Public Relations and Corporate Communications Manager
John Kauter
(02) 6773 2779
Public Relations Specialist/Journalist
Jim Scanlan
(02) 6773 3049
Corporate Communications Officer
Leon Braun
(02) 6773 3771
Photographer
David Elkins
(02) 6773 3770
Events Coordinators
Kerry De Jong
(02) 6773 3955
and
Tracey James
(02) 6773 2768
Administrative Assistant
Kathleen Harper
(02) 6773 2736
Powered by
November 2004
September 2004Professor Albury retires after distinguished career
October 29, 2004
Professor Randall Albury is retiring as the University of New England’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) after six years at UNE and more than 30 years in Australian higher education.
Professor Albury, who came to UNE at the beginning of November 1998 to serve as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, moved into the Pro Vice-Chancellor role in January 2002. Reflecting on his retirement at the end of October, he said he had “really valued the opportunity to make a contribution to UNE” in both these roles.
He came to UNE from the University of New South Wales where he had spent 25 years: 12 of them as Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, and the last four as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
“By the end of 1998 I was looking for a change from the urban congestion of Sydney and for some new, higher-level responsibilities,” he explained. “When the position of Dean of the Faculty of Arts was offered at UNE, it was a natural choice for me to accept.” He found a Faculty struggling with a financial deficit, and the task of creating a sense of collegial identity in the Faculty’s six Schools that had recently been formed from 17 independent Departments. “By the time I left we had addressed these issues and embarked on a number of new academic initiatives, while also making some inroads into the problem of disciplines with unviably small enrolments,” he said. “So I hope that, overall, I assisted in strengthening the Faculty.”
He said the biggest single challenge he had faced during his years as Pro Vice-Chancellor had been his management of the process for UNE’s audit by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). This is continuing right up to the day he retires. “UNE has been invited to contribute to AUQA’s Good Practice Database, and the deadline for our submission is 1 November,” he said. “So dispatching that document will be my final act as PVC.”
Professor Albury, who is retiring for family reasons, hopes to find some time for his academic interests. He was invited to deliver the keynote address for a history of medicine symposium at this year’s conference of the Australian Historical Association, and he has continued his involvement in professional societies for the history of science and the history of medicine. “I had hoped to be able to publish at least one refereed article a year while I was at UNE,” he said, “and I came pretty close to that target. So with any luck I can stay active in research.”
He will become an Adjunct Professor in two UNE Schools when he retires: the School of Classics, History and Religion, and the School of English, Communication and Theatre. In addition, he has just been awarded the title of Emeritus Professor by the University of New South Wales, in recognition of his previous service at that institution. “I expect to be staying in Armidale for the foreseeable future,” he said, “so my primary affiliation will be with UNE, but it will be good to have a formal link with UNSW when I visit Sydney.”
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 01:28 PM
Skeleton reveals "lost world of little people”
October 28, 2004
A near-complete skeleton of a previously undiscovered species of human has been found on the Indonesian island of Flores, raising images of a lost world of “little people” that co-existed with modern humans until relatively recently.
A team of Indonesian and Australian scientists discovered the skeleton last year, during an archaeological dig in Liang Bua, a large limestone cave on Flores, 600 km east of Bali. The skeleton was of a one-metre-tall female aged about 30, who died around 18,000 years ago. The skeleton nicknamed ‘Hobbit’ by the excavation team, is now the type specimen for a new human species Homo floresiensis.
The nearest anatomical equivalents lived in the Republic of Georgia, West Asia, almost 2 million years ago, with some features of the find harking back to 3 million year-old human ancestors in Africa. However, their existence in Southeast Asia almost up to the start of agriculture 10,000 years ago means they were contemporaries of modern humans. In fact, the two human species probably overlapped in time by tens of thousands of years.
The discovery is the cover story of this week’s edition of the authoritative British scientific journal Nature, which has reported the world’s most significant scientific discoveries since it was founded in 1869. Significantly, Nature also reported the discovery by Eugene Dubois 110 years ago of the 700,000-year-old Homo erectus “Java Man” fossils, which initiated the scientific study of human origins and evolution.
Since the time of Dubois, no new human species has been found in Southeast Asia. Now the Flores “Hobbit” is set to make her mark in our understanding of human evolution.
The Indonesian-Australian excavation team was led by archaeologists Associate Professor Mike Morwood from the University of New England and Professor R.P.Soejono from the Indonesian Research Centre for Archaeology. But the work is a real multi-disciplinary, as well as international, effort.
As a key part of the project, Professor Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts and colleagues at the University of Wollongong are developing new techniques for the dating of Liang Bua and other important Southeast Asian sites, and their work will help to resolve long-standing problems in the archaeology of the region.
Professor Morwood said the discovery was one of the most important early hominin discoveries of the last 100 years.
“It is a new species of human who actually lived alongside us, yet were half our size. They were the height of a three-year-old child, weighed around 25kg and had a brain smaller than most chimpanzees. Even so, they used fire, made sophisticated stone tools, and hunted Stegodon (a primitive type of elephant) and giant rats. We also believe that their ancestors may have reached the island using bamboo rafts. The clear implication is that, despite tiny brains, these little humans were intelligent and almost certainly had language.”
