Archive for October, 2011

Several popular Australian authors will be guest speakers at a University of New England symposium that will pose the question: “Where do you think you are?”

Lisa Heidke, Angelo Loukakis and Sophie Masson will be the guests of the UNE-based research centre Arts New England for the full-day public symposium that the centre is presenting on Tuesday 15 November. The symposium’s subtitle – “Writing Australia” – makes it clear that the subject under discussion will be the development of an Australian identity in and through writing.

Angelo Loukakis’s Greek-Australian heritage has informed much of his writing – including the novel The Memory of Tides (about Greek – Australian contact on Crete during World War II), the short stories in For the Patriarch (which won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award), and non-fiction such as The Greeks (a children’s book about Greeks in Australia) and Who Do You Think You Are? (a book on Australians’ ancestry). Angelo Loukakis, who is the current Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors, said his talk at the symposium would be “a meditation on whether where you are determines or influences who you are, and how Australian authors engage with this question – or otherwise”.

The New England author Sophie Masson, who spent her childhood moving with her French parents between France and Australia, said that her talk would be about her experience as a “border crosser” – both as “a child of two very different worlds and two very different languages” and, as a writer of fantasy, in her creation of  imagined worlds.

Lisa Heidke, the author of Lucy Springer Gets Even, What Kate did Next and Claudia’s Big Break, will talk about contemporary women’s fiction – its writers, its rules, its popularity and its future.

Bronwyn Clarke (the international award-winning romance writer Bronwyn Parry) will continue the discussion of “genre” writing and publishing with a talk titled “Challenges for Australian genre authors in the digital age”. “While territorial rights have in the past supported the Australian publishing industry to acquire authors with distinctly Australian voices,” she said, “in the now global, digital market those same territorial rights can conversely disadvantage an author’s access to a wider readership – and earnings.”

The other papers on the program will include new perspectives on Australian biography and poetry, the history of Australian publishing, and the teaching of Australian literature and culture.

Dr Jeremy Fisher, the UNE lecturer on writing practice and theory who is convening the symposium, said that it would “explore a range of ways in which Australian writing has evolved and is evolving”. Dr Fisher, a former Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors, added that, within this literary evolution at a national level, regions such as New England had developed their own “distinctive voices”. “And here in New England, UNE has played a role in the development of that ‘voice’,” he said. Contributing to this theme, UNE’s Associate Professor John Ryan will talk about the many “displaced” academics (including Dr Ryan himself) who found in New England and its University a place where they could teach and write in an environment of “tradition, tolerance and understanding”.

Dr Fisher said that all UNE staff members, UNE students, and members of the general public would be welcome to attend the symposium, but that they should – for catering purposes – notify the organisers of their plans to attend by an e-mail to artsadmin@une.edu.au.

The symposium will be in Lecture Theatre 3 in UNE’s Arts Building, starting at 9.30 am and concluding at 4 pm after a panel session in which Angelo Loukakis, Lisa Heidke and Sophie Masson will answer questions from the audience. Morning tea, a light lunch, and concluding drinks will be provided.

The writer Nicolas Rothwell, renowned for his creative insights into the influence of landscape on the human psyche, will share some of those insights with an Armidale audience at a public lecture on Thursday 3 November.

Nicolas Rothwell (pictured here) is well known for his interest in Australian Indigenous art and culture, and his lecture – titled “When the sacred shatters: experiences in the mountains of Central Europe and the Australian inland” – will include, among other things, an original perspective on the desert art movement of central Australia.

The lecture, at 6 pm in the Arts Theatre at the University of New England, will be the nineteenth in the University’s annual Sir Robert Madgwick Lecture series.

As a foreign correspondent for The Australian newspaper, Nicolas Rothwell reported from Eastern Europe (with which he has family connections), Western Europe (where he went to school and university), the Americas and the Pacific. Now, as The Australian‘s northern correspondent, he lives in Darwin. He is the author of five books, the first – Heaven and Earth (1999) – being set in Eastern Europe and the other four – Wings of the Kite Hawk (2003), Another Country (2007), The Red Highway (2009) and Journeys to the Interior (2010) – in the landscapes of northern Australia which he evokes so memorably.

