Archive for June, 2012

The University of New England is embarking on a major redevelopment of its residential colleges as it strives to become the country’s pre-eminent collegiate university.

In a major step in this process, the UNE Council has appointed UniLodge as the preferred tenderer for the first stage of the redevelopment.

The Chancellor, Richard Torbay, said that UNE’s Strategic Plan 2011-2015 was to grow volume and margin in distance education and to reinvest the surpluses on-campus, particularly in UNE’s college system. “And that is exactly what we are doing,” he said.

“This unique partnership with UniLodge, in which we will maintain our contribution to the colleges’ operating costs, allows us to retain the UNE culture and lifestyle and avoid privatisation,” Mr Torbay said.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jim Barber, said that UNE’s colleges were a national treasure, and that the University wanted to ensure that their rich culture and history were retained in any redevelopment.

“Last year we began our college redevelopment project by appointing Deans and Academic Masters to two of our colleges,” Professor Barber said. “These appointments have strengthened the academic culture of both colleges, and we will continue to enhance the academic life and pastoral care at all of our colleges.

“With that work well under way, we are now turning our attention to modernising our ageing college infrastructure to ensure that our aspiration to be the nation’s best is reflected in our residential offerings to students. This redevelopment will give UNE a competitive edge over other collegiate universities.”

“An important aspect of this partnership is that all physical assets will revert to UNE,” Professor Barber said.

UNE’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr Peter Enlund, said that the first stage of what UNE hoped would be the total redevelopment of its college system was likely to focus on Robb College.

“We will now work with UniLodge to develop a more detailed proposal that can be taken to college staff and residents for their input in the coming months,” Mr Enlund said. “Our colleges have a proud history dating back more than 50 years, and we need to ensure that tradition lives on by breathing new life into the colleges’ infrastructure.

“I look forward to working with Robb College in the months ahead to ensure that we honour and maintain the College’s rich culture and history.”

Clicking on the image of UNE’s Earle Page College displayed here reveals a photograph of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jim Barber (left), and the Chancellor, Richard Torbay, taken at Duval College.

Fear of crime in rural mining communities serviced by fly-in fly-out workers far outstrips the reality, a University of New England researcher has found.

In a paper published recently by the Sociologia Ruralis, UNE sociologist John Scott argues that an atmosphere approaching “moral panic” has settled on some mining towns, and that FIFO workers have become a convenient scapegoat upon which to blame all crime, in much the same way Indigenous people are blamed in other communities.

Dr Scott and Kerry Carrington from Queensland University of Technology visited mining regions in Western Australia and Queensland  interviewing local residents as part of an ARC-funded study into male violence in rural communities. What they found, Dr Scott said, was intriguing.

“Typically when you go into a rural community and interview the white population, they tend to see crime in general, and violent crime in particular, as an Indigenous problem,” Dr Scott said.

“Statistically, we know this isn’t the case. Violence is a community-wide issue and by no means confined to one particular group.

“What was interesting was that in these communities there were very few Indigenous people. They made up less than 3 per cent of the population. So instead of blaming the Indigenous community for crime, the locals blamed the FIFOs.”

“They told us things like, the FIFOs are dirty, they drink too much, they’re lazy – even that they’re responsible for all the litter in the town, ” Dr Scott said. “There were wild rumours floating around, like ‘one of them killed somebody’ or ‘they sell their wives for sex.’ None of this was backed by any evidence. In fact, despite a rising population and a decrease in social integration, official crime rates in these areas have remained stable or even dropped.”

The FIFO has become a “condensation symbol”, Dr Scott argues – a convenient scapegoat for the community’s ills.

“It’s like the old Blue Heelers episode. The guy comes into the community from outside and commits crime. It’s never the locals, always the outsider.”

Although fears of a FIFO-led crime wave were highly problematic, Dr Scott said, that did not mean the FIFO phenomenon had not brought with it considerable social challenges for the communities in which they operate.

“We do see that having large numbers of fly-in fly-out workers can put a strain on local services and that despite the high wages these workers are getting, not enough of that money is flowing into the local community. There are definitely legitimate issues out there. It’s just that rising crime rates are not necessarily one of them.”

In a discussion paper to be published next month, Dr Scott argues that similar fears fly-in fly-out sex workers servicing mining communities have led to an increase in sexually transmitted infections are likewise not borne out by the evidence.

Media contact: Dr John Scott (0467 733 452) or Leon Braun, UNE public relations (02 6773 3771).

An archaeology student from the University of New England has embarked on the trip of a lifetime thanks to a generous travelling scholarship that has allowed him to visit Thailand and Cambodia.

