Archive for April, 2011

The first week of April was a big week in the life of Domingos Oki, a Lieutenant in the East Timorese Army. He graduated from the University of New England in Armidale on Saturday 2 April, and married his fiancée Sally Belo in Canberra on Saturday 9 April.

Lt Oki (pictured here), who graduated with a Bachelor of Professional Studies degree, is the first officer from a foreign defence force to graduate from UNE through the Junior Officer Professional Education Scheme (JOPES).

The Australian Army introduced the JOPES scheme in 1990 to answer a need for its officers to gain a more rounded education and improve their skills in writing and critical thinking through studying for a university degree. Most participants in the scheme have studied through UNE – a specialist in distance education.

Lt Oki is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He was able to use that qualification as advanced standing for his university degree course, which he completed in three years of part-time study.

“It was hard work under very difficult circumstances,” said Major James Rogers, who recently returned to Australia, and the Sydney-based Regional Education Detachment for NSW of the Australian Army, after three years with the Australian Defence Cooperation Program in Timor-Leste. “Lt Oki’s studies began around the time of the shooting of President Jose Ramos-Horta in 2008, and he had to work 18-hour and 19-hour days. His academic success is a testament to his hard work.”

“It’s been a long journey, and one that started at a difficult time in my country,” Lt Oki said. “It was also quite difficult being the first candidate from Timor-Leste.”

He said he had chosen UNE because of the University’s expertise in distance education. “I’m very proud to have studied here,” he said, adding that he had found all the staff members “very helpful”. His first visit to the UNE campus was on his graduation day.

UNE has been collaborating with the Australian Defence Force for more than 70 years. In renewing its commitment to this partnership, the University has revitalised degree programs that Defence Force personnel have found ideally suited to their needs. The programs lead to the degrees of Bachelor of Organisational Leadership and Bachelor of Training and Development. Both are available only at third-year level, requiring the successful completion of only eight units of study to qualify for either degree. For the recognised prior learning criteria, go to: http://www.une.edu.au/defence.

Myee Gregory is making a documentary film in Nepal as part of her Honours degree program in Media and Communications at the University of New England.

Myee’s short documentary will be about the experiences of the community development worker Sarah Taylor in establishing the White Circles Global Trading project in 2009.

The White Circles Global Trading project promotes community development and women’s entrepreneurship by teaching Nepalese women the skills used in making products that are sold to fund education in their villages. At present, a paper-making project is under way in the remote Nangi village, and White Circles Global Trading will be expanding to include a kite-making project in the Taplejung district.

“It’s exciting that I’m able to do a worthwhile Honours dissertation that will have a positive impact on people’s lives outside of academia,” Myee said. “I’m grateful that UNE enables students to do creative Honours projects like mine. It’s a project I’m really passionate about.

“What has made this project possible was being awarded a Robertson-Cuninghame Honours Scholarship. The availability of scholarships at UNE is what really sets the University apart – giving us, as students, the opportunity to expand on our studies and try different things.”

Myee has left Armidale for Nepal and will be filming there during May.

“At UNE we encourage Media and Communications students at Honours level to extend themselves in study and research, and use a wide variety of media to communicate their findings,” said Myee’s supervisor at UNE, Dr Jeremy Fisher. “Myee’s project in Nepal is an example of this. She’ll be working with print and visual media and communicating her results via social media and YouTube.’

“I’m excited to be involved in these community development projects that are run by inspirational Nepalis,” said Sarah Taylor. “I think it’s incredibly important to educate Australians about what exactly can be generated from our consumer behaviours, and this documentary could play an important role in that. It’s a perfect way to connect people to something they may not otherwise consider.”

For regular updates, connect with White Circles Global Trading at: http://creativenepalis.blogspot.com, or Myee at: http://myeegregory.wordpress.com.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Myee Gregory preparing for her film-making project.

Professor Peter Philip McKeown, a respected senior surgeon with an international reputation, has been appointed as Professor and Head of the School of Rural Medicine at the University of New England. He will take up the position in September.

Peter McKeown received his medical school training at the University of Queensland before leaving for advanced training in the United States and Europe. His postgraduate training included posts at Stanford University, Emory University and Harley Street Clinic.  He holds an MBA degree from the University of South Florida and Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Health degrees from Harvard University. He is certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

He currently holds a professorial clinical appointment and is a surgeon at The Heart Institute, Pikeville Medical Centre, Kentucky, and is a Consultant Staff Physician at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in the United States. He has held senior clinical and professorial positions at the Veterans Administration Medical Centre in Lexington (Kentucky) and Asheville (North Carolina), and the positions of Professor of Surgery at the University of South Florida and Consulting Professor of Surgery at Duke University, North Carolina.

