INSIDE QUT October 10 - 23, 1995 Page 1 QUT Central Administration 2 George Street Brisbane 4000 Telephone (07) 3864 2111 Registered by Australia Post – Publication No. QBF 4778
Queensland University of Technology Newspaper Issue No 139
October 10-23, 1995
Boost for Qld health services
QUT has received more than $1 million from Queensland Health to establish a health statistics and research facility over the next five years.
The Queensland Health Care R e s e a r c h G r o u p , w h i c h w i l l operate through QUT’s Centre in Statistical Science and Industrial M a t h e m a t i c s , w i l l p r o v i d e Queensland Health with research a n d s t a t i s t i c a l e x p e r t i s e t o improve the management and planning of health services.
Professor Sean McElwain from the School of Mathematics said t h e g r o u p w o u l d r e d u c e Queensland Health’s historical r e l i a n c e o n c o n s u l t a n t s a n d interstate experts.
“In the past, when Queensland Health was working on planning and projections, it had to call on consultants, or use groups from other states, in particular, the University of Newcastle’s Health S t a t i s t i c s R e s e a r c h G r o u p , ” Professor McElwain said.
“Queensland Health realised last year that they needed to have t h e s a me s or t of e xp e r t is e in Queensland if at all possible.
“We will continue our links with the group at the University of Newcastle, but the Queensland Health Care Research Group will be at QUT.”
Professor McElwain said the group’s main tasks were to update p r o j e c t i o n s f o r d e m a n d a n d supply of health services up to the y e a r s 2 0 0 1 a n d 2 0 0 6 a n d t o a n a l y s e t h e l a t e s t s e r v i c e utilisation and population data.
“There are a number of issues you have to take into account when making these projections and I guess the three main ones are the change in the population and that’s particularly important in Queensland where there’s a great influx of people,” he said.
“The second thing is the change in the distribution of diseases.
“As the population ages we’re m o r e l i k e l y t o b e h a v i n g operations like hip replacements or cataract operations, whereas we won’t be having as many of the younger person’s diseases.
“The third thing and the major
QUT to establish medical statistics research facility
By TONY WILSON
c h a n g e t h a t ’ s o c c u r r i n g i n Queensland, Australia and all over the world is a change in the length of stay in hospital for a given operation.”
He said the contract provided for a senior lecturer to be appointed with funding shared between the university and Queensland Health.
“We have funding for five years for a senior lecturer which is funded $50,000 a year by the university and $50,000 a year by Queensland Health.
“That person has a number of duties — to look at liaising with Queensland Health about giving s h o r t c o u r s e s t o Q u e e n s l a n d Health staff and others from the quantitative side of the health industry and transferring the i d e a s a b o u t p r o j e c t i o n s a n d statistical modelling.”
Professor McElwain said the g r o u p w o u l d a l s o a d v i s e Q u e e n s l a n d H e a l t h o n t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f a r e s o u r c e allocation formula.
“This is the way the health cake will be progressively distributed across the State on a population basis.
“In Queensland we have some particular issues to examine when d e v e l o p i n g s u c h a f o r m u l a , especially those which relate to the large population increases.
“We’re hoping to contribute to t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f t h a t methodology for the Queensland situation over the next few years.”
State Health Minister Peter Beattie said the formation of the g r o u p w o u l d r e s u l t i n b e t t e r hospital and health care planning a n d w o u l d b e t t e r e q u i p Queensland to target its future health needs.
“This is an organisation which is long overdue in Queensland,”
Mr Beattie said.
He said it would inevitably lead to an improvement in the quality of patient care in our hospitals a n d w o u l d a s s i s t h e a l t h c a r e providers in ascertaining what was required not just for today, but also for tomorrow.
ABOUT 150 delegates representing more than 15 cities from the Pacific Rim region will converge on Brisbane to participate in the annual conference of Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development (PRCUD) to be held October 17-19.
Council president and head of the Australian Hous- ing and Urban Research Institute based at QUT, Profes- sor Bob Stimson, said the conference program commit- tee had assembled a stunning array of speakers includ- ing politicians, senior public policy makers, business people, consultants and researchers.
“They will come from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Vladivostok, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shan- ghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Sin- gapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra,” Professor Stimson said.
“As well as the speakers there will be plenary ses- sions, workshops and field visits that focus on the theme Information and Services in Urban Development.”
Professor Stimson said the talent assembled for the conference represented a level of expertise across the fields of urban development, planning and management that was rarely seen in Australia.
He said keynote speakers would address topics such as the APEC Initiative and its implications for cities;
mega-cities, mega-opportunities, mega-problems; the information superhighway; Pacific Rim property mar- kets and investment prospects; reinventing cities through human capital; and leadership for fast and flexible cities in the 21st century.