Darren Mitchell, a Ph.D. student in the School of Humanities at UNE, will spend several weeks working in the South East Asian Ceramics Museum in Bangkok, Thailand, before travelling to Cambodia to participate in an archaeological excavation at the Ta Prohm temple in the Angkor Wat complex, study stoneware kiln production in and around Angkor, and visit the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.

Mr Mitchell’s travel expenses have been met by a Keith and Dorothy Mackay Postgraduate Travelling Scholarship.

Using portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectroscopy – a non-destructive technique being pioneered at UNE for analysing archaeological materials – Mr Mitchell is hoping to uncover new insights into ceramic technological innovation and the political and economic changes that lead to the rise and fall of the Khmer empire.

“At its height, the greater Angkor area was one of the largest urban centres in the world, with a potential population of one million people,” Mr Mitchell said.

“Besides the world-famous ruins at Angkor, the Khmer left behind many ceramic artefacts and monuments across present day Cambodia and Thailand. By taking an archaeometric approach, I have been able to compare stoneware sherds with intact artefacts held in museum collections around the world.”

Earlier this year, Mr Mitchell travelled to Washington DC to visit the Freer and Sackler Galleries of South-East Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution. There he was able to analyse numerous Khmer artefacts that had never before been put to archaeometric analysis.

“It is an unfortunate historical fact that many of the ceramic objects in world museum collections were the result of looting,” Mr Mitchell said. “While it is a good thing that the objects have been preserved, all too often you wind up with a group of beautiful objects sitting there without any context.

“As archaeologists, part of our job is to help provide that context.

“In the past, archaeometric analysis of these objects had not been done because it would have meant drilling into the objects and taking samples to send off for various time consuming and often expensive laboratory studies. Almost inevitably, this meant destroying or damaging the artefact.

“The beauty of the techniques we are using at UNE is that museums are no longer concerned with us studying their collections or worried  that artefacts may need to be taken out of the country. I can do the analysis right there in the museum. It’s an exciting development for museum curators, art historians and archaeologists alike.”

Mr Mitchell said he was excited about undertaking his first field trip to Southeast Asia, especially after having studied the area for several years.

“It’s very pleasing to be able to travel around,” Mr Mitchell said. “Many researchers doing this kind of work typically stay in a lab in Australia, but I’m getting out there and making loads of useful contacts.”

Further information

Contact: Darren Mitchell dmitch33@une.edu.au

Reference

Mitchell, D., Grave, P., et al. 2012. Geochemical characterisation of north Asian glazed stonewares: A comparative analysis of NAA, ICP-OES and non-destructive pXRF. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39, 2921–2933.

Three Honours students from the University of New England are heading to New Zealand for the 2012 Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management (SELM) Symposium.

The students – Mark Yerbury, Joshua Barron and Samantha Anderson – are going to Lincoln University to present findings from the research projects they have been working on for the past six months within UNE’s Precision Agriculture Research Group.

Mark Yerbury (originally from Temora) is studying at UNE for a degree in Rural Science and has been investigating variability in the wool production of sheep, their worm burden, and – using GPS tracking collars – their spatial use of pasture. “The goal of my research is to try and find a link between where animals graze and the worm burdens that they develop,” he said. “If we can figure this out we may be able to help producers manage their grazing country to reduce parasite infestation and increase weight gains and wool growth.”

Josh Barron (from Cooma, NSW), also a Rural Science student at UNE, has been investigating the spatial variability of key soil nutrients across grazing paddocks, and correlating these “nutrient maps” with data on the animals in those paddocks (derived from GPS tracking), and the pastures and soils in them (collected through the use of electronic sensors). “I’m trying to determine which common precision-agriculture sensors are best able to predict the distribution of soil nutrients,” he said. “If we can work this out we could be able to help graziers start thinking about variable-rate fertiliser application for their pastures – something that has been successfully implemented in the cropping industry.”

Sam Anderson (originally from Hamilton, Victoria) is studying for a degree in Agriculture at Melbourne University and has undertaken a cross-institutional enrolment at UNE. She is investigating the potential for site-specific management of nitrogen fertiliser in improved pastures at a sub-paddock scale. “We already know that there is a lot of variability in pasture production across grazing paddocks,” she said. “What I’m looking at is the potential for various parts of a paddock to respond differently to increasing nitrogen rates. The early results are really interesting, with some zones of the paddock showing more than double the pasture growth per unit of nitrogen compared to others. We’ve got a lot more analysis to do, but this could really help graziers lift the efficiency of their fertiliser use.”

Mark Yerbury’s research is funded by a scholarship from the Australian Wool Education Trust, and Joshua Barron and Samantha Anderson have received travel scholarships from the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information to attend the 2012 SELM Symposium.