Professor McKeown (pictured here) has had a long-term interest in rural medicine and has led or participated in humanitarian missions to Bolivia, Mongolia, Indonesia and Vietnam. In his current position at The Heart Institute he has been involved in developing a sophisticated cardiovascular and thoracic surgery program in a very rural and underserved part of America. His research interests include the use of simulation in medical and surgical education, the implementation of evidence-based medicine, and the use of technology to deliver high-quality care in the rural sector.

He has been involved in almost all aspects of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, including transplants, ventricular assist devices, valve repairs, endovascular repair of aneurysms, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, and congenital cases. In the past two years, in his current position, he has introduced a range of innovative technologies including homograft root replacement and electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy, and is currently involved in the process of designing a robotic minimally-invasive program. By developing an integrated team approach he has been able to significantly reduce operative mortality and postoperative length of stay.

Professor McKeown has been listed by the Consumers’ Research Council of America in its Guide to America’s Top Surgeons.

In announcing the appointment, Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, said that Professor McKeown had “a strong record in building teams, working collaboratively, and recruiting and retaining high-calibre faculty and staff to deliver clinical excellence”.

“Professor McKeown has a strong commitment to providing professional development for medical staff and students,” Professor Minichiello said. “These are important leadership qualities for us as we continue to develop the reputation of the School of Rural Medicine and demonstrate our capacity and contributions to the Joint Medical Program offered in conjunction with the University of Newcastle.  We are now well placed, with the support of both State and Federal Governments and the private health sector, to create a Centre of Excellence in Clinical Rural Education in Armidale and Tamworth – and the wider New England community – so that we can provide students in the Joint Medical Program with a first-class teaching and clinical education experience.”

In accepting his UNE appointment, Professor McKeown said he was “tremendously honoured” by it. “The Joint Medical Program with the University of Newcastle brings together the best of both the rural and urban aspects of medical care and training and offers enormous scope for curriculum development,” he continued. “And during my visits to the University of New England I was tremendously impressed by the enthusiasm of the medical students and the creativity of the academic leadership of the University.”

“While I am grateful for the many opportunities I have had overseas,” he said, “I have ‘always called Australia home’. So the chance to come home is a very welcome one.”

The product of a research and writing project that Helena Pastor says has had “a major, positive impact” on her life is set to have a positive impact on the lives of many others.

After the publication last year in Griffith REVIEW of the first chapter of her manuscript Iron Men: Alchemy at Work, she and the youth worker who leads the project she is documenting were interviewed on Radio National’s Bush Telegraph program, and the essay was re-published in ON LINE Opinion, Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate.

“Through my work in writing creative nonfiction, always with a close personal perspective, I want to prompt people to examine the way they think and feel about contemporary social and moral issues,” Helena said. “Iron Men: Alchemy at Work explores the challenge of disaffected youth from a mother’s perspective, and reveals that all is not as hopeless as many people imagine.”

The manuscript, written as part of a “creative research practice” doctoral thesis at the University of New England, concerns a community-based program – Iron Man Welders – that is successfully redirecting the lives of teenage boys in Armidale who, for a variety of reasons, have difficulty staying at school. This project, led by the inspirational community worker Bernie Shakeshaft, provides the boys with an environment (“the Shed”) in which they can develop both technical and entrepreneurial skills – and self esteem – in making and marketing metalwork products.

Earlier this year Helena was named as one of five winners of the 2010/11 Varuna HarperCollins Awards. The award has taken her to the Varuna Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains to work for 10 days (from the 27^th of April) with a HarperCollins editor on the entire Iron Men manuscript – an opportunity that she hopes could lead to its publication by this leading publisher. It will be the fourth period of residence at Varuna that she has been awarded for the development of the manuscript.

As the winner of an Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Mentorship for 2010-11 she is also working with the well-known editor Judith Lukin-Amundsen on preparing the Iron Men manuscript for publication. This is the second year in a row that she has worked on one of her manuscripts with Ms Lukin-Amundsen under an ASA Mentorship.