The stories that Nicolas Rothwell will tell in his lecture at UNE will, he said, be set against a background of “religious breakdown” – an historical phenomenon that is having “a huge impact on us in the Western world in the way we organise our thoughts”.

Looking forward to his visit to New England and its University, he said: “There’s something very inspiring about the idea of a university that’s connected to its landscape,” adding that it was the historian Alan Atkinson, author of The Europeans in Australia and an Emeritus Professor at UNE, who had introduced him to “the idea of New England”.

“Alan Atkinson had a big influence on me,” he said. “Reading him at a tender age made me realise what you could do with words when writing about landscape.”

Everyone is welcome to this free event. Refreshments will be served in the Arts Theatre foyer from 5.15 pm.

Sarah Cook, the Beijing Olympian who is studying for a Graduate Diploma in Education at UNE, was named University of New England Sportsperson of the Year during the University’s 63^rd Annual Sports Awards presentation night last week.

The Annual Sports Awards celebrate the sporting achievements of colleges, teams and individuals within the UNE community and recognise those who have made outstanding contributions to sport at State, national, and international levels.

Sarah Cook (pictured here on the night), who holds a SportUNE Clem Jones Scholarship, has competed in four World Rowing Championships, winning a silver medal in the women’s fours at last year’s Championships in New Zealand. The winner of a silver medal in single scull rowing at this year’s Australian University Games, she was the special guest at the UNE Sports Awards.

Emma Gillogly was awarded a Full Sporting Blue to recognise various achievements during her study at UNE – most recently her selection in the Australian Rugby Sevens Women’s Squad. This will see her competing internationally and across Australia over the next year.

Emma has represented UNE in athletics, touch football and soccer at various intervarsity competitions, including the Australian University Games, Northern University Games and Eastern University Games, and has captained the UNE team in intervarsity competitions for three consecutive years. In 2010 she won UNE’s Spirit of Sport award for her active participation in sport and physical recreation, displaying a positive attitude, and inspiring others.

This year the Spirit of Sport award went to Dr Jack Hobbs, an Honorary Life Member of Sport UNE. Jack has been a committed member of SportUNE since 1965, is a past president of cricket, hockey and fitness clubs, and has served on various committees. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors, and is a former President.

Alex Badaoui was awarded a Half Sporting Blue in recognition of his gold medal in taekwondo at this year’s Australian University Games.

Sports Recognition Awards, acknowledging valuable service to sport, were presented to Dominique Carter, Samantha Manet Lees and Bradley Smith.

The Intervarsity Team of the Year award went to the women’s soccer team that competed at the Northern University Games. The Australian University Games women’s tennis team received the Spirit of the Games Award.

Rugby Union had a successful year, with St Albert’s Rugby winning the McDonalds Club of the Year award and the UNE Club Team of the Year award. Ian Tonkin of the UNE Barbarians Rugby Union Club was named Coach of the Year, and Sam Piddington won a Club Honours Award.

Peter Barker also received a Club Honours Award, and Charlotte Egan was named Sports Administrator of the Year.

Drummond and Smith College won the Mary Bagnall Trophy for female intercollegiate sport, and Duval College won the President’s Trophy for male intercollegiate sport.

Members of the UNE and Armidale communities enjoyed the Sports Awards evening, which was hosted by Mark Lowe, Sports Editor for ABC Radio New England North West. “It’s wonderful for us to recognise the achievements of our students and volunteers who have helped make 2011 a very successful year of sport at UNE,” said SportUNE’s Executive Director, David Schmude.

A group of medical students at the University of New England became pioneers in medical education today when they were transported, via the Internet, to a specialised training facility in the United States.

