Archive for January, 2010

A current PhD student and three former senior members of staff at the University of New England have been named Members of the Order of Australia (AM) in this year’s Australia Day Honours List.

The Rev. Dr Geoffrey Glassock AM

The Rev. Dr Geoffrey Glassock is conducting research to gain an understanding of the effect on a family when one of its members goes missing. Dr Myfanwy Maple, the principal supervisor of his research project at UNE, said Dr Glassock’s study was the first of its kind.

Dr Glassock received his Australia Day award for “service to the community through the development of programs and services to assist people experiencing grief and bereavement, and to the Anglican Church of Australia”.

“It is a great honour,” Dr Glassock said, “and I realise that such an award – and what work I have been able to do – has been because of a supportive and loving family and the wonderful group of colleagues with whom I have worked over the years.”

Dr Glassock is an Anglican Minister in the Diocese of Sydney, and has been instrumental in the development of grief and bereavement services and programs throughout Australia – and internationally – for more than 30 years.

A founding member and life member of the National Association for Loss and Grief, he has served as the Association’s National President (1986-1993) and NSW President (1983-1993). He is also a foundation member of the Australasian Critical Incident Stress Association, and Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Sydney International Conference on Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society.

From 1990 to 1994 Dr Glassock was Head of the Department of Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health Studies at the University of Sydney. He is a member of the National Committee of the Australian Psychological Society College of Counselling Psychologists, and Chair of the NSW Branch.

Dr Glassock acts as psychologist and counsellor for several leading social-service organisations, and as chaplain for various health and palliative care organisations.

A former Vice-Chancellor of UNE, and two men who were Foundation Professors at the University, have also been named Members of the Order of Australia.

Emeritus Professor Bruce Thom was UNE’s Vice-Chancellor from 1994 to 1996, Professor Roger Kitching was Foundation Professor of Ecosystem Management from 1986 to 1992, and Professor Alan Pearson was Foundation Professor Nursing and Head of the School of Health from 1992 to 1995.

Professor Roger Kitching AM

Professor Kitching, who has conducted research in rainforests throughout the world, is Chair of the Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee for Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage, a member of the Expert Panel on Biodiversity of the Australian Greenhouse Office, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Canopy Program (based in Oxford, UK).

He was Special Commissioner for the Resource Assessment Commission’s Kakadu Conservation Zone Inquiry in 1990-1992, and he was the first Chair of the Commonwealth Government’s Biodiversity Advisory Council. Professor Kitching’s work at UNE emphasised the vital importance of forest conservation in protecting Australia’s environment. He is now Foundation Professor of Ecology at Griffith University.

His award was for “service to conservation science as an academic, researcher and educator, particularly in the field of tropical rainforest ecology and ecosystem management”.

Professor Alan Pearson AM

Professor Pearson’s award was for “service to nursing as an educator and leader in the development of evidence-based health care and clinical best practice”. As well as being Foundation Professor of Nursing at UNE, he has also been Foundation Professor of Nursing at Deakin University and Foundation Professor of Clinical Nursing at the University of Adelaide. He is now the University of Adelaide’s Professor of Evidence-Based Health Care, and Founder and Executive Director of the Joanna Briggs Institute at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Professor Pearson is a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing (UK), a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Association of Gerontology, and Editor of the International Journal of Nursing Practice.

Emeritus Professor Bruce Thom AM

Professor Thom, who has been President of the Australian Coastal Society since 2006, received his award for “service to the environment as an adviser and advocate for the ecological management of the coastal zone and as a contributor to public debate on natural resource policy, and to the academic and professional discipline of geography”.

He has chaired several State and national committees on environmental management, including the NSW Coastal Council (1999-2004), the Commonwealth Government’s State of the Environment Committee (1998-2002), and the State Assessment Panel of the National Heritage Trust’s Coast and Clean Seas Program (1997-2002).