When Thomas Sutikna and other researchers from the Indonesian Research Centre for Archaeology discovered the skeleton in September 2003, they first thought it was a child. However, analysis of the skeleton indicated that she was a woman aged around 30, and the possibility that the skeleton was that of a dwarf was also ruled out. Analysis also showed that there was nothing ‘freakish’ about the skeleton at all, and that she was perfectly proportioned for someone her size. The discovery of the remains of similar hobbit-sized individuals in other parts of Liang Bua, also showed that she was a member of a population of little hominins.
Previous research by Professor Morwood and an Indonesian-Australian research team in the Soa Basin of Central Flores, showed that early humans, probably Homo erectus, had arrived by 840,000 years ago. Analysis of the Liang Bua skeleton suggests that the little humans, who lived in the cave from about 95,000 to 13,000 years ago, are probably derived from this ancestral Homo erectus population.
“Hundreds of thousands of years of isolation on a relatively small and resource poor island with few predators selected for smaller body size,” said Dr Gert van den Bergh, project palaeontologist from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.
The end result was that Flores ended up with the smallest species of human known anywhere. The same evolutionary pressures operated on Stegodon, the only other large mammal to make it to the island unassisted. The smallest known Stegodon species, about the size of a water buffalo, also evolved on Flores.
Perhaps most fascinating of all, the research team learned of local stories on Flores that suggested the “little people” may have existed on the island right up to the 16th century when Dutch traders arrived in the “Spice Islands”. Even though Professor Roberts, with Dr Chris Turney and Kira Westaway, at the University of Wollongong, have used radiocarbon and luminescence dating techniques to establish that the most recent fossil remains in the cave are 13,000 years old, the team has not ruled the possibility that the hobbit sized humans could have survived until relatively recently.
“There are lots of local folk tales in Flores about these people, which are consistent and incredibly detailed. The stories suggest there may be more than a grain of truth to the idea that they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s,” Professor Roberts said.
“The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it these were the guests from hell – they’d eat everything, including the gourds!”
The research project is funded by an Australian Research Council grant with additional support from the University of New England and the University of Wollongong. The National Geographic Society is also a sponsor and has filmed a documentary that will air early next year globally and in the United States on the National Geographic Channel.
For more information, contact
Associate Professor Mike Morwood ph (02) 67732357; E-mail mmorwood@pobox.une.edu.au
(or Lydia Roberts, PR Manager, UNE, 02 6773 2779/0438 234 152)
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 10:14 AM
Japanese festival music comes to Armidale
October 27, 2004
Armidale people will soon have an opportunity to experience the traditional festival music of Japan.
A group of festival musicians from Kanuma, a Japanese city with which Armidale enjoys a “Friendship City Agreement”, will perform at the C.B. Newling Centre (the Old Teachers’ College) at 7.30 pm on Friday 5 November.
The seven members of the Kamifukazu Club for Matsuri-bayashi will also conduct a five-hour workshop (9.30 am – 3 pm) earlier that day. Participants in the workshop will learn how to play two kinds of drum used in the festival music, and a hand-held gong. Those who have experience on a wind instrument can also learn to play the festival flute.
The University of New England, Armidale Dumaresq Council and Kanuma City Council are sponsoring the musicians’ visit. Associate Professor Hugh de Ferranti from UNE explained that “matsuri” is a Japanese word for “festival”, and that the visiting group is one of more than 20 community-based groups in the city of Kanuma that perform “matsuri-bayashi” music on festival days and at important events. “The Autumn Festival (Aki Matsuri) is the biggest public event on the calendar in Kanuma,” Dr de Ferranti said. “On two consecutive days, intricately carved and decorated carts are pulled through the streets, and the music of matsuri-bayashi groups playing inside the carts rings in the air.”
Dr de Ferranti, who is coordinating the daytime workshop, pointed out that, although it is free, those interested in participating should book by e-mailing him at: hdeferra@une.edu.au.
At the evening concert, traditional Japanese food and drinks will be served during interval. Although there will be no entry charge for the concert, gold-coin donations to help cover costs will be welcomed. “The first half of the concert will include both music and presentations on Kanuma and its Autumn Festival,” Dr de Ferranti said. “The second half will be performances of typical music and dance for both the Autumn Festival and the mid-summer Obon Festival.”
For more information contact Dr de Ferranti at UNE on (02) 6773 3518.
Media contact: Associate Professor Hugh de Ferranti, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UNE (02) 6773 3518 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 02:51 PM
Week of Italian Language at UNE
October 26, 2004
![circu[1].jpg](http://www.une.edu.au/news/archives/images/circu[1].jpg)
The University of New England, Australia’s largest provider of university-level Italian courses by distance education, took part in an international celebration of the Italian language last week.
The fourth annual “Week of the Italian Language in the World”, marked by special events in 87 countries, opened in Armidale on Saturday 16 October with a concert of 20th century Italian songs performed by the visiting Duo Alterno from Turin. The Italian Institute of Culture in Sydney sponsored the visit of the Duo (Tiziana Scandaletti, soprano, and Riccardo Piacentini, pianist/composer) to Armidale, and the Italian Section at UNE hosted the two performers. The Italian Consul General, Dr Antonio Verde, attended the concert, which was held in the C.B. Newling Centre (Old Teachers’ College).