Every Sunday for a year and a half Helena went to the Shed in Armidale and quietly observed the activities and social dynamics of the group of boys, and – over time – the development of skills and responsibilities. “We’d never had a woman in the Shed before,” Bernie said. “I think she did it well – sitting in a corner at first and, after that, just being there. We didn’t do anything differently – even down to our language.”

Helena’s writing, which began in the early days of the Shed, even played a part in keeping the boys engaged in the Iron Man project. “I think it was partly the book that kept them there,” Bernie said. “I don’t think they grasped the concept until the first chapter was read to them – and then you could have heard a pin drop. They liked the fact that it’s told ‘just how it is’ – language and all. And they liked the humour in it.

“It’s another way of telling the boys’ stories. Often with young fellas it’s the bad stuff that’s focused on. This book shows the bad, the good, and the ugly; it’s not putting them down.”

“Helena’s book is a good idea,” said Stephanous Olsen, who has been going to the Shed for almost two years and is thinking of taking up welding as a career. “It lets people know what’s going on.”

The progress of the Iron Man project has, in a way, paralleled Helena’s progress with her manuscript – going from strength to strength. Two of the boys who appear in the story (under false names) are now trainee youth workers within Bernie Shakeshaft’s BackTrack organisation, and another is a fully qualified metalwork tradesman.

“People are looking for answers, and in writing Iron Men: Alchemy at Work, I’ve tried to bring light and a human perspective to the question ‘What can we do to help our marginalised youth?’” Helena said.

Helena Pastor and Bernie Shakeshaft are pictured here in the Shed.

An international organisation promoting peace through education and cultural exchange has donated books to the University of New England in recognition of the work of UNE’s Peace Studies discipline.

Greg Johns, the General Director of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Australia, visited the University last month to present the books, and to meet staff members and students of UNE Peace Studies and members of local SGI groups.

The seven books, published by I.B. Tauris in London and New York, contain dialogues with the Buddhist philosopher, educator and writer Dr Daisaku Ikeda, the President of SGI. They offer perspectives – grounded in Buddhist humanism – on the challenges facing both individuals in their daily lives and humanity as a whole.

Mr Johns explained that Soka Gakkai (literally translated as “value creation society”), founded in Japan in 1930 as a study group of reformist educators, now had an international membership of 12 million people in 192 countries and territories, and was the largest non-government organisation in the United Nations.

SGI enjoys close friendships with leading Australian universities, peace research institutes and community organisations. Mr Johns commended Professor Helen Ware and her colleagues in Peace Studies at UNE for “working so hard for peace” – including  their contribution to the 23rd Biennial Conference of the International Peace Research Association at the University of Sydney in July last year.

“The links between SGI and Peace Studies at UNE are just one example of ways in which a common interest in the scientific study of the conditions necessary for building peace can bring together very diverse groups from around the world,” Professor Ware said. “If conditions permit, next year’s world peace research conference will be held in Hiroshima and UNE’s contributions will include our work on peace building in Africa, environmental aspects of peace, and the use of art in community building.”

For information about Peace Studies at UNE go to: http://www.une.edu.au/study/peace-studies/.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Professor Helen Ware and Mr Greg Johns displayed here was taken at the book presentation.

A flight in a 70-year-old biplane has added an important extra dimension to biographical research by James Vicars, a postgraduate student at the University of New England.

Mr Vicars took the flight, in a De Havilland Tiger Moth first flown in 1939, in an effort to deepen his knowledge about flying in the 1920s and to write authentically about the short career of Australia’s little-known first woman aviator, Millicent Maude Bryant.

Millicent Bryant won the “race” to become Australia’s first woman aviator in 1927, and was undertaking advanced flying instruction with the Australian Aero Club when, barely eight months later, she was killed when the ferry Greycliffe was cut in half by the liner Tahiti – Sydney’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.

“After growing up in a pioneering western household, raising three boys who all became prominent businessmen, going to Sydney University, and becoming a small-scale developer and entrepreneur just a few short years after World War I, Millicent Bryant took up flying in late middle age,” Mr Vicars said. “She was impressed by its possibilities and planned to buy her own aircraft. It would have been interesting to see what else she might have achieved had she lived longer.”

He said that the few Tiger Moths still flying in NSW were almost identical to the original “Moth” in which Millicent Bryant had gained her pilot’s licence. The flight that he himself had taken was in an aircraft operated and maintained by the Royal Newcastle Aero Club near Maitland, he explained, adding that it had “transformed” his understanding of what flying in such aircraft was like.