Dr Mark Trotter, the Research Lecturer in Precision Agriculture at UNE, is supervising the project of all three students. “This is a great opportunity for them to talk in front of the leading researchers in the field of spatial and precision livestock management,” Dr Trotter said. “They will also learn a lot from the event. They really are the future leaders of our grazing industries, and even now they are doing leading research that the livestock sector is going to need to lift productivity in the coming years.”

The 2012 Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium is being held at Lincoln University, Christchurch, on the 6^th of July. This symposium brings together leading researchers from across Australia, New Zealand and the world to discuss the latest in spatial technologies and precision livestock and pasture management technologies. For more information, go to: http://www.agresearch.co.nz/our-science/land-environment/soils-land-use/Pages/spatially-enabled-livestock-management-symposium.aspx.

Clicking on the precision-agriculture-derived image above reveals a photograph of (from left) Dr Mark Trotter, Mark Yerbury, Joshua Barron and Samantha Anderson.

A community arts program conducted through the University of New England is revealing yet another facet of Armidale’s creativity. In its inaugural year, the program has enabled three outstanding creators of children’s literature to live and work in Armidale while helping groups of community members – from infants to mature adults – to explore their own talent for this form of creativity.

The “writers and illustrators in residence” were based at UNE and conducted community workshops at the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM). They were the first participants in the Creative Communities in Children’s and Young Adult Literature program, funded by a grant of $90,000 from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund to UNE’s School of Arts, with NERAM as a major partner. Other partners in the program include the New England Writers’ Centre and the local branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia.

UNE’s Dr Elizabeth Hale, who is directing the program, said she had been impressed by the way the community had embraced it – from university staff members and students, to preschool, school and TAFE teachers, to members of the general public. “It has demonstrated the value of the University’s outreach into the community – particularly, in this case, in partnership with NERAM,” she said.

The three “writers and illustrators in residence” were Clare McFadden (author and illustrator of The Flying Orchestra), who was in residence from the 4^th to the 18^th of May, Kevin Burgemeestre (illustrator of Bernard Was a Bikie and Thunder Mountain), in residence from the 18^th of May to the 2^nd of June, and Tristan Bancks (author of the Mac Slater books and the Nit Boy series), in residence from the 6^th to the 17^th of June. “Their professionalism, adaptability, thoughtfulness and generosity have been very inspiring,” Dr Hale said.

Living on the University’s campus and meeting staff members from UNE’s School of Arts, the visitors found time to progress their own creative projects as well as conduct the community workshops. Kevin Burgemeestre said that being located in “a creative organisation like UNE” had been a good experience for him. “People who have a passion for the arts know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“The Creative Communities program was immediately attractive to me,” he said. “It was asking us to share skills with the community in a way that would reach people from young children to adults. And working at NERAM gave it an immediate arts focus.”  He said he hoped the workshops – those for adults as well as for school students – had left people feeling “a bit more confident about making things – and having fun in the process”.

“Children should be encouraged to tell stories – and can be amazing storytellers,” he said, “And while technological advances are introducing sound-effects and animation into children’s literature, it’s important to ensure that it’s more than just the effects. We’ve got to hold on to strong stories.”

Tristan Bancks, a UNE graduate himself, applauded the University for “making these connections into the community”, where he felt it had established “deep roots”. “It’s about giving people the licence to spend time creating something,” he said, “and supporting them in feeling OK about it.”

With the successful completion of the residence program for this year, Dr Hale is already starting to plan for 2013 and 2014, as the funding from the Copyright Agency is supporting the program for those two years as well. She’s hoping it will not only reach even more community groups, but also resonate within units of study at UNE focusing on children’s literature.

She is developing a blog, http://blog.une.edu.au/creativecommunities/, which will reflect on the program’s achievements this year and provide information about the offerings for 2013 and 2014.

The image above, from the cover of Tristan Bancks’s book My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up, expands to show a photograph of Tristan Bancks and Dr Elizabeth Hale.

The University of New England’s Susanna Greig has won a national award for her work as Science Education Officer for UNE’s Primary Industry Centre for Science Education (PICSE) program.

Dr Matt Cahill, Dow AgroSciences Research and Development Leader for Australia, presented Ms Greig with the award at Parliament House in Canberra last week. Dr Cahill was accompanied by the Hon. Sid Sidebottom, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

PICSE is a national collaboration between – and is funded jointly by – the Commonwealth Government, universities, regional primary industries, national primary industry organisations, and businesses. It delivers science class activities, teachers’ professional development, teaching resources, student camps and student industry placement programs, building relationships between school students, teachers, universities and local scientists or employers associated with primary industries

Ms Greig (pictured here), who has worked as a PICSE Science Education Officer at UNE for the past four years, said she was “proud and honoured” to have been recognised. “I’m really committed to helping teachers develop their students’ interest in – and knowledge about – the science that supports our agricultural industries,” Ms Greig said after receiving the PICSE / Dow AgroSciences Science Education Officer Professional Development Award.