Before coming to UNE as Vice-Chancellor, Professor Thom was Professor of Geography and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sydney. He has been President of the Geoscience Council of Australia (1990-1991) and President of the Institute of Australian Geographers (1986-1989), and was awarded the Griffith Taylor Medal of the Institute of Australian Geographers in 2004.

In addition to these four men, the 2010 Australia Day Honours List includes a number of UNE alumni and people with other connections to the University.

More than 200 members of the Country Women’s Association (CWA) of NSW will be arriving at the University of New England this Friday for a weekend-long examination of Scottish history, culture and society.

Scotland is the subject of this year’s CWA Weekend Country of Study School – an annual event held at UNE and organised by the UNE Conference Company. (Last year’s “country of study” was Egypt.)

Over the weekend there will be lectures from prominent speakers of Scottish heritage on a wide range of subjects including the Scottish clan system, tartans, music, and cuisine.

Mr Iain Steele from Scottish Development International will act as the delegate of the British Consulate-General in Sydney in presenting an “Introduction to Scotland”, and Professor Iain Young, Head of UNE’s School of Environmental and Rural Science, will speak – from a personal perspective – on “My Scotland”.

Mr Rodney McInnes, Convener of the Scottish Gaelic Association of Australia, will talk about the Gaelic culture of Scotland, Professor Anders Ahlqvist, Chair of Celtic Studies at the University of Sydney, about “Celtic Scotland, past and present”, Dr Frank Davidson, Deputy President of the Scottish Australian Heritage Council, about the Scottish clan system, and Mrs Wendy Watts, Chair of the Australian Celtic Festival Committee, Glen Innes, about “Tartans and the kilt”.

Local speakers will include Mr Sandy Phillips, the chef at “Squires” restaurant in Armidale, who will speak on Scottish cuisine, and Dr Darrell Fisher from the Armidale Pipe Band, whose talk will be titled “A journey through the uniqueness of the Scottish Borders”.

There will be a talk on traditional Scottish music by Mr Graham Aubrey, Director of the Australian Institute of Celtic Studies, and one titled “The Scotland Australia Cairn and Mosman” by the General Manager of Mosman Municipal Council, Mr Vivian May.

The presentations, on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 January, will be in UNE’s Wright Centre, and the formal dinner, on the evening of Friday 29 January, will be at Earle Page College. During the dinner, the Armidale Dumaresq Mayor, Councillor Peter Ducat, will welcome the delegates to Armidale, and UNE’s Chief Development Officer, Mr Chris Patton, will welcome them to the University.

A Scottish “cultural evening” on Saturday will include music from the Armidale Pipe Band as well as poetry, singing and dancing, and solo fiddling and piping.

The annual CWA Study School is an expression of the long-standing relationship between the University of New England and the Country Women’s Association of NSW.

The University of New England will receive $14.7 million from Commonwealth funding schemes to support research and research training in 2010.

As part of this funding package the Commonwealth has increased Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarships by ten per cent, lifting the annual student stipend to $22,500 a year.

UNE has 35 postgraduate students beginning this year who have been awarded APAs.

The Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Graham Webb, welcomed the funding, which he said would strengthen UNE’s research base.

“This funding allows us to pursue our strengths,” Professor Webb said.  “UNE has a distinguished record of research with a rural and regional focus – in areas including environmental and agricultural sciences and an increasing array of professional areas.  Our research provides real and concrete outcomes for our own and other regional communities, including internationally.  This funding reinforces our capacity to pursue such research and to build our research student profile.

“A large part of the $14 million that the Commonwealth has granted to UNE will go to the Research Training Scheme, which helps universities meet the cost of tuition for students completing their PhDs and Masters’ by Research. It funds research undertaken by students and the maintenance of infrastructure used by students, and contributes to the salaries of their academic supervisors.”

“This is a key focus for us,” Professor Webb said. “We have 701 students undertaking higher degrees by research in 2009 with the greatest concentration in Education, where we have 164 research students, but we also have 143 in Environmental and Rural Science, 100 in Humanities, and 72 in Business, Economics and Public Policy.”