In one of the first international links of its kind, five students from UNE’s School of Rural Medicine joined their American counterparts for a training session in one of the world’s most advanced laboratories for the simulation of medical procedures using sophisticated and responsive manikins.

That laboratory is in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. UNE and UC Irvine have established a collaborative arrangement that will contribute to medical education at UNE. Today’s training session took the students through a scenario that enabled them to apply their knowledge of pharmacology and physiology to the treatment of a lifelike (and realistically vocal) “patient” suffering from heart failure. The interactive link was relayed to the School’s main lecture theatre, where it was observed by many other UNE medical students and staff members.

As a partner in the Joint Medical Program (JMP) – a unique partnership between the University of Newcastle, UNE, Hunter New England Health, and Central Coast Health – UNE offers a five-year Bachelor of Medicine degree program. The JMP’s special focus on regionally-based medical education and practice gives it a particular interest in the use of broadband communication technologies such as those offered by the National Broadband Network.

UNE’s Professor Peter McKeown, the Head of the School of Rural Medicine, said that the NBN could enable the School to become – in effect – “an international medical school in a rural setting”. “And today’s demonstration of the effectiveness of this communication technology in medical education,” he added, “indicates its potential effectiveness at the doctor-patient level.”

Professor McKeown said he was grateful to UC Irvine for its generosity in sharing its state-of-the-art facilities – and particularly to Dr Harry Haigler, an Associate Dean in the UC Irvine School of Medicine, who is leading the organisation of the teaching links with UNE, and Dr Suzanne Strom, Associate Director of the Medical Education Simulation Centre at UC Irvine, who led the students through today’s exercise.

The five UNE students interacted with Dr Strom and her students during the simultaneous session. One of the UNE students, Sam Phillips, said that it had had provided “a valuable adjunct to the theory” they had learnt. And the technology behind the manikins themselves was “awesome”, he said. The same adjective might be used for the communication link itself, which flowed seamlessly from beginning to end.

Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, said that today’s link with UC Irvine was an example of “the opportunities that the NBN is providing for connectivity through partnerships”. “It allows a rural university such as UNE, which has the innovative use of e-technology as part of its strategic plan, to become global in its outreach and to link its students with national and international expertise,” Professor Minichiello said. “This means that you don’t have to be in a metro-centric environment to have access to excellence.”

A UNE graduate in law has won a prestigious international fellowship valued at at $70,000 per year, for two years.

Dr Mark Lewis Shepheard, a PhD graduate from the University of New England, is one of 70 inaugural Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship recipients.

“The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships is a prestigious new program to attract and develop the world’s best and brightest postdoctoral researchers in Canada,” according to a media statement from the High Commission of Canada.

“The program aims to develop their leadership potential and position recipients as research leaders of tomorrow,” the statement goes on to say.

Dr. Shepheard is one of only two Australian recipients of the highly competitive fellowships, and an equal number were awarded to US and UK researchers.

“This demonstrates the high quality and calibre of postdoctoral researchers from Australia,” the High Commission statement says, adding: “The two Australian researchers are looking forward to undertaking their research in Canada and the opportunity the Banting Fellowship presents.”

Dr Shepheard will undertake his research at McGill University in Montreal. It will centre on legal challenges of sustainable water management.

Dr Shepheard said: “Banting Fellowships provide a unique opportunity for me to further my academic career at McGill’s prestigious Faculty of Law. The Faculty offers a dynamic and supportive environment for interdisciplinary scholarship and innovative approaches to socio-legal research methods.”

He went on to say that staff at McGill were “experienced in working across disciplines, highlyconnected to a network of researchers in sustainable water development, law and society, and offer unique relationships with hydro electric crown corporations”.

“This will be invaluable as I develop and test my research ideas”.

Media contacts: Mary-Lou Hayman, Manager of Academic Relations/Education Marketing at the High Commission of Canada (cnbra.academic@international.gc.ca).