While she has yet to decide on the focus of her professional development prize, she is interested in learning more about the new national science curriculum for high-school students. “I’d like to know more about how, within the new curriculum, the science supporting agriculture will be incorporated into the science classroom,” she said.

Another award presented at last week’s ceremony was the PICSE / Dow AgroSciences Travelling Scholarship Award. This went to 18-year-old Alana Johnson from Tamworth, who is thinking about a career as an agronomist. The award includes an all-expenses-paid placement at the Dow AgroSciences Global Discovery Research Station in Waireka, New Zealand.

“I’m really excited about winning the award,” Alana said. “At the moment I’m thinking about agronomy, but this travel prize will help me see what the options are.”

Through the PICSE centre at UNE, Alana has completed a number of industry placements, including one with the Australian Cotton Research Institute at Narrabri. “That experience was amazing,” she said. “I got to assist researchers and students with their trials. PICSE has opened my eyes to the science that underpins the agricultural sector. I can see there are great opportunities – and many diverse career options – in agriculture.”

The awards, now in their second year, were presented during a two-day roundtable event to help generate solutions to the shortage of skills in agricultural industries. The event, “Rebuilding the Ag Workforce”, was coordinated by PICSE and brought together industry, education, and government representatives.

Clicking on the photograph of Susanna Greig displayed above reveals a photograph of her, taken at the award ceremony in Canberra, with (from left) Dr Matt Cahill, Alana Johnson, and Associate Professor David Russell (National Director of the PICSE program).

Globalisation has intensified an invasion by alien animals and plants that now costs Australia $7 billion each year.

“Bio-security is everyone’s business,” says the University of New England’s Professor Oscar Cacho. “The community has a role to play in protecting Australia’s environment. This includes telling the truth to Customs when returning to Australia from overseas, and reporting noxious weeds.”

Professor Cacho, from the UNE Business School, will be presenting a free public lecture on bio-security and the economics of invasive species on Wednesday 4 July. It will be his Inaugural Lecture for the Armidale community as a Professor of Economics. Titled “Life is Full of Trade-offs”, it will be in the Armidale Ex-Services Memorial Club at 6.30 pm.

Professor Cacho started his professional career as a marine biologist and later became an economist. His career has included being part of a Technical Advisory Group on Control of Invasive Species in the Galapagos Islands, and a visiting expert at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations in Rome. He has worked at UNE for the past 18 years.

Currently, Professor Cacho is involved in a project on reducing deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia, and has funding from the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis to study the surveillance and control of invasive species.

His lecture will explain how the principles of economics and biology can be used to address threats from diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, Hendra virus and equine influenza, and to resolve conflicts over natural resources.

The lecture will be followed by drinks and canapés. To help with catering arrangements, please e-mail the organisers at events.pr@une.edu.au by Monday 2 July if you are intending to join the audience.

The NSW Minister for Education, the Hon. Adrian Piccoli MP, met Deans and Heads of Schools of Education from universities around the State this week to discuss the universities’ vital role in producing high-quality teachers.

The meeting was in Armidale, where the University of New England was hosting the 2012 Conference of the NSW Council of Deans of Education.

Mr Piccoli said he was keen to develop the relationship between his Department and universities “to help ensure that we get the best teaching graduates possible”.

It was also important to work together to develop strategies to support teachers throughout their professional careers, he said. Associate Professor Peter Aubusson from the University of Technology, Sydney, who was elected as the new President of the NSW Council of Deans of Education on the first day of the conference, agreed that it was “critical to equip teachers to learn throughout their careers”.

Despite the large number of teachers graduating from NSW universities, Mr Piccoli said, there were still shortages of secondary science and mathematics teachers – and teachers in remote areas.

He explained that the Council of Deans of Education would play an important role in the preparation of a discussion paper on all these issues to be released at the end of July.

The conference, which ran from Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 June, brought together about 75 people from around the State. As well as Deans and Heads of Education and other academics from all of the NSW teacher education providers, they included representatives of the NSW Department of Education and Communities and teachers’ professional organisations such as the NSW Institute of Teachers and the NSW Board of Studies.

