Archive for August, 2011

A public lecture at the University of New England on Thursday 8 September will examine Australia’s complex relationship with South Africa at the time of the Boer War, and subsequent links between the two countries.

The prize-winning author and historian Jim Davidson will present his insights into this relationship when he gives this year’s Russel Ward Annual Lecture at UNE.

“Australia entered the Boer War enthusiastically as an imperial cause,” Dr Davidson said. “Nonetheless the war had, until recent attempts to revive its memory, faded from public consciousness – save for the Ned Kelly-like figure of ‘Breaker’ Morant.”

His lecture, at 6 pm in the A2 Lecture Theatre in UNE’s Arts Building, will examine the reasons for this and the legacies of the war on Australia’s relationship with South Africa. “Although eclipsed in the apartheid era, Australia’s relations with South Africa have been persistent and complex,” he said.

He will highlight the existence of a large community of Australian miners in South Africa around the time the war began – and after. “Indeed, South Africa at that time could be said to have been Australia’s forgotten frontier,” he said. “Moreover, these miners played a crucial role in determining the racist cast of twentieth-century South African politics.”

Dr Davidson will also consider South African influences in Australia, such as that of the writer Olive Schreiner. “As a feminist and passionate anti-war campaigner she had considerable influence on Australian opponents of the Boer War,” he said. And he will discuss the influence of the war on the Australian writer Miles Franklin, “giving an edge to her early feminism”.

Jim Davidson is an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Centre in the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. He is the author of two highly-praised biographies: Lyrebird Rising, the story of the music patron Louise Hanson-Dyer, and A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock, which was described by the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey as “one of the very best Australian biographies about a mind at work”. A Three-Cornered Life won the prize for non-fiction in The Age Book of the Year Awards for 2011, and is shortlisted for this year’s NSW Premier’s History Prize.

Dr Davidson was the editor of Meanjin from 1974 to 1982, and has published an acclaimed edition of Anthony Trollope’s South Africa.

The Russel Ward Annual Lecture, sponsored by UNE’s School of Humanities, honours the memory and legacy of Emeritus Professor Russel Braddock Ward, one of UNE’s most renowned scholars. Russel Ward taught at UNE from 1957, and was Deputy Chancellor of the University from 1981 to 1989. He was the author of a number of important books, including The Australian Legend (1958), A Nation for a Continent (1977) and Finding Australia (1987).

For more information on the lecture, phone Dr David Roberts at UNE on (02) 6773 3794 (e-mail: drobert9@une.edu.au).

The University of New England has repositioned itself at the forefront of distance education in Australia through a deal agreed between UNE and the international education services provider Pearson on Sunday.

The partnership entails world-standard delivery and marketing of UNE online courses throughout the nation and overseas. It is the first partnership of its kind in the tertiary sector outside the United States.

It will provide a guaranteed revenue stream for the University and is expected to increase external student numbers each year.

Through the partnership with the University, Pearson will make its online systems and marketing expertise available to enhance the way UNE delivers its distance education course material.

The UNE Council has also approved the first step towards a staged upgrade of the residential colleges on campus through further partnership agreements with the private sector.

Robb College will be the first to undergo extensive re-development with expressions of interest to be called for this week. All 190 rooms at the College will be upgraded.

The Chancellor, Dr Richard Torbay, said the two deals were integral to the University’s Strategic Plan, which received unanimous support at Sunday’s Council meeting. “We are back at the top of the game, and it’s an exciting development for the University based on two of its outstanding features – distance education and the residential college system,” he said.  “Bringing the colleges up to date will attract greater numbers of internal students to Armidale.

“Through the partnership with Pearson we can grow UNE’s proven excellence in delivering distance education. We will have greater numbers of external students, and that will create more academic and other staff positions in the long term.”

The Chancellor emphasised that UNE would continue to control all course content and academic standards, and that there would be no job losses on the campus as a result of the agreement.