This year’s Maurice Kelly Lecture at the University of New England will honour the founder of UNE’s Museum of Antiquities in a particularly appropriate way. It will bring news from another distinguished, university-based collection of Classical antiquities.

Dr Maurice Kelly, who founded the Museum of Antiquities within UNE’s Classics Department in 1959, saw it develop into the most significant Classical collection in non-metropolitan Australia. Dr Kelly died earlier this year, aged 92.

The Maurice Kelly Annual Lecture for 2011 will be presented on the afternoon of Thursday 27 October by Professor Elizabeth Minchin, Curator of the Classics Museum at the Australian National University. Her lecture, titled “Breathing new life into antiquities: Reinterpreting the ANU Classics collection”, will discuss the recent re-design of ANU’s  Classics Museum.

The museum was founded in 1962. As its current Curator, Professor Minchin commissioned a team of museum designers to come up with new ways of presenting the collection, and the refurbished museum – with new cases, lighting, and interpretative panels – was re-opened last year by ANU’s Chancellor, the Hon. Gareth Evans.

Speaking at that event, Professor Minchin said that the re-opened museum represented the culmination of two years of “planning, dreaming, and sheer hard work”, and that the University and its students were “delighted” with the result. “We hope that the wider community too will wish to use our collection as a resource – a window onto the ancient Mediterranean world,” she said.

The Maurice Kelly lecture will be in UNE’s Arts Building (Arts Lecture Theatre 2) at 5 pm (for 5.30 pm). Light refreshments will be served, and the Museum of Antiquities will be open to visitors from 5 pm.

Elizabeth Minchin has held teaching and research positions at ANU since 1990. She teaches ancient Greek and Latin language and literature and social history. Her research focuses on the Homeric epics as oral poetry, and she is the author of Homer and the Resources of Memory (2001) and Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender (2007). Professor Minchin is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

“Professor Minchin’s talk will be full of interest, not only for those with a penchant for the ancient Mediterranean but also for people interested in the craft of museums,” said UNE’s Ian Stephenson, Chairman of the Museum of Antiquities Advisory Committee. He added that, like Dr Kelly, Professor Minchin was “inspired by the culture of the ancient world” and had “a mission to share its wonders with a wide audience”.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here is of an Attic red-figure plate, dating from about 460 BC, on display in UNE’s Museum of Antiquities.

The first thoroughgoing conservation study of the charismatic red panda in Bhutan indicates that the conservation of this threatened mammal and the well-being of the Himalayan Kingdom’s human population are inter-dependent.

The study, published this week, is the work of Sangay Dorji, an officer with the Wildlife Conservation Division of the Bhutanese Government’s Department of Forests & Park Services, who undertook the research as part of a Master’s degree program at the University of New England.

“Careful, sustainable management of Bhutan’s temperate forests is necessary if a balance is to be met between the socioeconomic needs of people and the conservation goals for red pandas,” say the authors of the paper – Sangay Dorji and his UNE supervisors Dr Karl Vernes and Dr Rajanathan Rajaratnam.

They explain that there is an “inadvertent conflict” between the needs of people and red pandas in Bhutan. The harvesting of native timber to build houses is a traditional practice that is still encouraged, they say, “and demand is increasing from a growing population with higher living standards”. “Sixty-five per cent of Bhutan’s households in rural areas exploit potential red panda habitat to meet their needs, in conjunction with an equal urban-based demand for timber and firewood.”

The harvesting of bamboo – the red pandas’ main food – for roofing, fencing, and other uses, and the intense grazing of bamboo by migratory herds of cattle, also constitute a serious threat to the species.

The paper, titled “Habitat correlates of the red panda in the temperate forests of Bhutan”, was published on the 19th of October in the high-impact online scientific journal PLoS ONE at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026483.

Over a two-year period, Sangay Dorji monitored more than 600 selected forest sites for evidence of red panda presence, and obtained additional information from interviews with more than 660 forest residents. He found that the mammals were “generally confined to cool broadleaf and conifer forests from 2,110 to 4,389 metres above sea level”. They also required a complex understorey, including a dense growth of bamboo for food and access to water.