Duo Alterno have performed to great acclaim on four continents. Their focus on the human voice provided an appropriate introduction to the week’s activities at UNE, the theme of which was “Poetry”. These activities included the screening of an Italian film on Wednesday and, on Thursday, the performance of an Italian farce called “The Bicycle Shop” (incorporating a theatrical circus show) presented by Circus 4 and UNE students of Italian. Children from UNE’s Yarm Gwanga Child Care Centre were among the audience and, ultimately, joined in the fun on stage.
Also on Thursday the Italian Section presented its second annual contribution to that part of the Italian Language Week known as “Italian Lecturers’ Day”. A special guest at this event was Ms Luciana De Leon, Education Adviser at the Italian Consulate in Sydney. Brennan Wales, Senior Lecturer in Italian, welcomed an audience comprising UNE students and students of Italian from Armidale High School, and Silvia Ferrari (a Lecturer in Italian at UNE sponsored by the Italian Government) introduced and presented poems written by UNE students of Italian, and announced the prize-winners in an essay competition sponsored by the Italian Institute of Culture. Mr Wales gave a talk titled “Italian, Language of Poetry”, and Annamaria Cavallaro, also from UNE’s Italian Section, talked on the subject of “Italian Women Poets”.
Ms De Leon visited Armidale High School and the Armidale Waldorf School (which also teaches Italian), as well as UNE, during the week. At UNE she met the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Michael Macklin, and the Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Lingusistics, Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf, as well as members of the Italian Section.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 05:52 PM
Chancellor's "corporate" view for universities
October 25, 2004
Universities are being forced to change from “academic professional bureaucracies” to be run along corporate lines, the Chancellor of the University of New England told a conference of local government delegates today.
In his opening address to the annual Local Government Association, held at UNE, Mr John Cassidy said universities needed to exist less on “hand-to-mouth” Government hand-outs to developing business plans and balanced budgets.
“Dare I say, we have to compete for students and for public and private research funds,” Mr Cassidy told a packed auditorium at the start of the three-day conference.
“The challenges for change are in formulating a long-term strategic plan, sound business plan, adopting a more corporate structure with strict finance and administrative procedures, better lobbying and marketing skills.
“The greatest challenge is for senior management and the University Council to implement these changes.”
He told how this thinking came about in part by sweeping changes to the Federal Government’s funding policy for higher education providers. These new protocols, Mr Cassidy said, had existed for some time in the corporate sector and are “much needed and are forcing institutions to make drastic changes”.
Mr Cassidy said local government was also experiencing a time of change.
“Local Government in NSW has been and will continue to grow through a process of amalgamations forced on them by the State Government,” Mr Cassidy said.
“This process has in turn forced many local governments to revue the financial and social impacts of amalgamation.
“Your [LGA President, Cllr Dr] Sara Murray, hit the nail on the head when she said [in her welcome address to the LGA conference] that the two main issues for amalgamation are long-term financial viability and delivery of relevant social services.”
A total of 770 delegates are expected at the conference, being held at Lazenby Hall.
Guest speakers today (October 25) included NSW Roads and Transport Minister Carl Scully, NSW Opposition Leader John Brogden and Mr Richard Torbay, Independent MP for the Northern Tablelands.
Mr Scully said he had “an open mind” about creating tolls on the Pacific Highway and touted plans by the State Government to review liability in road accidents involving truck drivers the vehicle operators.
Mr Brogden, also addressing concerns from the floor about road safety, said if he were elected he would consider reintroducing the so-called 3X3 levy of the Greiner/Murray Government, where an extra levy on road users would go towards the maintenance of local roads.
For more information phone Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 05:11 PM
Overcoming culture shock in language learning
October 22, 2004
An American professor visiting the University of New England spoke about his pioneering work in helping language students make the most of foreign travel.
Professor Andrew Cohen is the Director of the Language Resource Centre at the University of Minnesota. The Centre has produced a new guidebook that helps students analyse and overcome difficulties they face when they travel abroad and try to immerse themselves in a foreign language.
Professor Cohen said that much of the difficulty was a result of “culture shock”, and that the guidebook provided strategies for breaking down this initial barrier. It did this, he said, by focusing on “speech acts” such as requests and apologies, that were “at the intersection of language and culture”.
In one of his two public lectures at UNE, he analysed the results of an experiment (funded by the US Government) with 86 young Americans travelling abroad as part of their foreign-language studies. The experiment demonstrated the benefits of using the guidebook. More generally, he said, his team was getting “great feedback” from users of the book. “Ideally, study abroad can help fluency and awaken a student’s sleeping proficiency in the language,” he said. “We developed the guidebook because we were concerned that some students weren’t getting the maximum benefit from their foreign travel.”
Professor Cohen visited UNE for several days last week as a guest of the University’s School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the Language and Cognition Research Cluster. He presented two public lectures and a workshop, and had discussions with UNE’s Dr Karen Woodman, who conducts research on language activation and increased fluency as a result of learning in a foreign country. During her study leave last semester, Dr Woodman spent several days with Professor Cohen at the Centre for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota, and presented a seminar there about her research on study abroad.