The Chancellor, Dr Richard Torbay, welcomed the funding as a boost to UNE and the broader regional community. “Building the University’s research profile by attracting more postgraduate degree students is strategically important,” he said. “UNE was the first regional university established in Australia, and from the beginning has had a strong research focus.

“While that has always had a national and international component, much of the research has traditionally focused on rural and regional issues. More skilled graduates trained at a rurally based university has benefits for our region and beyond.”

Dr Torbay also welcomed Sustainable Research Excellence, a new category directed at complementing competitive grant funding to help universities meet the indirect costs of running research programs. This funding will progressively increase across the sector over the next few years.

In addition to the funds announced this week, UNE expects more than $17 million in grants for individual research projects.

Brian Byrne has contributed more than most researchers to an understanding of why some children have difficulties in learning to read.

Professor Byrne’s contribution has been so significant that several of his research colleagues flew to Armidale from the United States last December to honour him at the announcement of his retirement from the academic staff of the University of New England.

Although he retires at the end of this month, his research funding will allow him – for at least the next year – to continue with the analysis and compilation of data on the 1,000 sets of twins in Australia, the United States, Norway and Sweden that he and his international colleagues have followed through the early years of schooling. With funding from the Australian Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health, the research team – led by Professor Byrne – has recorded thousands of observations on each of those 2,000 children over the past 10 years.

This work with twins, which has enabled the disentanglement of genetic from environmental factors, has shown that a child’s genetic inheritance is the dominant factor influencing progress in the acquisition of literacy. From this new understanding, carefully-designed curricula (including intervention and support strategies) for literacy learning emerge as being all the more important in enabling children to realise their literacy potential. “We already have some ideas of how the reading curriculum should be designed to help children who are likely to encounter difficulties,” Professor Byrne said.

“There are a lot of parents who think they must have done something wrong because their child is encountering difficulties in learning to read,” he said, “but this is often not the case.” In his retirement, he plans to do some reflective writing that will help take this message of encouragement to parents and educators. “I want to draw out the implications of this for the education system,” he said – “what it might mean for education policy and for parents. I’d like to turn the basic science to some practical good.”

Both of Brian Byrne’s parents were teachers. “My father had charge of classes (known as ‘general activity’ classes) for boys who were struggling at high school,” he said, “and he taught a lot of them to read. After his death, my mother kept getting Christmas presents from some of those former schoolboys in thanks for the fact that they were now leading successful lives. That got me interested in reading and some of the problems associated with it.”

That specific interest in the psychology of language acquisition re-emerged during his postgraduate studies at McMaster University in Canada. Most of his subsequent research has been on children’s literacy. “The problem that sparked my interest,” he said, “was why some children, after mastering the extremely complex business of spoken language by the age of three or four, have trouble with the apparently small additional step of learning to read.

“I think I’ve helped make a contribution to solving that mystery. Part of it is that learning to talk is natural and biologically grounded: children don’t have to be aware of the components of language or think about sounds as they must do when learning to read. Children acquire spoken language spontaneously – but not reading and writing.” Professor Byrne is the author of an influential book on this subject: The Foundation of Literacy: The child’s acquisition of the alphabetic principle (Psychology Press, Hove, UK, 1998). His other scientific publications include about 70 journal articles and 15-20 book chapters.

Brian Byrne (pictured here) joined the staff of the University of New England as a Lecturer in Psychology in 1972. After promotion to the levels of Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor, he was appointed to a Personal Chair in 1997.

As a lecturer, he experienced the pioneering work of UNE in distance education. “That was a splendid innovation,” he said – “an addition to the educational landscape of Australia. It was a privilege to be part of that enterprise.” He was able to develop a course on the psychology of language at a time when there weren’t many such courses in Australia. “It was fun and rewarding to do that,” he said. And the students – particularly the many PhD students he has supervised – have been “a joy to work with”.

As a researcher, he has enjoyed the opportunity to follow his deep interest in the psychology of language, attracting research funds totalling about $5.5 million. He has twice been the recipient of the UNE Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research.