Red pandas are confined to the eastern Himalayas. The paper points out that Bhutan’s temperate forests are in the middle of the red panda distribution range and are therefore crucial to the survival of the species. “The red panda has been proposed as a suitable indicator species for monitoring the integrity of the eastern Himalayan broadleaf and conifer eco-region,” the authors say. “Red pandas are charismatic mammals, making them an ideal flagship species for harnessing public support for prudent natural resource management.”

They conclude that such management would benefit people as well as red pandas, and would thus support Bhutan’s philosophy of “Gross National Happiness”.

A University of New England law student has won the inaugural prize in a prestigious national competition focused on copyright law.

Wellett Potter, who is studying for a Master of Laws at UNE, won the $4000 Kevin Lindgren Prize with an innovative presentation on the copyright implications of “music borrowing” in Australian law that included a live performance on the recorder by Ms Potter. The winner and the university will each receive $2000.

Music borrowing is the practice of an artist taking a small amount of music from another’s composition and using it in his or her own work.

In her presentation, Ms Potter cited a recent Federal Court case, Larrikin Music v EMI (2010), where Australian pop group “Men at Work” was found to have infringed Larrikin’s copyright by reproducing part of the “Kookaburra” song in the flute riff of the group’s 1981 single “Down Under”.

Ms Potter also made a point of comparing the status of music borrowing in Australian law with its status in the copyright law of Germany. “Music borrowing is allowed by law in parts of Europe,” Ms Potter said. “If the Larrikin case had been tried in Germany, the music borrowing involved would likely have been allowed.”

The Kevin Lindgren Prize was awarded at the biennial Copyright Law and Practice Symposium to the best student presentation on copyright from three finalists. The prize was established by the Copyright Society of Australia and named after Dr Kevin Lindgren, a former Judge of the Federal Court of Australia and former president of the Copyright Tribunal.

Dr Lindgren was among the judges when Ms Potter gave her presentation at the offices of Gilbert + Tobin, a prestigious Sydney law firm, who hosted the event.

Ms Potter said that although it “wasn’t easy” giving a presentation in front of some of the country’s leading copyright experts, she was on familiar ground with the topic, having completed her honours thesis on music borrowing at UNE last year. “This made my presentation an appropriate topic for the competition,” she said.

“I really enjoy intellectual property law,” Ms Potter said, describing it as “a fascinating and dynamic part of the law”.

Ms Potter said she had received “outstanding support” from UNE’s School of Law, singling out Prof Jürgen Bröhmer and Heather Ann Forrest for their encouragement and support of her competition bid.

Student groups at the University of New England are taking the initiative in organising opportunities for people from industry and the professions to meet students aiming at careers in those fields.

FARMING FUTURES INDUSTRY DINNER

A Farming Futures Industry Dinner in Armidale at the end of October will bring agricultural science and agribusiness students together with representatives of agricultural industries.

Organised by the UNE branch of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) in conjunction with UNE’s Rural Science Undergraduate Society (RSUS), the event will help to develop students’ awareness of career paths in agricultural industries.

Troy Settler, a UNE graduate who is now Chief Operating Officer of the Australian Agricultural Company, will be one of the guest speakers at the dinner, which will be at Armidale City Bowling Club from 6 pm on Saturday 29 October.

Another distinguished UNE graduate, Dr Geoffrey Fox, will be the other guest speaker. Dr Fox, who holds Bachelor of Rural Science and PhD degrees from UNE, held several important positions during a 27-year career with the World Bank – including that of Director of Rural Development and Natural Resource Management for the East Asia and Pacific Region.

Other guests at the dinner will include the Vice-Chancellor of UNE, Professor Jim Barber, his wife Mrs Mary Barber, and the Head of UNE’s School of Environmental and Rural Science, Professor Iain Young.

The Master of Ceremonies will be the agriculture graduate and agricultural innovator Chris Russell, who was a judge on the popular ABC television show The New Inventors.