Professor Cohen is currently on sabbatical at the University of Auckland. His visit to UNE was part of an Australian lecture tour that is taking him to universities in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as well as Armidale.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 03:58 PM
Students log in to ‘new world’ of planning
October 21, 2004
Students of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of New England
will soon be able to track a development application (DA) through the intricacies of the local council approval process by logging in to the Internet.
Angus Witherby, a Senior Lecturer in UNE’s Urban and Regional Planning
programs, pointed out that this use of the Internet would not only give the
University’s students access to a “real-world system”, but would give equal
access to both internal and external students. “A student anywhere in the
world can take part in this learning experience,” he said.
UNE has signed an agreement with the Internet development company
Internetrix and Shellharbour Council to give it access to the revolutionary
new DA tracking system that Internetrix has developed (with Shellharbour
Council as the pilot site). The system, called “eDA”, is the first fully
online submission and tracking system for DAs in Australia, and UNE will be
the first university to use it as an educational tool.
Mr Witherby said that students would be able to make submissions to a
“virtual council” (using the interface that Shellharbour Council has
provided), with other students playing the roles of council officials. He
said this would replace a software program called “The DA Game” that he and
a colleague wrote 10 years ago. “We’re taking the next step: moving beyond
simulation into the use of real systems,” he said.
“The ‘eDA’ system itself represents the future direction of local
government,” he continued. “It introduces an openness of government activity
that we haven’t seen before. In many respects it’s a whole new world.”
This teaching innovation at UNE, to begin next year, will introduce the
University’s planning students to the “new world” of local government while
providing real-life experience for them to take into the workplace. “It
comes at a time when numbers of planning students at UNE (in both the
Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning and the Graduate Diploma in Urban
and Regional Planning programs) are growing,” Mr Witherby said. “Planning
and sustainability are key responsibilities of every community in the
country, and never more so than today.”
Media contact: Angus Witherby, School of Human and Environmental Studies,
UNE (02) 6773 2821 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 05:19 PM
Diet a key to new super chickens, research finds
October 20, 2004
Chickens bred for eating grow by a quarter overnight and the key to this is good diet, not hormones, according to a Professor at the University of New England.
Up to 10 million birds are slaughtered every week for Australian dinner tables, making it economically impossible to inject each bird with hormones, Professor Mingan Choct, (pictured) Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Poultry CRC, said.
Another fallacy Professor Choct will explode in his forthcoming lecture is the notion chickens are fed in tubes and broilers are kept in cages.
“Misconceptions such as these are common, however, nutrients are a key to the successful modern chicken, rather than hormones,” Professor Choct said.
“Also, chickens bred for eating are invariably reared on the ground, where they can roam around.”
Professor Choct will present his inaugural lecture at Armidale Town Hall on Thursday, October 21.
Entitled Antibiotics, Superbugs and Hormones, Facts, Fantasies and Fallacies, it will concentrate on delivering the facts on the Australian poultry industry.
Chicken is Australia’s first meat of choice, with the industry worth $3 billion annually and employing 200,000 people nationwide.
The industry has grown vastly over the past 40 years and with it, the size of chicken bred for Australia’s dinner tables.
These days, the average chicken increases its weight by 5000 per cent in five weeks, usually weighing about 2kg at time of slaughter, whereas a modern laying hen produces up to 330 eggs a year.
Professor Choct will argue good nutrition is a key to such a prodigious animal, with the average modern chick being fed a diet matching all its nutrient needs.
“These figures depend on the birds and they are highly selected, however, great pains are taken by producers to ensure the animals are fed balanced nutrients and kept in a hygienic environment,” Professor Choct said.
It was this which separated the efficacy of the modern chicken with its parent stock from 40 years ago, which was fed a similar grain diet but with less care taken to nutrients and health care, Professor Choct added.
“Chicken is the number one meat among Australians because it is versatile, convenient and perceived to be healthy,” Professor Choct said.
The lecture, which starts at 7.30pm, is open to the public and free. Supper will be served afterwards.
For more information phone Professor Choct on 6773 5121 or
Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 09:57 AM
UNE academics edit national sociological journal
October 19, 2004
A stream of publications and the hosting of a national conference has helped a team of academics from the University of New England win the right to edit a prestigious journal on Sociology.
Eight lecturers from several faculties will edit the Journal of Sociology from next year until 2008.
Effectively, they will be responsible for the publishing of academic research into Australian sociology, editing research tomes from sociologists here and overseas.
“After hosting The Australian Sociological Association’s annual conference last year, we were encouraged to bid for the editorship of the Journal,” said Dr Margaret Gibson, one of the successful editors and a lecturer at UNE’s School of Social Science.
“The department has also produced a host of relevant books which has helped boost our profile.”
These include Sex and Pleasure in Western Culture by Dr Gail Hawkes, who is also editing a new book with colleague Dr John Scott entitled, Human Sexuality. Dr Gibson’s book, Objects of the Dead, is due to be published next year.
The Journal of Sociology has been published four times a year over the past 40 years. It is understood a number of other universities from around Australia also tendered for the right to edit the journal.