“Your speed in the air is slower than you would imagine,” he said, “yet the aircraft feels light and – with the open cockpit – the feeling of freedom and space is exhilarating. It’s easier for me now to see the appeal it must have had, along with the kind of skills and physical courage needed to fly in all sorts of conditions and weathers.”

This experience is helping Mr Vicars bring to completion a biographical account of Millicent Bryant’s life – one of the two sections of the PhD thesis he is preparing “by Research in Creative Practice”. The academic exegesis which accompanies the biography will be the focus of the remainder of his candidature.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows James Vicars beside the Tiger Moth operated by the Royal Newcastle Aero Club – an aircraft almost identical to that in which Millicent Bryant gained her licence as Australia’s first woman pilot in 1927.

A schoolboy band from south-west Sydney has won an invitation to perform beside some of the brightest young stars of Australian rock music at the university city of Armidale’s inaugural Life at Altitude festival.

Receiving the full rock-star treatment, Will and the Indians will be flown to Armidale in a private jet, and will perform on a festival program that includes Little Red, Children Collide, Operator Please, and Amy Meredith.

Organised by the University of New England, Life at Altitude is a celebration of university education and student lifestyle in Australia’s highest city. UNE’s annual Open Day on Friday 6 May will be followed the next day by a program of live band performances, a lunch featuring the best of local New England food, and much more.

Arran Airs, Marketing Manager at UNE, said the standard of entries in the “Elevation Band Search” competition had been very high, with bands from as far afield as southern Sydney and the far North Coast of NSW lodging entries in the form of a YouTube video link.

Will and the Indians comprises Will Thackeray (guitar and vocals) and Michael Watson (bass guitar) from Magdalene Catholic High School, Narellan, and Kabir Bhalla (guitar) and Matin Gouniai (drums) from Elderslie High School, Camden. (The four band members are pictured in the photographs on this page.)

Mr Airs said that the festival organisers were excited about having such a talented young band on the program, and about the opportunities that this event might open for the band’s future career. When informing them of their success, he told the band members that their VIP passes to the festival would enable them to meet some of the rock-music celebrities on the program.

Speaking at the launch of Life at Altitude earlier this month, UNE’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jim Barber, emphasised that university life in Armidale involved the city as well as the University. “The message is that if you choose to come to UNE you’ll have the whole town there to welcome you,” he said. “We offer you not just a qualification but a way of life.” And as for “altitude”: “We’ll help you rise to heights you didn’t know you were capable of,” he said.

The Armidale Dumaresq Mayor, Councillor Peter Ducat, said that Armidale was “proud to be a university city” and “proud to be involved in Life at Altitude”.

This year’s John Ferry Heritage Lecture at the University of New England will focus on the work of John Ferry himself, contrasting his approach to the history of Armidale with that of the archaeologist Heather Burke.

John Ferry, the UNE-based historian who died in 2004, published his book Colonial Armidale in 1999 – the year in which Heather Burke published her Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology. Both books were based on the authors’ doctoral research at UNE into Armidale heritage and history.

Colonial Armidale examines the growth of Armidale society by focusing on its inhabitants, their sense of place and special affection for their town, the moral dimensions of the day, and the proscriptions of class and gender. Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology investigates the relationship between the development of capitalism in New England and the expression of ideology in Armidale’s architectural styles.

“The two books could hardly be more different as approaches to history and heritage,” said Professor Iain Davidson, who will discuss them both – making some points about the relationship between history and heritage – when he presents the John Ferry Heritage Lecture on Wednesday 20 April.

Titled “Two tales of a city: history and heritage of Armidale by John Ferry and Heather Burke”, the lecture will be at 5.30 pm in UNE’s Arts Building (Lecture Theatre A2). Everyone is welcome to this free lecture.

Iain Davidson (pictured here), Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at UNE, was the foundation Director of UNE’s Heritage Futures Research Centre, which honours the memory and work of John Ferry by organising the annual Heritage Lecture.

A Cambridge graduate, Professor Davidson arrived at UNE 12 weeks after the University established an academic department devoted to prehistory and archaeology – later to become the Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology. When that department was absorbed into a multidisciplinary School of Human and Environmental Studies, he was appointed foundation Head of School. He held a Personal Chair at UNE from 1997 to 2008, and holds honorary positions at Flinders University, the University of Queensland and Harvard University.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1994, held the Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in 2008-9, and was awarded the Rhys Jones Medal of the Australian Archaeological Association for 2010.