Jo Newton, Treasurer of RSUS and leader of the SIFE UNE Farming Futures Project, said that she and Jo Robertson (the RSUS Industry Liaison Officer) “came up with the idea of the industry dinner as a way of increasing student engagement with the agricultural sector”. “We hope it will also inspire students to pursue a career in agriculture,” she said.

The Farming Futures Project is one of several community engagement projects that SIFE UNE – as an active branch of the international SIFE organisation – is currently undertaking.

Tickets for the dinner cost $50 each, and include drinks and snacks on arrival, a two-course dinner and an event “showbag”. For more information, or to buy tickets, e-mail farmingfutures11@gmail.com.

EBL BALL

The EBL Ball, on Friday 21 October, will enable current students of economics, business and law at UNE – and their lecturers – to meet prospective employers from the relevant professions during an enjoyable evening.

The organising committee of UNE students is planning the ball as an opportunity for people in the professions to get to know students who are aiming to enter those professions.

“We’re inviting business representatives who would like the chance to network with current students and staff of the University,” said Will Rouse-Upjohn, a member of the organising committee.

The formal-dress ball will be at Armidale Bowling Club from 6.30 pm, with the main course at 7 pm. Music will be provided by DJ ‘RIP’.

Tickets, costing $60 each, are available from the Bowling Club and from UNE’s Campus Essentials shop. For more information, e-mail eblball@une.edu.au.

Professor Peter McKeown’s ambition is to help build “the best medical school in Australia”.

After a career in the United States that saw him become one of that nation’s leading heart surgeons, Professor McKeown has returned to his native Australia to take a leading role in the innovative Joint Medical Program (JMP) as Head of the School of Rural Medicine at the University of New England. He started work in that role at the end of September.

“Our mission in UNE’s School of Rural Medicine,” he said, “together with the University of Newcastle (our partner in the JMP), is to take on first-year medical students who, by the end of their degree program, will have become the best possible physicians – in terms of knowledge, technical skills, and compassionate care.”

“The skill set necessary to practise medicine in a rural community is extraordinary,” Professor McKeown said. “But with our own resources and those of the University of Newcastle, and through our collaborative relationship with the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, we can develop a very advanced curriculum – and provide a mixture of rural, urban, and international experience – that will produce world-class graduates.

“We have the potential to really make a difference. Within the community, for example, UNE and its Medical School can create clinical centres of excellence. It’s often difficult to attract practitioners to rural communities, and in this way we could play an important role in enhancing both the personal and professional satisfaction of physicians who choose to move here.”

“I’m excited to be here at the University of New England,” he said. “I was attracted by the reputation of UNE as a leading provider of distance – as well as on-campus – tertiary education, and by the culture of an innovative rural university. And the opportunity to build a medical school was irresistible.”

Peter McKeown (pictured here) received his medical school training at the University of Queensland before leaving Australia for postgraduate training in the United States and Europe. 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. At the time of accepting the position at UNE he held a professorial clinical position – and was a surgeon – at The Heart Institute, Pikeville Medical Centre, Kentucky, and was a Consultant Staff Physician at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He holds Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Health degrees from Harvard University and an MBA degree from the University of South Florida, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and has been listed in the Consumers’ Research Council of America in its Guide to America’s Top Surgeons.

Professor McKeown has a long-term interest in rural medicine, and in his position at The Heart Institute he was involved in developing a sophisticated cardiovascular and thoracic surgery program in a very rural and under-served part of America.

One of his major research interests is the use of simulation in medical and surgical education, and he is particularly enthusiastic about the partnership with the UC Irvine School of Medicine that will give UNE access to the Irvine School’s advanced simulation facilities via the Internet.

Professor McKeown and his wife Mary will be living in Armidale, while their four adult children are pursuing their careers in South Africa, Panama, and the United States. “I have family in Queensland,” he said, “and it’s good to be back home in Australia.”