNE’s advisers to the Naresuan University Centre, and was an invited speaker at the symposium that discussed the declaration.  “The declaration is a significant step towards meeting the growing expectations of the public with regard to receiving high-quality and effective health care,” Professor Minichiello said.

“A widely-reported issue in the media is the crisis in the health care system at a global level, and the challenges that the system faces,” he continued. ”Central to this debate is the capacity of health service managers to deal with the economic context of delivering health care, and to introduce reforms in the delivery of primary health care that are innovative and forward thinking. The declaration recognises the importance of training – and of ensuring appropriate levels of qualifications – for those who work in health service management.”

THE IMAGE displayed here expands to show Professor Alan Pettigrew, who recently retired as Vice-Chancellor of UNE, signing the Phitsanulok Declaration during the conference in October.

A public lecture at the University of New England will take its audience into largely uncharted territory: between the arias of operas by composers such as Vivaldi, Handel and Mozart.

Dr Alan Maddox is a leading researcher into the theoretical and practical traditions that guided singers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in their performance of recitative – the singing in speech-like rhythms that carries the story of an opera forward between the more formally poetic arias that explore and reveal the emotions of the characters.

“Recitative took up a large proportion of the total time of any opera, and was the vehicle for almost all of the advancement of the plot,” Dr Maddox said. “But it hasn’t received much attention from critics and scholars; people are generally more interested in the arias.”

“The flexible, declamatory style of recitative meant that musical notation could convey only a small proportion of the information needed to bring the drama to life in performance,” he explained. “While singing treatises of the period give few specific guidelines about how to do this, principles for applying many of these ‘missing’ elements in performance were well established in the rhetorical tradition of delivery, which taught not so much how to sing the recitative as how to recite or declaim it.”

Dr Maddox, who is a lecturer in musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium, has conducted much original research on this “rhetorical” tradition in eighteenth-century singing, and has published his findings in a number of scholarly books and journals.

He will present this year’s Gordon Athol Anderson Memorial Lecture in the Oorala Aboriginal Centre, UNE, at 6 pm on Wednesday 2 December. The free lecture will be preceded by refreshments in the Oorala Centre’s foyer at 5.15 pm. The title of the lecture – “‘To vary the voice . . . according to what reason and nature seem to require’, or, how (not) to sing recitative” – quotes a treatise by the eighteenth-century singing teacher Giovanni Battista Mancini titled Practical Reflections on Figured Singing.

Dr Maddox is an experienced public lecturer who gives pre-concert talks for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Musica Viva. He approaches the subject of recitative as both scholar and performer, having lived and worked for 10 years as a professional singer in Europe and in Australia, where he has appeared with Opera Australia.

“The main objective in a performance of any opera is to get the story across and convey the drama,” he said. “While it makes good musical sense to present eighteenth-century music using instruments and vocal conventions of the time, it’s certainly not helpful to aim at a kind of ‘museum-piece’ performance.

“In the case of recitative, the singular lack of contemporary documentary evidence about performance practice forces us to look beyond the apparent certainties of the musical text and to think more broadly about ways of understanding music as an activity, as an experience, and as a means of communication.”

An international conference at the University of New England this week is examining ways of making education more equitable – locally, nationally, and globally.

The opening keynote address at the 37^th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Comparative and International Education Society (ANZCIES) was given yesterday by Professor Colin Power, who was Deputy Director-General of UNESCO from 1989 to 2000. Professor Power (pictured here) was instrumental in establishing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, and he reported to the conference on progress towards those goals.

The 80 delegates to the conference, which is running from Wednesday 25 to Friday 27 November, include invited guests from Denmark, Tonga, Fiji, China and New Zealand, and postgraduate students from more than 15 countries.

Professor Power observed that gaps in income levels and educational opportunities were widening both between and within countries – including Australia. “No national government is interested in looking at global issues, so we need international organisations – such as ANZCIES – to do so,” said the convener of the conference (and outgoing President of ANZCIES), UNE Senior Lecturer Dr Brian Denman.

The theme for ANZCIES 2009 is “Entering the Age of an Educational Renaissance: unity of purpose or further discord?” It is addressing questions such as: Is education perceived as a tool for peace? Can we use education to expand our imagination to explore new ways of thinking for collective action? What can we do to view education as a whole – from early-childhood, primary and secondary to tertiary education and life-long learning? How can the world foster greater cooperation to offset fear of collapse, apathy, and complacency? Dr Denman said that the five keynote presentations addressed such questions from global, regional, national and local perspectives.