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of his career, he said, had been the opportunity – as in the work on reading ability – to combine theory, basic science, and practical application. In retirement, he hopes to be able to facilitate the practical application of some of his research findings.

At last month’s “research day” celebrating Professor Byrne’s achievements during his 38-year career at UNE, eight of his research colleagues – from Australia and abroad – presented the results of their work in the field of literacy and language. That event, with its focus on the continuing research rather than the “retiring” researcher, was a fitting tribute to a dedicated scientist.

Clicking on the photograph of Professor Brian Byrne displayed here reveals a photograph of him – taken during last month’s “research day” in his honour – with  Professor Stephen Crain from Macquarie University, Sydney, and Professor Janice Keenan from the University of Denver in the United States.

The University of New England is well under way with preparations for its annual “Orientation” – a week-long program of entertaining and informative events introducing new students to the University itself and to the wider Armidale community.

Professor James Barber, who takes up the position of UNE Vice-Chancellor early in February, will – as his first official function – welcome the new students to the University.

Professor Barber’s welcome to UNE’s new international students will be at the beginning of a special day of orientation for them on Friday 5 February. Orientation for all new students will begin on Monday 8 February, when Professor Barber – speaking on the lawns of “Booloominbah” at 11 am – will extend his welcome to them all.

The Orientation program is aimed both at students living in UNE’s residential colleges and those living in town. As well as introducing the students to each other, the program will inform them about the wide range of personal and academic support services available to them at UNE, provide tours of the academic campus and the Dixson Library, and present introductory course lectures.

Social events during the week will include a sports afternoon at Sport UNE on Thursday 11 February, this year’s “Freshers’ Bash” – featuring “Bag Raiders” – in the Bistro at 8 pm that evening, a film night at the Belgrave Cinema on the same evening as an alternative to the “Freshers’ Bash”, and barbecues for students sponsored by Services UNE.

A traditional highlight of Orientation at UNE is “Lifesaver Day” (pictured here), when student and community organisations and local businesses set up stalls to alert new students to the vast potential for involvement – both on and off campus – in sporting, cultural, and community-oriented activities.

This year, “Lifesaver Day” will be in UNE’s Lazenby Hall on Monday 8 February, beginning at 10 am. Fifty-six stalls have already been booked, and organisers say there is room in the hall for many more. The stall-holders include government, church and political organisations, sports clubs, banks and other commercial businesses, student organisations, cafes and hotels, transport companies, music, drama and arts societies, and organisations such as St John’s Ambulance, Amnesty International, and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.

Organisations interested in booking a stall should e-mail Marina Schneider at: marina.schneider@une.edu.au.

School students from northern NSW, and from as far afield as Parkes, Gol Gol (near Mildura), and Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, are gaining hands-on science experience in laboratories around the University of New England this week.

The students, who are all entering Year 10 this year, are participants in “The Science Experience” – a program coordinated by the Science Schools Foundation during January at more than 30 universities and other tertiary institutions throughout Australia. At UNE, the program is running from Tuesday 12 to Thursday 14 January.

The Science Experience enables participants to meet scientists and engage in a wide range of science-based activities.

“It’s designed to show students going into Year 10 that science can be exciting,” said Associate Professor Jim McFarlane, Director of The Science Experience program at UNE. “There’s been a serious, world-wide decline in the number of students preparing for careers in science, and we need to help young people understand the vital role that science plays – and the opportunities for science-based careers – in so many aspects of today’s society.”

“Although some of the participants can be a bit sceptical at first, they all end up finding the event enjoyable and enlightening,” Dr McFarlane said.

“It’s expanded my horizons,” said Marie Laurie from Sawtell. “I didn’t know anything about subjects such as criminology – but now I’m interested.”

“We’re country kids,” said Sophie Charalambous (pictured here) from Narrabri. “It’s a great experience for us because we don’t normally have access to a lot of this technology.”