The editors from UNE are Drs Gibson, Scott, Peter Corrigan, Steven Thiele and Associate Professor David Plummer.
Book review editors are Drs Hawkes, Jennifer Rindfleish and David Gray.
The editorship is further evidence of the growing reputation of UNE’s School of Social Science.
It will also give postgraduate students at UNE the opportunity to be involved in the journal’s production.
For more information phone Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 03:48 PM
Good eggs go all the way in hair-raising fundraiser
October 18, 2004
It’s proved a close shave for I.T. workers at the University of New England to raise $1300.
Mark Simpson, Laurence Garner and Andrew Curry (pictured) decided to enter this year’s Relay for Life, an annual event held round-the-globe to help raise funds for cancer research.
But after making a commitment to the cause on Thursday, they left themselves with little time to prepare for the event, held on the weekend at Armidale Sportsground.
Instead, they decided on-the-spot to shave their heads and in the process, managed to raise $1300 from friends, family and colleagues.
“We sent e-mails to friends and colleagues, telling them of our last-minute decision and they pledged support,” Mr Simpson, 35 and Manager of UNE’s Computer Services said.
“Initially we thought we would raise about $500 so were stunned when we raised more than $1000.”
The lads also walked around the showground with hundreds of other entrants on Friday afternoon, before undertaking the Full Shave on Saturday morning.
Mr Simpson’s wife Helen, a professional hairdresser, shaved their heads at the showground on Saturday morning, while other Relay for Life entrants watched on.
“The whole process took about half an hour,” Mr Simpson said. “We have gone totally bald, with the razor and the blade taking all our hair.”
Laurence Garner, 23, Manager of UNE’s I.T. Workshop and Andrew Curry, 28, an I.T. technician, surprised staff when they turned up on Monday totally bald.
But colleagues were happy to support the worth cause and the trio are looking at entering Relay for Life next year, Mr Simpson said.
For more information phone Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779
For photographs phone David Elkins on 6773 3770.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 04:04 PM
Science adventure: from the swamp to the stars
October 15, 2004
More than 250 high-school students from the New England region will visit the University of New England next week for a scientific adventure that will take them from an actual swamp on the University’s campus to the farthest reaches of space.
During the day-long adventure they will build a freezer alarm, experiment with hens’ eggs and wool fibres, meet bush mammals and insects face-to-face, look at flies’ eyes through an electron microscope, and learn how fish swim upstream.
Called “Science in the Bush”, the day of activities will take students in Years 7-10 into a real, cutting-edge research environment at UNE, and give them an insight into the vitality of science and the variety of scientific careers. UNE’s Dr Chris Fellows, the coordinator of the day, said it was vital for school students in country regions to have opportunities, like their city counterparts, to experience “science as it really is practised”.
This, the second annual “Science in the Bush”, will be on Wednesday 20 October. Contributors to the program, hosted by UNE, will include UNE itself, The University of Technology, Sydney, CSIRO, and the Department of Primary Industries, Tamworth. Sponsors include UNE, OzIntell and Konica.
The students will come from 10 schools in Armidale, Inverell, Walcha and Bingara.
At the swamp, they will find out why it is good for a swamp to smell, why swamp slime is a great source of food for animals, what kind of animals live in and visit swamps, and what we can do to conserve swamps in our local areas. Entering the Starlab Planetarium (brought to UNE by Clue Communications, Sydney), they will go on a guided tour of the stars. Back on earth, they will have the opportunity to fossick for sapphires (and keep the loot!), learning at the same time about the formation of sapphires as a result of natural earth processes.
Simon Walsh, from the University of Technology, Sydney, will talk to the students about careers in science, focusing particularly on forensic science as just one example of the fascinating career paths open to science graduates. He will describe how forensic scientists go about analysing evidence from the scene of a crime.
Media contact: Dr Chris Fellows, School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, UNE (02) 6773 2470 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 03:13 PM
Waste managers discuss alternative technologies
October 14, 2004
Finding alternatives to landfill was the theme of a regional Waste Management Seminar at the University of New England yesterday.
About 40 delegates from throughout NSW attended the seminar (pictured are, from left, Bernadette Thomas and Dr Tony Wilkins) One of them,
Steven Bernasconi, Waste Development Coordinator for Port Stephens Council,
described his Council’s experience in pioneering the successful use of composting technology for mixed household waste.
Bernadette Thomas, Coordinator of the North East Waste Forum, talked about enlisting community support for alternative waste management strategies. She
emphasised the importance of engaging the community from the beginning of
the decision-making process.
Dr Tony Wilkins, NSW Branch President of the Waste Management Association of
Australia (WMAA), chaired the seminar. Dr Wilkins said that Australia was leading the world in (for example) the recycling of newspapers, and that at a State level several Australian States (including NSW) were performing as well as comparable communities anywhere in the world. “The next step is to look at it on a regional basis,” he said. “Engaging the whole community means working with the regions as well. “
The seminar followed last year’s inaugural northern NSW meeting of WMAA,
also held at UNE. Rex Glencross-Grant, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental
Engineering at UNE, convened that meeting and yesterday’s seminar. “We want
to get people in the community thinking and talking about, and actively
participating in, sound waste-management practice,” he said.