Professor Phillip Jones from the University of Sydney gave a keynote address yesterday on “Education and the construction of world order” and, in their address today, Brigadier Iain Spence and Colonel Bill Monfries (Headquarters Forces Command, Australian Army) looked at the changing role of the Army in the 21^st century, when soldiers have to combine full-scale military operations with peacekeeping and social reconstruction activities.

Tomorrow’s keynote talks will be by Professor Michael Williams from the University of Queensland, who will discuss the state of Aboriginal education, and Dr Christine Fox, Secretary-General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, who will discuss the role of ANZCIES in making an impact on education policy and practice within the Asia-Pacific region.

ANZCIES is one of 40 comparative education societies throughout the world.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Professor Colin Power displayed here expands to include Dr Brian Denman.

Four students from the University of New England’s School of Education are teaching English at four schools in the Korean city of Daejeon.

Their eight weeks of teaching experience in Daejeon (19 October – 11 December) has been organised through UNE’s Korea Internship Program with financial support from the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education.

The four students – Andrew O’Connell, Helen Wicker, Sophie McGregor and Nathaniel Sundstrom – are working with Korean teachers of English at middle schools (Years 7-9). The schools are Sung Duk Middle School, Daejeon Daecheong Middle School, Daejeon Taepyeong Middle School, and Weolpyeong Middle School.

“English proficiency is one of the most important goals for school education in Korea,” said Dr Myung-sook Auh, one of the coordinators (together with Dr Chris Reading) of UNE’s Korea Internship Program. “The Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education is supporting our program in order to give Korean students an opportunity to learn English from teachers who are native speakers of the language.”

The Daejeon Office’s current involvement with the UNE program is the first time that it has recruited pre-service teachers from overseas. This follows the signing of an agreement in July this year by the Office’s Superintendent, Dr Shin Ho Kim, and the recently-retired Vice-Chancellor of UNE, Professor Alan Pettigrew.

As part of their internship, the UNE students are conducting two demonstration classes for teachers of English (to which Korean teachers of English from throughout the city have been invited), and developing lesson plans and teaching materials. During their internship, the students are taking advantage of the opportunity for cultural exchange by using Australian (as well as Korean) folk tales and folk songs in their teaching of English – songs such as “Waltzing Matilda”, “Click Go the Shears” and “Botany Bay”, and stories with themes such as the Rainbow Serpent and the arrival of Captain Cook.

The UNE students’ visit has been the subject of publicity in two Korean newspapers. The article in Yonhap News is at:

http://app.yonhapnews.co.kr/YNA/Basic/Article/Prin/YIBW_showArticlePrintView.aspx?contents_id=AKR20091021089200063,

and the article in Meil Kyungje is at:

http://news.mk.co.kr/newsReadPrint.php?year=2009&no=545760.

One of the UNE students, Helen Wicker, is being filmed – together with her advising Korean teachers and her home-stay “mother” – for a Korean television report on her experience in Korea.

For more information on UNE’s Korea Internship Program, contact Dr Myung-sook Auh on (02) 6773 2917 (e-mail: mauh@une.edu.au).

Clicking on the image displayed here reveals a photograph of Dr Shin Ho Kim, Superintendent of the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education.

Emeritus Professor Chris Gossip was presented with a volume of essays in his honour on the 45^th anniversary of the beginning of his academic career.

The volume – French Seventeenth-Century Literature: Influences and Transformations, Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Gossip – demonstrates the respect for him as a scholar and teacher – and the affection for him as a friend and colleague – that he has inspired in the course of that career.

Chris Gossip (pictured here) was Professor of French at the University of New England from the beginning of 1991 until July 2007.

He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and it is an essay by his PhD supervisor at Edinburgh – Emeritus Professor H.T. Barnwell – that opens the celebratory volume (or Festschrift).

Professor Gossip held academic positions at the Universities of Aberdeen and Swansea before being invited to Australia to fill the New England Chair, and the volume includes contributions by Professors of French from both of those universities and from six other Professors and retired Professors of French from other British universities. It also includes essays by five of Chris Gossip’s colleagues and former colleagues at UNE.