“In effect, it means that the University’s five-star rating for student satisfaction will now be matched by a platform for delivery in the very competitive national and international online environment,” he said. “The competition in the public and private tertiary sector is fierce and the uncertainty surrounding enrolments with next year’s deregulation of the market has created a lot of nervousness.”

The Chancellor said that Council was confident UNE could withstand the challenge by building on its existing strengths through world-class online course delivery and a rounded university education experience through the residential college system.

Pearson is the world’s leading education company. From pre-school to vocational, university and professional studies, its curriculum materials, multimedia learning tools and testing programs help to educate more than 100 million people worldwide.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows the Chancellor of UNE, Dr Richard Torbay (right), with the Chief Executive Officer of Pearson Australia, Mr David Barnett.

A public seminar in Tamworth this evening (Monday 29 August) will recognise the key role that Tamworth has played in the University of New England’s groundbreaking demonstrations of broadband capabilities in education, and explore how new technologies can be used to create a virtual campus presence in Tamworth.

For the past few years, the University’s School of Education has been using broadband connections to enable “virtual supervision” by lecturers on the UNE campus of student teachers gaining professional experience in Tamworth classrooms. “We’ve collaborated on this with Tamworth’s Oxley High School since 2009,” said Associate Professor Stephen Winn, Deputy Head of UNE’s School of Education (Professional Practice and Partnerships) and one of the organisers of this evening’s seminar.

Dr Winn pointed out that – with the involvement of partners including its Tamworth connections – UNE was a pioneer among Australian universities in the development of such uses for broadband communication technology. “In this regard we’ve had very good and strong links with Tamworth in fields such as education, health, medicine, and agricultural science,” he said.

The seminar, at 6 pm in the UNE Tamworth Study Centre (24 Fitzroy Street), will examine opportunities that broadband connection offers to regional communities both generally and in the specific fields of education and local government. Titled “Local Government, the National Broadband and Development Opportunities for Innovative Regional Communities and Universities of the Future,” the seminar will include a joint presentation by the Vice-Chancellor of UNE, Professor Jim Barber, and the Community Relations Adviser of NBN Co, Darren Rudd. Their presentation, titled “Opportunities for a University of the Future in Tamworth?”, will follow a presentation by Ian Tiley, a councillor with Clarence Valley Council, the Chair of Regional Development Australia Northern Rivers, and a member of the Executive Committee of UNE’s Centre for Local Government. Councillor Tiley will discuss how local councils might engage communities and facilitate, develop and upgrade innovative online service delivery to homes and businesses.

The Federal Member for New England, Tony Windsor, will give a short introductory talk titled “What does NBN mean for New England?”

This evening’s seminar is part of a series organised by UNE to highlight current innovations and future possibilities in the University’s engagement with its students, industry partners and research partners using broadband technology. The series has included presentations on the use of such technology in medical education, vision screening, agriculture, and other fields.

The most recent event in the UNE-NBN Seminar Series was on Wednesday 24 August, when Professor Ted Alter from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at Penn State University in the United States spoke about “Rural Broadband Investment in the United States: The Political Economy of Growth”.

“Broadband access is an essential – although not sufficient – condition for local and regional growth and development in rural areas,” Professor Alter said. He argued that broadband roll-out should be planned from the perspective of “investment” rather than that of “cost savings”.

“Investment to ensure rural broadband access requires significant expenditure, but the cost of not incurring this expenditure is the cost of lost opportunities for development,” he said.

Ideas for innovation have begun emerging within regional communities around northern NSW, a process that is being fostered through an initiative called “Unison”.

“Unison” is bringing to regional centres a series of community workshops – called “Intentional Innovation Community Workshops” – aimed at identifying good ideas from within those communities and developing them into action.

The project is being conducted by the University of New England with funding from the NSW Department of Trade and Investment.

“It’s a novel collaboration between the communities themselves, UNE, and the State Government,” said Dr Philip Thomas (pictured here), the leader of the project, who is a Principal Research Fellow in Innovation in UNE’s School of Business, Economics and Public Policy. “Our aim is to draw innovative ideas from the wealth of knowledge and experience within communities, and to see how UNE might be able to assist in developing those ideas into action.”