“One of our major aims is to reduce landfill to a minimum by getting
treatment processes above the ground,” Mr Glencross-Grant explained.
“Ultimately, only ‘inert’ material that will not contaminate ground water or
produce methane gas will go to landfill.”
He said details presented by representatives of Armidale Dumaresq Council
during the seminar indicated that the Council was on track to meet the State
target of a 60 per cent reduction by the year 2014 in the amount of waste
going to landfill.
At the end of a successful day, the delegates agreed that the regional Waste
Management Seminar for northern NSW should become an annual event.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 02:50 PM
Big increase in Australian cotton crop predicted
October 13, 2004
There will be an overall increase of about 70 per cent in the area of Australia’s next cotton crop, currently being planted. In some regions, up to 90 per cent of that crop will be the new genetically-modified cotton Bollgard II.
These are two of the main findings of a survey of agronomic consultants conducted last week by the University of New England’s Institute for Rural Futures (IRF) on behalf of Cotton Consultants Australia (CCA).
The Director of IRF Cotton Research, Brendan Doyle, said the Australian crop next season would be about 300,000 hectares (compared to 181,000 hectares last season). “This increase is particularly welcome as an economic stimulus for the cotton regions and a much-needed boost to the nation’s agricultural output,” Mr Doyle said. “If there is significant rain throughout October the area of plantings could be even greater than predicted, while a lack of such rain would result in an area slightly smaller than that predicted.”
He said the use of GM cotton had led to significant reductions in the use of insecticides on cotton crops. “Bollgard varieties will form the major part of next season’s cotton crop overall,” he said. “However, the percentage varies greatly between regions, the uptake ranging between 15 and 90 per cent. Growers have been successfully trialling the technology over the past couple of seasons and, as further varieties are released, adoption will stabilise.”
Mr Doyle emphasised that Bollgard II was just another tool that Australia’s cotton farmers were using to reduce the application of chemicals. “Data collected over the past 12 years by CCA show how crop management practices such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) have achieved a big degrease in chemical use generally, and reveal a wide adoption of softer chemicals that preserve beneficial insects such as ladybirds and parasitic wasps in the crop,” he said.
Detailed data about next season, such as valley-by-valley information on expected plantings (including areas of Bollgard and conventional cotton, and Roundup Ready proportions), are available from Cotton Consultants Australia, Narrabri, on (02) 6792 5459.
Media contact: Brendan Doyle, Institute for Rural Futures, UNE (02) 6773 3077 (e-mail Brendan.Doyle@une.edu.au), or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 10:59 AM
Campus composers present their work in concert
October 12, 2004
Several 50th anniversary compositions will be premiered in UNE’s Campus Composers’ Concert No 59 on Friday 15 October.
Ann Ghandar, founder of music composition and performance at UNE, inaugurated the Campus Composers’ Concert Series in 1974. Two or three of these concerts have been held each year since then. Internal as well as external UNE Music students, and members of the University and the Armidale communities, have the opportunity to perform in them.
Friday’s concert, sponsored by the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ingrid Moses, will be at 1.10 pm in Room G43 at the C.B. Newling Building (the Old Teachers’ College).
“The students’ compositions are rehearsed to a high standard of presentation
and they take great pride in presenting their work in such a public forum,”
Mrs Ghandar said. “This gives them valuable training in many aspects of
concert presentation that have to be experienced in order to be understood.
Public performance of students’ compositions is an integral part of their studies, and these concerts allow them to demonstrate their explorations of sound, and their skills in music making.”
Campus Composers’ Concerts have also become a forum of interaction between
the University and the wider community, whether through members of the
community simply attending the concerts and enjoying premiere performances
of music, or participating in the concerts by performing and conducting
their own work.
In the lunch-time concert on Friday, Chris Ross-Smith, formerly Head of Drama at UNE, who is well known in the Armidale community for his acting skills and his many entrepreneurial activities in the arts, will be MC.
Students’ works to be performed will include "Paddling Through Still Water" (by Glen Wholohan), "Wash of Time" (by Becky Williamson), "Till Human Voices Wake Us" (by Sarah Christopher), and "The House on Common Land Point" (by Victoria Bellingham). Students and members of the Armidale community will perform their compositions on instruments that include flute, clarinet, piano, violin, guitar, and various percussion instruments. Performers and composers from the Armidale community include Stephen Thorneycroft, who has written a new composition for the concert, and Stephen Tafra. The concert will be followed by tea and coffee, to enable the audience to meet and talk to the composers and performers.
For more information, please phone Mrs Ghandar on (02) 6773 6456.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 04:57 PM
Don Aitkin, UNE's first student, awarded honorary degree
October 11, 2004
Don Aitkin AO, one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals, received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at the weekend from the university he entered as an undergraduate 50 years ago.
Presenting the Occasional Address during a Spring Graduation ceremony at the University of New England on Saturday, Professor Aitkin recalled his formal admission to UNE as a “matriculant” during a graduation ceremony in May 1954. It was in that year that UNE became an autonomous university. “Because my name begins with ‘A’, and there was no other surname closer to the beginning of the alphabet, I became the first student ever admitted to the new University,” he said. After his address, the Deputy Chancellor, Mr James Harris, presented Professor Aitkin with the honorary degree.