In all, French Seventeenth-Century Literature: Influences and Transformations, contains 13 peer-reviewed essays by scholars in the UK, Ireland and Australia. As pointed out by its editors – Jane Southwood and Bernard Bourque – the title anchors the volume in the seventeenth century “while allowing for contributions from scholars working in earlier and later periods”. Among the “influences” discussed are those of Homer, Euripides and Plutarch, and the “transformations” include the works of Jean Cocteau, Andrzej Zulawski and Marguerite Yourcenar.

In officially launching the Festschrift at UNE last month, Professor Kerry Dunne, a former colleague of Professor Gossip at UNE, outlined his “long and distinguished record of publications on the literature of the seventeenth century”. Professor Dunne, now Director of the Language Centre at the University of Wollongong, mentioned in particular Professor Gossip’s “invaluable” critical editions of several seventeenth-century plays, and his current collaboration on a complete critical edition of the plays of Thomas Corneille.

Dr Jane Southwood, the UNE lecturer in French who initiated the Festschrift project at the time of Professor Gossip’s retirement, said: “Tonight brings to conclusion a project undertaken to honour Chris Gossip, much-loved colleague, mentor and friend, whose meticulous attention to detail, gentle humour and incomparable gifts as scholar, teacher and administrator [as Head of the former School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at UNE and Convener of French] inspired the project in the first place.”

In his response, Professor Gossip said he was “humbly grateful” for the work of Dr Southwood and Dr Bourque (Convener of French at UNE in 2007/8) in planning and editing the volume, and of many other people – including the contributing authors and their reviewers. He paid special tribute to the life-long support of his wife Jean who, together with their daughters Sarah and Olivia, accompanied him at the launch.

In the presence of Mr Pierre Labbe, Cooperation and Cultural Counsellor at the French Embassy in Canberra, Professor Gossip thanked the French Embassy for its continuing support of French studies at UNE. The Embassy – as well as UNE – provided financial assistance for publication of the Festschrift, by the Oxford-based academic publisher Peter Lang, as Volume 7 in the series “Medieval and Early Modern French Studies” edited by Professor Noel Peacock.

Mr Labbe, who travelled with his wife Madeleine to Armidale for the launch, spoke about the well-functioning exchange programs that Professor Gossip had set up between French universities and UNE, and of his dedicated service to seventeenth-century French literature – bringing it to life for countless students and scholars.

French Seventeenth-Century Literature: Influences and Transformations will be one of the publications on display in “Booloominbah” from 4 pm tomorrow (Wednesday 25 November) at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ “Celebration of Research”.

Clicking on the image of Professor Gossip displayed here reveals a photograph of him with Mr Pierre Labbe, Mrs Madeleine Labbe (second from left) and Dr Jane Southwood.

Graduates of a Master of Counselling degree program delivered in Hong Kong by the University of New England were included in the 35^th Graduation Ceremony of Hong Kong Shue Yan University last Friday.

The ceremony brought to 158 the total number of people to have graduated with a UNE Master of Counselling degree since the inception in 1998 of UNE’s agreement with Shue Yan University to offer the course.

During his address to the graduates and their families at the Hong Kong ceremony, UNE’s Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Graham Webb, said that the UNE Master of Counselling course had gained a reputation in Hong Kong for being “intensive, of high quality, and tailored to the needs of students in Hong Kong”.

The Vice President (Academic) of Shue Yan University, Professor Yao-su Hu, welcomed the UNE delegation to the ceremony – including Professor Webb and the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, Professor Victor Minichiello. Professor Hu said that Shue Yan University – Hong Kong’s first private university – was committed to promoting learning for the benefit of society and with a high moral purpose, enabling people “to act morally and to choose wisely throughout their lives”.

Professor Minichiello said that the collaboration between UNE and Shue Yan University had made possible the delivery of Hong Kong’s first Master of Counselling course. “We are now working with colleagues in Hong Kong to recruit students into a PhD program,” he said, “and have so far successfully enrolled six doctoral students who are undertaking important research on topics related to counselling and of relevance to the Hong Kong situation. These doctoral candidates will be making significant contributions to the advancement of counselling knowledge in Hong Kong.”