Glen Luckett from Ashford said he was enjoying the experiments – and also the swimming and other sports activities available at Sport UNE of an evening. And staying at UNE’s Mary White College gave him an insight into student life at university, he said.

The three-day program for The Science Experience at UNE has included practical sessions – led by UNE scientists – on forensic science, physiology, chemistry, and molecular and micro-biology, as well as talks and demonstrations titled “The life of birds”, “Forensic handwriting analysis”, “The code of life”, “Forensic DNA evidence”, “Research on small mammals”, and “A chemist’s view of energy”.

For more information on The Science Experience, go to: www.scienceexperience.com.au.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here, taken in a UNE microbiology laboratory, expands to show Sophie Charalambous, from Narrabri, taking a mouth swab for microbial analysis.

Almost 300 of Australia’s most promising junior Rugby players will travel to Armidale this week to take part in the Abigroup National Rugby Camp at the University of New England.

Jim Williams, assistant coach of the Wallabies, will lead the camp, which will run from the 17^th to the 20^th of January.

The Rugby Camp, which has been held annually in Armidale since the early 1980s, has been in recent years under the auspices of the New England Rugby Union. This year, the camp has gained the support of the Australian Rugby Union (ARU).

“This year’s Rugby Camp will be greatly enhanced by the support of the ARU,” said David Schmude, Executive Director of Sport UNE and Director of the Rugby Camp, “particularly with the attendance of Australian Rugby coaching staff such as Jim Williams and Patricia Noriego. Their presence has enabled the camp to attract promising Rugby juniors, aged between 8 and 17, from all over Australia. The opportunity of having this quality coaching staff on hand will be a real boost for kids in regional areas.”

“The Armidale camps have raised the profile of Rugby in our regional communities, and have been a great Rugby nursery,” Mr Schmude said. “This year’s program offers varied opportunities for the development of skills and the encouragement of sportsmanship. And it will give regional kids a chance to ‘rub shoulders’ with current Wallabies and Waratah players and receive expert coaching.

“We are very much looking forward to the participation of current Wallabies and Waratah players Benn Robinson and Luke Burgess at our camp, building on the relationship that has helped to promote junior Rugby in regional areas.”

The ARU’s High Performance Unit and Junior Gold coaching staff will be providing on-field coaching for the budding Rugby players as well as running coach and referee education courses in conjunction with the camp. Junior Gold scouts are hoping to identify a handful of promising players to be included in the national development program.

About 160 of the players visiting Armidale will be staying at UNE’s Robb College, along with the Australian Rugby coaches.

Cherry Robertson’s own children, and people who remember her as “the mother of the students” at the University of New England, have celebrated her generous and compassionate life as revealed in a newly-published book of her writings.

“The mother of the students” was the phrase in which UNE’s Associate Professor John Ryan, speaking at the launch of the book, encapsulated Mrs Robertson’s 24 years of dedicated service to the University.

Mrs Robertson – now a frail but courageous 99-year-old – was present at the launch, together with her daughter Suzanne, son John, and daughter-in-law Geraldine. Her son Richard and daughter Stephanie were not able to attend. Several representatives from Cherry Robertson’s time at UNE were also present at the launch – which was at Armidale’s Bupa nursing home, where Mrs Robertson now lives – as well as Sophie Bailey, acting manager of the nursing home.

Cherry Robertson: Episodes in the life of a very special person provides insight into the quietly remarkable life of the author of Long Youth Long Pleasure: Adventures Behind the Scenes of the University of New England 1956-80, Mrs Robertson’s previous book, published in 1982. While Long Youth Long Pleasure illuminates her founding and sustaining role in the University’s residential college system, Cherry Robertson places her achievements at UNE in the context of a life characterised by intelligence, sensitivity, and humanity. It conveys, in Dr Ryan’s words, “a zest for the seemingly mundane patterns of life and a celebration of their deepest meaningfulness”.

Geraldine Edith (Cherry) Johnstone was born in Balmain, Sydney, in August 1910, and married Hugh Malcolm Robertson at Griffith, NSW, on Christmas Day 1936.