The ceremony on Saturday formed the second half of UNE’s two-day Spring Graduation for 2004, the University’s Golden Jubilee year. Professor Aitkin recalled that he had also given the Occasional Address at a UNE graduation ceremony in the University’s Silver Jubilee year.
Graduating from UNE in 1961 as Master of Arts with First Class Honours (the first such degree ever awarded by the University), Don Aitkin went on to a distinguished career as an academic (serving as Foundation Professor of Politics at Macquarie University from 1971 to 1979 and Professor of Political Science at ANU from 1980 to 1988), university administrator (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, 1991-2002), author and columnist.
Professor Aitkin said the Australia of the 1950s “was, in very many respects, much less interesting and enjoyable than the country we have today”. He attributed the change to three main factors: immigration, wealth, and education. “Education has been the real catalyst,” he said. “When I started here at UNE in 1954 there were only 30,000 university students in the whole of Australia. Today there are 850,000. When I graduated with my PhD in 1964 I was one of a couple of hundred who did so across the nation. Today, 5,000 or so will graduate with that degree.
“You will hear people criticise this increase as ‘credential creep’, or say that the students of their day were better. Well, I’ve been in the system for 50 years, and I think that, generally speaking, today’s students know more, work harder, and are better-rounded people.”
Speaking to the UNE graduands on election day, he said he had found the election campaign “singularly lacking in broad vision”. “Don’t blame the politicians, because we elect them, but press them to drop the short-sighted stuff and imagine a better Australia and a better world,” he continued. “This University exists only because people now long dead had such a vision.”
About 800 students graduated from UNE this spring, with about 400 of these able to attend the two-day Spring Graduation to receive their testamurs in person.
Media contact: Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
A photograph of Don Aitkin presenting his Occasional Address at UNE is at:
http://smithserver.une.edu.au/photography/media/aitkin.jpg
For other Graduation photographs, contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 05:14 PM
German Festival planned for Armidale
October 08, 2004
The German Consul General, Dr Guenther Gruber, visiting the University of New England for a celebration of the Day of German Unity, announced plans for an annual German Festival in Armidale beginning next year.
Dr Gruber said the festival, planned at this stage for March, would incorporate a range of events in education and the arts. (The production of a German play in English translation is already being discussed.) It could also extend to sport and other areas of activity, he said.
About 60 people with German connections gathered in Booloominbah at UNE this
Wednesday for the celebration. The Day of German Unity has been celebrated
in Germany each year since the formal re-unification of the country on
October 3, 1990.
Dr Gruber’s visit to Armidale and UNE this week was the second since his arrival in Australia three months ago. His first visit, in August, was for the launch of the international film festival that formed part of UNE’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. “We at the Consulate in Sydney take Armidale very seriously,” he said. He added that, as a small university city, Armidale was an ideal location for a festival such as the one he had in mind. He said people both at the University and in Armidale itself had been supportive of the idea.
Dr Gruber said the German Festival would involve local school students studying German, and might also include a soccer tournament in honour of Germany’s hosting of the World Cup in 2006. In drawing the attention of Sydney-based German business interests to Armidale, the festival could also result in business growth for Armidale, he said.
Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf, Head of UNE’s School of Languages,
Cultures and Linguistics and an Armidale Dumaresq Councillor, described the
idea of a German Festival in Armidale as “a great thing for the University
of New England and the whole New England region”. “Fostering direct cultural
ties with Germany will be very beneficial for high-school and university
students of German language and culture,” he said. “It is also important for
people now living in this region to be able to celebrate their German
heritage.”
Dr Kerry Dunne, Convenor of German at UNE, said Germans had lived in the New
England region, particularly around Inverell, Tenterfield and Armidale,
since the mid-nineteenth century. In more recent years, numbers of German
academics and professionals had been attracted to the region to work at UNE,
in the medical professions, and in business. “German was a foundation
subject at UNE from the beginning of the University in 1938,” Dr Dunne said.
“UNE was the first Australian university to offer German in the external
mode, and now has students throughout the world. Many graduates of German
went on to successful careers in a number of fields, including careers in
German-speaking countries, as well as teaching and academic careers.”
Media contact: Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf, School of Languages,
Cultures and Linguistics, UNE (02) 6773 3042 or Jim Scanlan, Public
Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
A photograph showing (from left) Dr Guenther Gruber, his wife Mrs Christiane
Gruber and Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf is at:
http://smithserver.une.edu.au/photography/media/unity.jpg
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 05:06 PM
UNE honours its brightest in Science, Health studies
October 07, 2004
The founding member of Women In Agriculture, Catherine McGowan (AO), will be guest speaker at the University of New England’s graduation ceremony to be held tomorrow (October 8).
Ms McGowan has held the positions of Secretary, Vice-President and President of Australian Women in Agriculture. She has also chaired the Regional Women's Advisory Council and been involved in many facets of agripolitics.
Degrees, diplomas and certificates in Science, Education, Health and Professional Studies will be conferred on a total of 225 students at the ceremony, held on the lawns of Booloominbah.