Professor Minichiello, who has been invited to join the editorial board of the newly-established Asia Pacific Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy (a Routledge, Taylor & Francis publication of the Asian Professional Counselling Association), was involved in discussions about the journal while in Hong Kong.

A program of collaboration between the University of New England (UNE) and Harbin Engineering University (HEU) in China that has brought more than 100 students from Harbin to UNE since 2004 is to be expanded.

The Acting Vice-Chancellor of UNE, Professor Graham Webb, who is in Harbin this week for discussions with the President of HEU, Professor Liu Zhigang, said the two universities would sign a new agreement to expand the level of collaboration and engagement over a wider range of projects.

Also involved in the discussions were the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, Professor Victor Minichiello, and members of the senior executive staff of HEU including Vice President Professor Yu Yao and Professor Liu Ping, Dean of HEU’s College of International Cooperative Education.

“UNE has had a very productive relationship with HEU,” Professor Webb said. “Students complete a 2+2 program that involves two years of study in both Harbin and Armidale. Nearly 60 students from Harbin have graduated with either a Bachelor of Computer Science or a Bachelor of Financial Administration degree from UNE, and a small number of them have decided to continue their studies with UNE by completing a Master’s degree. There are 58 HEU students enrolled at UNE this year.”

Professor Webb said that this week’s discussions had explored how UNE students could spend time studying in Harbin. “We are looking at innovative ways to enrich the UNE learning experience and for our students to engage globally,” he said. “The discussions we have had in Harbin have identified a number of possible models through which we can achieve this important objective.

“Given the role China is playing in the world economy and its influence in world affairs, providing opportunities for our UNE students to come to HEU to study Chinese culture and learn a new language is an exciting possibility.”

Professor Liu Zhigang said that Harbin Engineering University (pictured here) held a unique position in China, with a strong commitment to the advancement of learning through higher education and research. The University has passed its half-century mark, and there are now more than 23,000 students studying at HEU, including more than 1,000 PhD candidates.

UNE’s 2009 Lucy Mentoring Program concluded last month with a celebratory event in the Chancellery at Booloominbah.  This  ceremony for the Lucy “class of 2009″ highlighted a diverse range of opportunities presented by this year’s mentors.

The “Lucy” program started in 2006 as an innovative mentoring program to inspire, motivate and educate women about the opportunities available for employment and leadership in major corporations and the public sector. Since it began,  more than 350 students have graduated from the program.

“Lucy” is a partnership between the NSW Office for Women, Women Chiefs of Enterprises International and the University of Sydney, Western Sydney, New South Wales, Newcastle, Wollongong and the University of New England.

At last month’s ceremony, each of the Lucy graduates reflected on their mentoring experiences as part of the Graduation proceedings.

A participant named Lucy, who was mentored through a local Law firm, said the program provided a link between the classroom theory and the reality of the workplace. She described her experience as “like getting a whole firm of mentors”.

Erin, another participant, said her mentor helped her to find direction with her studies and helped her to look past the obvious when seeking solutions.

Hang’s experience was about confidence building on a personal and professional level. Her mentorship in a large accountancy firm helped her make choices about her career path and gave her the confidence to try something new.

Professor Graham Webb, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England, acknowledged the generosity of the mentors, businesses and departments who made the experience such a fruitful one for the participating students.

Guest Speaker Elizabeth Egan encouraged the young women to continue to be open to mentoring opportunities and to seek out the people who inspire them.

No matter the style of mentoring adopted through the Lucy program, whether a weekly coffee meeting or daily participation in the workplace, each participant found the experience rewarding, inspirational and worthwhile.

The Lucy Mentoring Program runs from May to October each year for women students in their final year of their Law, Accounting , Finance, Business or Economics degree.  For further information about the 2010 Lucy Program please contact Airlie Bell or Julia Perryman at Careers Assist (67732897) or Lou Conway in the School of Business, Economics and Public Policy (67733919).

One hundred plant scientists from throughout Australia and abroad will meet at the University of New England at the beginning of December to discuss new botanical discoveries and their significance for human societies.

The 2009 conference of the Australian Systematic Botany Society (ASBS) will be held at UNE from the 1^st to the 3^rd of December. The overseas delegates will travel to Armidale from New Zealand, The Netherlands, the UK, and the United States.