Cherry Robertson begins with a “travelogue” chronicling her movements from town to town in NSW from 1910 to 1956 – first within the family of her father (a magistrate), and then with her husband (a bank manager) and their four children. In 1956 Hugh Robertson was posted to Armidale as manager of the town’s Rural Bank branch, where the family lived in the bank residence until Mr Robertson’s retirement in 1972.

The book includes pieces written by Mrs Robertson during her periods of residence in rural communities throughout NSW – writings reflecting her appreciation of (and involvement in) the struggles and personal triumphs of people living in such communities. It also includes some engaging memories, written in her later years, of her childhood and young womanhood. The chapters describing her work as a legal secretary – especially with Garfield Barwick (subsequently Chief Justice of Australia) – were of particular significance for her.

After devoting much of the previous 20 years of her life to being a housewife and mother, Mrs Robertson returned to the full-time workforce in 1956 to help finance the education of her children. After a brief period of work in UNE’s administration centre, she became secretary to the Warden of (town) Students, Ben Meredith, and played a major role in the establishment of two of the University’s colleges – first Robb College and then Drummond College.

Dr Ryan, in summarising her UNE career, spoke about Mrs Robertson’s service to town students, overseas students and external students, as well as to the college residents, and “her insightful participation in what we once so proudly called ‘adult education’ or ‘university extension’”. His appreciative comments on the book itself included high praise for a substantial piece, titled “University of New England Seminar in Indonesia, January 1967″, written after Mrs Robertson’s return from a tour of Indonesia by 66 Australians led by Arch Nelson, who was UNE’s Director of University Education. “It is perhaps one of the most insightful and memorable responses to Indonesia – especially in the 1965-1967 period – that has ever been penned in Australia,” Dr Ryan said.

Mrs Robertson’s daughter Suzanne, who works at UNE as a doctor in the University’s Medical Centre, prepared and published Cherry Robertson: Episodes in the life of a very special person from her mother’s papers. “These stories have been part of our family life,” Dr Robertson said. “Publishing them as a book at this time gives our mother recognition important to her in coping with a difficult condition, as well as providing a resource for those interested in the social and historical implications of her experiences.”

“This University has been graced by the life and work of Cherry Robertson,” Dr Ryan concluded. The book is a testament to that grace.

Cherry Robertson: Episodes in the life of a very special person is available from S. Robertson, PO Box 150 Armidale (phone 0414 954 650).

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show the cover of Cherry Robertson.

A researcher at the University of New England is pioneering the use of new X-ray technology in analysing the composition of ancient pottery.

On her retirement as a teacher of art and mathematics at Bairnsdale Secondary College in East Gippsland, Jesse Walker knew exactly what she wanted to do: study archaeology at the University of New England. She didn’t know then, however, that her two-year Honours program would involve her in exploring the use of X-ray fluorescence in archaeological research.

Archaeology & Palaeoanthropology at UNE acquired a portable Bruker X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) instrument at the end of 2008, and when Ms Walker began her Archaeology Honours program in 2009 she was recognised – with her background in mathematics – as an ideal candidate to explore its capabilities in archaeology.

The PXRF instrument offers the exciting possibility of analysing the elemental composition of ancient ceramics in situ and without the necessity of destroying the material being analysed. Its versatility opens new avenues for researchers, as they can now study valuable museum specimens without moving them to a laboratory.

The technology involves the analysis of “secondary” (or fluorescent) X-rays emitted by a material that has been excited by bombarding it with high-energy X-rays. It is used in a variety of disciplines, including geochemistry, forensic science and archaeology, but its potential in the study of ceramics – particularly those housed in museums – has received little attention.