During the ceremony, expected to last about three hours, 21 graduates from UNE will be bestowed with a Doctor of Philosophy, or PhD, for a broad range of theses.
These include Mr Matthew Cameron, from UNE’s School of Environmental Sciences receiving a PhD for his work on the Glossy Black Cockatoo in Central NSW as well as Ms Mary MacLean Panko from UNE’s School of Professional Development for her work on The Impact of Teaching Beliefs on the Practice of E-Moderators.
The ceremony starts with a speech from Ms McGowan and will be followed with the conferring of Honorary degrees on Emeritus Professor Grant Harman (widely acknowledged as a world leader in the analysis of higher education) and Mr Max Woods, Master of Rural Science.
Mr Woods has played a key role in fostering agricultural research programs in the area, particularly involving soil degradation issues.
Deputy Chancellor of UNE, James Harris, will then confer degrees to students who have completed Masters and Bachelor degrees from the Faculties of Science and Education, Health and Professional Studies.
A separate graduation ceremony will be held on Saturday for students from the Faculties of Arts and Economics, Business and Law.
For more information phone Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 05:06 PM
Foreign-language learning: new techniques revealed
October 06, 2004
One of the world’s leading authorities on second-language learning will present two public lectures and a workshop at the University of New England next week.
Professor Andrew Cohen is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His presentations at UNE will describe and demonstrate some of the Centre’s latest practical advances in helping learners of a second language.
UNE’s School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the Language and Cognition Research Cluster will host Professor Cohen’s visit to the University on October 14-16. All three presentations will be in Lecture Theatre A2 in the Arts Building.
In his first talk, Professor Cohen will discuss the effects of training language learners to be more strategic in their learning of complex speech functions such as requests, refusals, compliments, thanks and apologies. Titled “A Web-based approach to strategic learning of speech acts”, it will be on Thursday 14 October at 5 pm. The talk will focus on a project that trained students to learn and use pragmatic information more successfully in speaking Japanese. The project has generated a Web site for learners of Japanese at:
www.iles.umn.edu/IntroToSpeechActs/
The second talk, titled “Enhancing students’ language and culture learning in study abroad”, will be about a new guidebook that takes a strategies-based approach to language and culture learning in a foreign country. Eighty-six university students studying abroad in Spanish and French-speaking countries have participated in a study of the guidebook’s effectiveness, half of them working with the guidebook and half without. This talk will be on Friday 15 October at 9.30 am.
The hour-long workshop, also on Friday 15 October, will begin at 11 am. It will deal with issues including individual style preferences in language learning, the choice of language-learning strategies, and maintaining the motivation of both learners and teachers. The second part of the workshop will involve participants in a way that will illustrate how style preferences, strategy choices and motivation might intersect for a learner in dealing with a given language task. This session is intended for both teachers and learners of second and foreign languages, and will also be of interest to anyone who teaches writing.
All members of the University and wider communities will be welcome at these three events. For more information, contact Dr Karen Woodman on (02) 6773 3381 (after Monday 11 October) or Dr Andrea Schalley on (02) 6773 3655.
Media contact: Dr Karen Woodman, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UNE 6773 3381 (after Monday 11 October) or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at 04:55 PM
Memories shared at UNE reunion weekend
October 05, 2004
University of New England alumni from all over Australia gathered in Armidale at the weekend for a reunion to celebrate the University’s 50 years of autonomy.
They included people who were students when UNE gained its autonomy in 1954.
Sister Pat Bundock, a Dominican nun now living in Wallangarra, Queensland, was living and working in Tamworth when she became UNE’s external Arts student No. 45 in 1954. She remembered her fellow externals as “all older students who’d been denied university because of the Depression and the War”.
Sister Bundock, who studied Latin, paid particular tribute to her lecturer
Maurice Kelly who, recognising that the “externals” were high-achieving
students, gained them the right to sit for the Distinction exams.
Ken Williams, who was born and brought up in Armidale, was one of UNE’s
first Science graduates (in 1955). He travelled to the reunion from
Laurieton with his wife Lal, also originally from Armidale, whom he met when
they were both students at UNE.
The weekend of activities included a welcome on Saturday morning by the
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ingrid Moses, and the President of the UNE Alumni
Association (Armidale Branch), Dr Neville Webb; lunch on Saturday at the New
England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) and a tour of the NERAM storeroom; a
picnic lunch on the lawns of Booloominbah on Sunday, followed by afternoon
tea and live jazz music. UNE’s fund-raising Spring Ball on Saturday night in
the University’s Lazenby Hall formed part of the Golden Jubilee
celebrations.
Professor Moses and Dr Webb traced the growth of UNE from 242 students in
1954 to about 19,000 today, mentioning the unique “living and learning”
experience provided to internal students by the University’s residential
colleges, and the opportunities that UNE, as a pioneer in distance
education, had opened for so many people.
Later in the weekend Professor Moses said it had been “a wonderful
experience to hear people reminisce about their student years at UNE”.
“They can still be proud of their UNE degrees,” she said. “The University
has grown enormously, but its values are still the same.”
Media contact: Lydia Roberts, Public Relations Manager, UNE (02) 6773 2779
or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049/
Photographs are available. Please contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049.
Posted by Lydia Roberts at 03:14 PM