Workshops have been held in Armidale, Tamworth, Moree, Narrabri and Bingara over the past two months, and there will be additional workshops this coming week in Bingara and Narrabri. The Bingara workshop will be in the Roxy Theatre at 5.30 pm on Monday 29 August, and the Narrabri workshop in the Crossing Theatre at 10.30 am on Thursday 1 September.

Another partnership that has flourished during the project is that between UNE and Penn State University (PSU) in the United States. The two universities signed an agreement at the beginning of 2010 that has seen them develop strong relationships in several areas of research and engaged scholarship – particularly in the area of the development and adoption of innovation and in several other areas of research and engaged scholarship. Professor Ted Alter and Dr Michael Fortunato from PSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences travelled to Australia to assist with the workshops – Dr Fortunato in Armidale and Tamworth, and Professor Alter in Moree, Narrabri and Bingara.

Professor Alter, who will accompany Dr Thomas to next week’s meetings in Bingara and Narrabri, said that the workshops were about “the creation, development and implementation of ideas from a community base”. “They’re bringing together the ideas of people in the community on subjects such as new technologies, new public policies, and new business initiatives,” he said.

He added that innovative ideas were already emerging, through the encouragement of the workshops, in areas such as broadband development, improved methods of service provision, and alternative means of energy generation.

The Chair of the Board of Cotton Australia, Andrew Watson, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Robb College Rural Focus Dinner at the University of New England on Tuesday 30 August.

Members of the University and the wider community are invited to join Robb College students at Mr Watson’s lecture, which will be in the Robb College Dining Hall at 8 pm. The lecture is titled “Is there life after uni? What the next generation of rural leaders should look forward to”.

The Robb College Rural Focus Dinner is an annual event that began in 2002. The College invites high-profile guests to deliver lectures with a rural theme. Previous speakers have included the climate change advocate Professor Tim Flannery, and former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.

Mr Watson (pictured here) is a mixed cropping and cattle producer from Boggabri.  In addition to being Chairman of the Board of Cotton Australia, he currently sits on the National Farmers’ Federation Policy Council. He has also sat on the NSW Irrigators’ Council and the Board of Namoi Water Limited, and has been on farmer reference panels for the Grains Research & Development Corporation, Land & Water Australia, and the Cotton Catchment Communities Cooperative Research Centre.

In 2004 Mr Watson was named NSW Farmers’ “Young Farmer of the Year”, and in 2008 he won the “Australian Cotton Grower of the Year” award.

To reserve a seat for the lecture, please contact the Robb College office on (02) 6773 1700, or email robb@une.edu.au.

Eight UNE scientists travelled to Melbourne at the end of July, to join about 2,000 others from around the world for the 18^th International Botanical Congress.

After the Congress, Associate Professor Jeremy Bruhl (the Director of the N.C.W. Beadle Herbarium at UNE) and Ian Telford (The Herbarium’s Curator and a PhD student in Botany) conducted an international group of 10 botanists on a three-day field trip through a wide range of ecosystems in the Northern Tablelands and North Coast of NSW.

The trip ended at UNE, where most of the visitors made use of the Herbarium for their research.

One of them, Dr Lutz Kunzmann, Head of Palaeobotany at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden, Germany, was particularly interested in the conifers he saw during the field trip. As a palaeobotanist, Dr Kunzmann studies the fossils of conifers that became extinct in northern Europe about 110 million years ago. In northern NSW he saw – for the first time – close relatives of those extinct European conifers growing in their natural habitats.

“We saw conifers in a diverse range of habitats on the field trip,” he said, “and in different stages of development – from saplings to large trees.” He told Dr Bruhl that the trip had given him some important ideas for further research.

At UNE, Dr Kunzmann saw specimens of Australian native conifers growing around the campus, and is pictured here (at left) with Dr Bruhl inspecting a Queensland Kauri (Agathis robusta) growing just outside UNE’s Botany building.