Ms Walker has at her disposal not only the PXRF instrument but also a museum well endowed with ancient ceramics: UNE’s Museum of Antiquities, which celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year. Using a set of potsherds of known composition available to her through an ARC-funded research project on Iron Age trade and exchange (the “Anatolian Iron Age Ceramics Project”), she has successfully calibrated the instrument for the analysis of ancient ceramics, and has gone on to analyse the elemental composition of two small ceramic vessels in the Museum, dating from the early Iron Age. (These are examples of “Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware”, which was a major trade item of the late Bronze Age and occurs throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.) “Patterns of ceramic elements can be difficult to interpret because people alter the clay – for example, by adding sand – during the manufacturing process,” Ms Walker explained.

Her work will continue in 2010, but she believes she has already demonstrated that the instrument has exciting potential in the study of ancient ceramics. “The PXRF offers the possibility of widespread use in museum collections, allowing researchers to investigate the sources – and subsequent movements through trade and other human activities – of high-quality ceramics,” she said.

“It’s been fun,” she concluded. “And it’s suited me because it involves mathematical analysis.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show the PXRF instrument being used to analyse the composition of one of the Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware objects in situ in UNE’s Museum of Antiquities. A photograph of Jesse Walker is superimposed.

Twenty students preparing for tertiary science studies are gaining an insight, this week, into the variety of careers in agricultural industries that are open to science graduates.

The students are participating in a Science to Industry Camp organised through the University of New England. The five-day event is taking them not only into UNE research facilities but also to research and industry organisations in Tamworth, Walcha and Guyra.

Each of the students is a recipient of an Industry Placement Scholarship awarded by the Primary Industries Centre for Science Education (PICSE) – a national organisation that works to inform school leavers about employment opportunities for young scientists in agricultural industries. UNE houses the NSW activity centre for the national PICSE program.

This week’s activities are a precursor to the industry placements themselves: during the two weeks beginning next Monday, each of the students will spend five days working with professional scientists. For example, Ellie Noon, who is completing her HSC studies at Armidale’s Duval High School this year, will be working in a parasitology laboratory at UNE with Associate Professor Lewis Kahn. “It’s exciting to have the opportunity to do this before finishing school,” said Ellie, who hopes to study rural science at UNE.

During the Science to Industry Camp, scientists at UNE are explaining – and practically demonstrating – the contribution that agricultural scientists are making to the solution of some of the world’s most pressing problems. Elsewhere, the students are being introduced to the development of animal pharmaceuticals at Veterinary Health Research in Armidale, to the biology of pesticide resistance in insects and the latest technology for testing water quality at East West EnviroAg in Tamworth, and to research for the sheep industry conducted by the UNE-based Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation.

They are also visiting agricultural businesses – including a poultry farm, a dairy farm, and a vineyard, as well as Top of the Range Tomatoes at Guyra and Joe White Malting in Tamworth. Other activities during the week include raft-building, and night-time viewing of wildlife with spotlights.

The Australia-wide structure of the PICSE program has allowed students from Western Australia and Queensland to travel to NSW to participate in this event alongside students from centres in the New England North West region – including Armidale, Gunnedah, Guyra, Moree and Walcha. “It’s been a lot of fun,” said Melissa Jones, who comes from Nambour in Queensland and is in her final year at Burnside State High School. The group had just returned to UNE after investigating the production of compost on a New England property, and Melissa was impressed with the potential of compost as an alternative to chemical fertilisers.

Susanna Greig, who manages the PICSE activity centre  at UNE along with Professor Brian Sindel and Associate Professor Robin Jessop, said that the program had been established by Dr David Russell from the University of Tasmania in 1999 in response to a national decline in the number of young people entering agricultural science careers.

“We are all well aware of global concerns to be addressed, including global warming and the need to produce fuel and food more efficiently,” Ms Greig said. “These issues translate into a huge demand – and exciting possibilities – for skilled agricultural scientists, and these possibilities are exposed through the PICSE program.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows the two inter-State participants in this week’s Science to Industry Camp: Eliza Walton-Hassell (left) from Pingelly in Western Australia and Melissa Jones from Nambour in Queensland. It expands to include Dr Susanne Hermesch (far left) and Wayne Upton  from UNE’s Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, and Susanna Greig, co-manager of the PICSE activity centre at UNE.