There wasn’t an empty seat in Sydney Theatre’s Richard Wherrett Studio when Alfred Deakin is Afraid of the Dark, a play written and directed by a postgraduate Theatre student at the University of New England, was staged there in two performances last Friday evening.

“It was a sell-out,” said Carla Moore, reflecting on her achievement. “Now I’d love to take it somewhere else – particularly (considering Alfred Deakin’s association with Melbourne) the Melbourne Fringe.”

Carla Moore is a Sydney-based drama teacher and director. A graduate of NIDA (as a playwright) and UNE (as a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Theatre Studies), she is now working towards a Master of Applied Theatre Studies degree from UNE. “Someone approached me about writing and staging a new play at a time when I needed to be involved in just such a project as the core component of my Master’s program,” she said.

The play evolved from the words “Alfred Deakin was afraid of the dark,” which she had heard years before in a radio broadcast about the life of Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister. These words opened the possibility of creatively exploring what she calls Deakin’s “dark side” – for example his active belief in Ouija boards and spirit mediums.

“We got a group of nine people together,” she said, “including a ‘Dame Nellie Melba’ with a wonderful voice, and we all researched aspects of Deakin’s life. Then we came together to improvise scenes, which I’d write up when we were happy with them. It was a slow process, but very interesting – and we had a lot of laughs along the way.”

A month before the production they “workshopped” the play in front of a large invited audience, and Ms Moore made adjustments to the script in the light of audience reactions. “And I was still making adjustments a few days before last Friday’s performances,” she said.

UNE’s Master of Applied Theatre Studies degree program enables theatre practitioners and drama teachers to develop and apply research skills in testing and evaluating the knowledge gained in the creation of a practical project. Ms Moore, who gained her first degree from UNE as a distance education student, is also studying for her Master’s degree by distance education. “It’s lovely being able to do it this way,” she said. “I love the people who teach the course, and the course content.”

Dr Anne Pender, a Senior Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at UNE, has worked with Ms Moore in the Master’s program over the past year and was present at last Friday’s performance in Sydney. “It was a remarkable piece of theatre that brought together Carla’s dramaturgical research and artistic strengths exceptionally well,” Dr Pender said. “Carla managed to bring this mysterious political figure from Australian history to life, and showed the resonance of his ideas about race and social justice for a contemporary audience.”

Alfred Deakin is Afraid of the Dark was produced in Sydney by RGP Productions and Carla Moore taurus productions. Audiences at the Melbourne Fringe are in for a treat if Ms Moore can find the funding to stage it there.

The international legacy of the distinguished agricultural economist John Dillon was personified at the University of New England last month in four visitors from Cambodia, India and Indonesia.

The visitors have been in Australia as recipients of John Dillon Fellowships awarded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

Dr El Sotheary from Cambodia, Dr Dindo Campilan from India, and Dr Fadjry Djufry and Dr Idha Arsanti from Indonesia spent two days at UNE as part of a six-week study tour focused on best practices in agricultural research management.

John Dillon (pictured above) was foundation Professor of Farm Management and then Professor of Agricultural Economics and Business Management at UNE from the mid-1960s. He made an outstanding contribution to international agricultural research and research collaboration, and chaired ACIAR’s board of management from 1985 to 1994.

“Our visit to UNE is very significant,” said Dr Campilan (pictured right). “We’ve been wondering about John Dillon – and now, coming here, we’ve been able to hear a lot about him. And here at UNE we’re seeing a true agricultural university.”

The four John Dillon Fellows are all young leaders in agricultural research management in their respective countries. Their fellowship tour began with a week at Melbourne Business School, and that was followed by a week in South Australia and a week in the ACT. After their two days at UNE they travelled to Brisbane for visits to the University of Queensland and other research organisations.

“It’s been very useful,” said Dr Arsanti (pictured right). “We’re all involved in collaborative research projects between Australian institutions and our own countries. Australians often visit us, and now – through these fellowships – we have an opportunity to come here and develop mutual understanding.”

ACIAR’s John Dillon Fellowships, established in 2002, are awarded each year. They provide leadership development opportunities in agricultural research management, agricultural policy and extension technologies, and opportunities to make valuable connections with Australians working in similar fields.