More than 800 school students travelled to the University of New England during National Science Week to explore the world of science guided by UNE lecturers, researchers and technicians.

They were participants in UNE’s annual “Science in the Bush”, which this year was extended into a two-day event to include – for the first time – primary as well as secondary students.

Altogether, 40 schools – from Grafton to Inverell to Macksville – sent cohorts of students. On Thursday 18 August the secondary students (in Years 7-9) plunged into activities designed to introduce them to aspects of scientific disciplines including chemistry, forensic science, robotics, physics, psychology, biology, horticulture, engineering, biomedical science and pharmacy.

Josette Lewis from Orara High School in Coffs Harbour, while experimenting with the manufacture of cold packs in a UNE chemistry laboratory, said that she had already had a lot of fun investigating the colours of the flames of burning chemical elements. She had been surprised – and delighted – for example that beryllium burnt with a red flame. And looking forward to a subsequent experiment she said: “I can’t wait to be making lip balm.”

In an adjacent laboratory, students were using the phenomenon of fluorescence to identify a chemical associated with a “crime scene”. “I’ve only ever seen this sort of thing on television,” said Claudia Cooper from Bowraville Central School.

“The hands-on activities at ‘Science in the Bush’ are designed to show school students that science can be fun,” said UNE’s Dr Michelle Taylor, one of the organisers of the event. “And they certainly did have fun: we got some really good feedback.”

Dr Taylor said that the introduction of a second day to cater for primary school students had been a great success. “We’ll definitely try to do it again next year,” she said.

This year’s “Science in the Bush” was helped by a National Science Week grant from the Commonwealth Government, which supported – among other things – the transport of students from distant schools and schools in low socioeconomic-status communities. “This enabled the participation of students who would otherwise have been unable to attend,” Dr Taylor said.

She was particularly pleased that the program for primary students (in Years 5 and 6), on Friday 19 August, had attracted so many participants from small schools – including Bendemeer, Tintinhull, Moonbi, Deepwater and Nowendoc.

UNE students as well as staff members were involved in the presentation of “Science in the Bush”, and other sponsors included CSIRO and the Australian Poultry CRC.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Emily Marshall from Ben Venue Public School, Armidale, engrossed in a chemistry experiment during “Science in the Bush”.

A new research centre launched today at the AgQuip agricultural field days will be devoted to helping Australian farmers and rural communities take full advantage of scientific innovation in farming, business, health and rural policy.

Based at the University of New England, the new centre will initially bring together innovation and engagement researchers from UNE and Penn State University (PSU) in the United States.

“Australia’s farming sector has benefited greatly from the uptake of scientific innovation, but that uptake is sometimes slow and always incomplete,” said Professor Paul Martin, Director of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law (AgLaw Centre) at UNE. “This is true regardless of whether the innovation is in farming, environment protection, health and safety, or policy improvements.”

Professor Martin said that the UNE Ideas to Action Centre (i2A Centre) would draw on many different approaches to accelerating the conversion of good ideas into practical use for the benefit of rural people. “These include more sophisticated approaches to rural education and communication, better engagement between researchers and those intended to benefit from their research, and better translation of technology into practice,” he said.

He explained that PSU had the strongest rural extension operation in the United States university system. “When combined with UNE’s outstanding track record in rural research and engagement and in promoting the uptake of innovation, this will provide a strong focus for delivering the outcomes of scientific research to rural people,” he said.

Professor Martin said he expected that the i2A Centre would attract other researchers, farmers, rural service providers and government representatives to provide “a more concentrated focus on this topic, which is of vital importance to rural resilience and resurgence”. He said that – among other things – the i2A Centre was aiming to develop programs in collaboration with new and extending Australian Cooperative Research Centres.

UNE’s Ideas to Action (i2A) Centre was launched in the NSW Farmers Association pavilion at AgQuip today by Professor Martin, Professor Ted Alter from PSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, and the President of the NSW Farmers Association, Fiona Simson.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Professor Paul Martin (left) and Professor Ted Alter.