“It’s been an extraordinarily significant event,” said Professor Stephen Tobias, Head of the School of Education at UNE, referring particularly to the location of this year’s conference in regional NSW. “It’s laid a wonderful foundation for moving forward in partnership with the Department – and in particular the local regional office.”

While he agreed with the Minister that there were legitimate questions to be asked about the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of students entering teaching degree programs, Professor Tobias said it was important to recognise that “it takes all kinds of teachers to teach all kinds of students”. He said that, while UNE had set one of the State’s highest ATAR scores – 77 – for entry into its teaching programs, it also accepted students on the basis of their school principal’s recommendation. “That is often a better predictor of successful completion than ATAR scores,” he said.

This year’s meeting marked the 25^th anniversary of the annual conference of the NSW Council of Deans of Education.

Clicking on the logo of the NSW Council of Deans of Education displayed above reveals a photograph of (from left) Professor Stephen Tobias, the Hon. Adrian Piccoli MP, and Associate Professor Peter Aubusson.

The University of New England’s community engagement initiative Far Out Science has won an Australian Government grant of $45,000 to help it extend its program of hands-on, science-based activities throughout northern NSW.

The three-year grant is one of 63 “Unlocking Australia’s Potential” science communication grants announced last week by the Minister for Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans, as part of the Government’s Inspiring Australia strategy. The UNE program has also received funding of about $4,500 from the NSW Trade and Investment Science Leveraging Fund.

This year’s Far Out Science program, in early November, will take UNE scientists to busy shopping centres in northern NSW towns including Armidale, Tamworth, Grafton, Kempsey and Toormina, where they will engage shoppers in simple experiments illustrating the scientific principles behind everyday domestic activities. This part of the program, called “Consumer Science”, made its successful debut at Armidale’s Centro shopping centre during National Science Week last year.

Far Out Science also includes “Science in the Bush”, which brings school students from all over northern NSW to UNE for activities designed to help them realise that the study of science – and the pursuit of a scientific career – can involve a lot of fun. For the past decade, “Science in the Bush” has been an annual event at UNE for secondary students, but last year, with the help of a National Science Week grant, it was extended into two consecutive days – the second day being for primary school students. This new grant will enable UNE to continue to run the primary students’ day, and in 2013 add a third day – on a Saturday – for members of the general public.

More than 800 school students visited UNE for “Science in the Bush” last year.

Dr Michelle Taylor and Dr Erica Smith from UNE Chemistry, who coordinated Far Out Science last year, are already preparing for this year’s program. “Students from Indigenous communities, remote areas, and small schools are often prevented from attending outreach events because of the costs associated with travel,” Dr Taylor said. “Government funding allows us to make ‘Science in the Bush’ accessible to all students by offering transport subsidies.”

“‘Consumer Science’ will take science to the people,” Dr Smith said. “By visiting local shopping centres on a Saturday morning, we can offer people of all ages and walks of life the opportunity to carry out enjoyable and simple hands-on experiments that demonstrate the relevance of science to the very items they are there to buy.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show UNE’s Dr Ben Greatrex entertaining young shoppers at Armidale Centro during last year’s “Consumer Science” event.

Researchers at the University of New England have secured funding from the NSW Environment Trust to extend their research aimed at reducing wood smoke pollution in Armidale.

The UNE researchers, in collaboration with Armidale Dumaresq Council, hope to involve 200 Armidale households that currently use wood heaters on a regular basis.

“Our aim is to evaluate and compare traditional education (which was previously shown to be effective) with regular feedback about wood smoke emissions,” said UNE’s Professor Don Hine, one of the chief investigators on the project. He said previous studies had shown that providing feedback had been effective in reducing household energy use.

Once the participants have been recruited, they will be randomly assigned to one of four groups. The first group will be given educational materials containing “best practice” advice about firewood purchase and storage and wood heater operation. The second group will be given feedback about their household emissions. The third group will receive both the educational materials and feedback, and the fourth group will receive only general information about wood heaters (but will receive the educational materials at the end of the study).

A team of trained research assistants will monitor the participants’ chimneys for smoke emissions both before and after the intervention trial, and in this way will be able to link changes in emission levels with each respective test condition.

The UNE team emphasised that the study was not about banning wood heaters.  “Although wood smoke pollution is a serious problem in Armidale, it is important to acknowledge that there are benefits associated with wood burning and a substantial proportion of the community is strongly attached to their wood heaters,” Professor Hine said. “We want to see if we can create a win-win situation, where those who choose to use wood heaters can continue to do so, while at the same time reducing overall wood smoke levels in the community to an acceptable level.”

Wood heater users interested in participating in the study should contact the Project Coordinator at UNE on (02) 6773 2546, or e-mail armidalewoodsmoke@gmail.com