The convener of the conference, UNE’s Associate Professor Jeremy Bruhl, said this year’s theme – “Systematic botany: from science to society” – acknowledged that the discovery and classification of plant species was the vital basis for all new applications of botanical knowledge.

“We’re at a particularly exciting time to be dealing with the fundamental questions ‘What are the species out there?’ and ‘What are their evolutionary relationships?’,” Dr Bruhl said. “There’s a convergence of new technologies for analysing plant samples and data with a greater awareness of how much more we need to know about the biological world in order to address the threats of weeds, habitat clearing, and climate change.”

“According to conservative estimates, 20 per cent of all Australia’s plant species are still unrecorded,” he said, “but that estimate jumps to about 75 per cent when looking at certain groups of plants.”

The conference will include an important workshop titled “National accreditation of providers of biological identification”. “This workshop is very timely,” Dr Bruhl said, “as some States are gearing up for accreditation of people who provide species identification and biological surveys. The workshop will include discussion of the role of vouchers, herbaria, and software and databases for identification and planning, and the need for adequate funding to support these systems.”

The workshop panel will include Dr David Coates (Leader of the Flora Conservation and Herbarium Program, WA Department of Environment and Conservation), Mr Greg Elks (Ecological Consultants’ Association of NSW), Dr Tim Entwisle (Executive Director of the Botanic Gardens Trust, Sydney), Dr Klaus Koop (Director, Environment and Conservation Science, and Chief Scientist, Environment Protection Authority, NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water), and Mr Cameron Slayter (Director of the Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts).

Dr Bruhl is the Director of the N.C.W. Beadle Herbarium at UNE, and the conference is being hosted by the Herbarium and the Botany discipline within UNE’s School of Environmental and Rural Science.

Dr Bruhl said that 17 universities and 15 herbaria would be represented at the conference, as well as other research institutions and botanical consulting companies. The keynote speaker will be Peter Stevens, Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri in St Louis, USA, and Curator of the Missouri Botanical Garden. “Professor Stevens will bring a clear understanding of what we need to do in matching newly-acquired molecular data on species relationships with morphological data acquired over hundreds of years,” Dr Bruhl said.

For more information on the ASBS 2009 Conference, go to: http://www.une.edu.au/herbarium/asbs/.

A report by researchers from the University of New England and other leading research organisations has revealed that invasive animal pests cost Australia more than $740 million a year.

The report, The economic impacts of vertebrate pests in Australia, provides estimates of the direct economic impact of invasive animals on agriculture in Australia ($620.8 million), and the nationwide expenditure by governments and landholders on pest management, administration and research ($122.7 million).

Associate Professor Jack Sinden, one of the two UNE-based researchers who collaborated on the project, said that the research had involved compiling estimates of the impact of foxes, rabbits, wild dogs and feral pigs on the beef, wool, sheep meat and grains industries. The figures also included estimates of the impact of introduced species of birds on horticulture, and mice on grains, he said.

Dr Sinden is an agricultural economist at UNE who specialises in the application of cost/benefit analyses to environmental issues. He was joined in the research by Dr Wendy Gong (also, at the time of the project, from UNE) and Dr Mike Braysher from the University of Canberra’s Institute for Applied Ecology. Dr Randall Jones from the NSW Department of Primary Industries was the team leader.

The report is published by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre (IA CRC). It was launched earlier this year at Parliament House, Canberra, by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Hon. Tony Burke MP. The full report, a summary brochure, and answers to frequently asked questions are available at: http://www.feral.org.au/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.ReferenceDetails&fer_reference_uuid=2D3EED0B-AA5B-102D-EC1C5110BA9F1B2F.

Dr Sinden pointed out that the information in the report could be used to raise general awareness of the problem, draw attention to specific issues, demonstrate the size of the problem, define broad problem areas, and formulate broad policies.

“The report underlines the cost of losses to specific agricultural industries and expenditures on invasive animal control, and provides a vital baseline to illustrate the damage caused by invasive animals,” said Professor Tony Peacock, Chief of the IA CRC. Professor Peacock added that the estimates presented in the report were conservative, as they did not consider the environmental or social costs of invasive animals.

THE IMAGE displayed here, taken from the cover of the report, expands to include (from left) Dr Randall Jones, Dr Wendy Gong, and Associate Professor Jack Sinden.