Fifty doctors, nurses and students met at the University of New England on Saturday to discuss the latest developments in the treatment of people with heart failure, cancer, and mental illness.

With participants from around the New England and North West regions of NSW as well as from Newcastle, the third annual Armidale Medical Conference (AMCON) had an appropriately “rural medicine” focus.

The incoming Head of UNE’s School of Rural Medicine, Professor Peter McKeown, introduced the conference. Professor McKeown, who takes up his position at UNE in September, said during his visit to the University last week that his vision for the School of Rural Medicine was for it to be not only an educator of first-rate doctors, but also a catalyst for the development of Armidale as a “centre of clinical excellence”.

Professor McKeown said that the AMCON conference was an example of the kind of ongoing education for rural practitioners that he envisaged as an important function of such a “centre of excellence”.

The presenters at the conference included the specialist physician Dr John Flynn and the psychiatrist Dr Saroja Krishnaswami from Armidale Hospital, the interventional cardiologist Dr Hadi Najoumian who will soon move to Armidale Hospital from Sydney, the oncologist Dr Matthew George from Tamworth, and the Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Sydney’s Concord Clinical School, Dr Timothy Lambert.

Dr Flynn talked about managing ischaemic heart disease in rural communities, Dr Najoumian about the causes of sudden death in young people, and Dr George about common cancers and new developments in their treatment. Dr Lambert presented information on the use of drugs in the treatment of mental illness, and Dr Krishnaswami presented a paper on “social capital in mental health”.

Fiona Ord, a social worker in oncology at Armidale Hospital, and Greg Moin, an Armidale solicitor, talked about a framework for advanced care planning they have developed that covers both the health and legal ramifications of end-of-life decision making.

The program included hands-on sessions with sophisticated simulation equipment to practise the management of critical care situations. And about 20 GPs took the opportunity to undertake – during the day – an accredited two-hour course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

“The third Armidale Medical Conference was a great success,” said its convener, Dr Maree Puxty, Clinical Dean of the Tablelands Clinical School. “The attendees were able to participate in simulation exercises, CPR, and lectures on cardiology, psychiatry and oncology. We all look forward to AMCON 2012, which will be even bigger and better.”

Professor Gene E. Likens, famous for his discovery of the impact of acid rain in North America, is to give a public lecture at the University of New England about the water-related challenges facing the world.

“Solving the world’s water needs represents one of human society’s most urgent problems, given the critical role of water in the world’s economies, politics and general biotic wellbeing,” he says.

Professor Likens (pictured here) is on a two-week visit to UNE, where his host is Professor Martin Thoms, an internationally recognised expert on riverine ecosystems. The public lecture, titled “Water: The challenging interface between scientific understanding and policy”, will be in UNE’s Arts Theatre (Arts Lecture Theatre 1) at 6 pm on Thursday 25 August.

Professor Likens played a vital role in identifying the relationship between sulphur dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and acid rain. In recognition of his contribution to science, he received the US National Medal of Science in 2002 and, in 2003, the Blue Planet Prize (with F.H.Bormann) awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation. He has won several other major awards, including the Australia Prize for Science and Technology (now the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science) in 1994. He was responsible for establishing two major research centres – the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies – in the United States.

“Major issues of human-accelerated environmental change currently affecting our planet include global climate change, stratospheric ozone reduction, land-use change, loss of biodiversity, invasion of exotic species, pollution of the biosphere, and infectious disease,” Professor Likens said.

He pointed out that all these factors were having an impact on the world’s inland waters. “There is a clear and urgent need to resolve the conflicts of use and abuse of aquatic ecosystems within the context of our planet’s finite freshwater resource,” he said. “Serious water shortages and water-quality problems have occurred in many areas around the world. And there are new water problems on the horizon – including contamination by antibiotics, steroids, hormones, other pharmaceuticals, and nanoparticles.”

In addition to being elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Professor Likens has been elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is also an Honorary Member of the British Ecological Society.

Everyone is welcome to attend the free lecture on Thursday 25 August by this eminent scientist, educator, and science adviser.