“The conference will feature presentations by city officials on the planning issues of Brisbane, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Seoul, Vladivostok, Beijing and Shanghai,” Professor Stimson said.
“Workshops will address urban investment opportuni- ties in Vietnam, China and Queensland. There will be case study presentations on urban mega-projects, their design and management and legal arrangements; envi- ronmental management projects; innovations in housing services; and sustainable urban development projects.”
He said Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley and the Bris- bane City Council were strong supporters of PRCUD and the council was the major foundation sponsor for the con- ference to be held at the Sheraton Hotel.
“The Lord Mayor will be using the occasion to launch his Brisbane City Centre Vision at a lunch on Tuesday, 17 October.”
Professor Stimson said good use would be made of the presence of such a rich array of talent in Brisbane to benefit local planners and developers.
He said a half-day would be devoted to field trips and round-table discussion sessions including Robina on the Gold Coast and the role of “Edge Cities”; Regional met- ropolitan planning strategies hosted by the SEQ2001 Secretariat and the Department of Housing, Local Gov- ernment and Planning; the role of airports and ports;
cleaner technologies for the city, hosted by Brisbane City Council; and waterfront and inner-city renewal, fo- cusing on South Bank and the Better Cities Project in the inner north-east suburbs of Brisbane.
Professor Stimson said PRCUD was a network or- ganisation encompassing the private, public and academic sectors established to enhance the development of link- ages between cities in the Pacific Rim region.
“It promotes a better understanding of cities, and en- courages the achievement of excellence in urban develop- ment, planning and management to improve the economic performance, quality of life and sustainability of cities.”
Urban development conference attracts Pacific Rim expertise
Health Minister Peter Beattie and Professor Sean McElwain…‘This organisation is long overdue’
One year Business masters in 1996
Page 3
Dissident journalist tours Australia
Page 10
Uni games gold!
Page 12
Vice-Chancellor’s comment
Letters to the Editor
After reading the (Inside) QUT issue of September 5-19, I had to ask my- self if the QUT had abdicated its title of “a university for the real world”.
My reaction was prompted by the front-page article which discussed a
“history of lost opportunities” for parklands in Brisbane.
In that article, Dr Lynette Finch was quoted as saying that while Brisbane had what was termed “squares” (spaces smaller than a city block size), it did not have rolling parklands that stretched for miles”.
If Dr Finch cared to put on her walk- ing shoes and tried to traverse some of the city’s outstanding natural areas she would soon change her opinion. The Mt Coot-tha Reserve, Brisbane Forest Park, Toohey Forest Park, Karawatha Park, Boondall Wetlands and Bulimba Creek parklands are extensive areas for recrea- tion and for flora and fauna conservation.
The Southbank [sic] Parklands have added another dimension to Brisbane’s open space systems and the proposed parkland development of the old Roma Street railway yards will provide yet another.
The history of Brisbane’s parklands does include some examples of lost opportunities, but notwithstanding past mistakes, it remains one of the world’s greenest cities.
It is a pity that your article provides neither an accurate nor a balanced pic- ture of the true situation.
Terry Ryan Address supplied
Specialists vs.
generalists?
This question arises frequently;
however, the reply must be: both are needed! Specialists (i.e. experts or professionals) are the ones ascertain- ing the best-possible job in any social setting whether in science, technology, industry, engineering or business administration, finance, Public Service, politics, etc. No progress without experts!
But unequivocally, there are situa- tions where advancement is only likely by generalists’ contributions.
The broadly experienced, trained or educated persons can provide an over- view or a perspective or context: they are responsible for a holistic/synectics approach because “the whole is more and different than the sum of the parts”
as the systems analysis’ basic law goes.
A whole book can fill generalists (G) vs. specialists (S) matters.
A couple of suggestions to researchers
in various disciplines: (a) Find a more pre- cise working definition of these two words to be able to set (even if initially roughly only!) a boundary between them along a continuum or spectrum. (b) Find a semi- quantitative measure of one person’s or in- stitution’s G-S mix. It ought to be possible to eventually (after trial/error experiments) classify the G and S according to a 1-to-10 scale. Also, a ratio (i.e. G/S or S/G) ought to be possible — a “pure” generalists experi- ence can be expressed as: science (4) + philosophy (3) + history (4) + politics (3);
a narrow specialist’s as: physics (9) + other subjects(1).
Contact me for details and many essays available free of charge.
Dr KH Wolf 18 Acacia Street
Eastwood, Sydney, NSW, 2122
Life as a student has its own story
A SEMESTER of study leave to complete her Master of Arts in Creative Writing gave the Vice- Chancellor’s Executive Officer Mary-Rose MacColl a valued in- sight into a student’s perspective of university life.
Runner-up in The Australian/Vogel Literary Award with her manuscript No Safe Place, Ms MacColl said the experience of studying full-time at the University of Queensland gave her a very real sense of the need to focus on the student as a client.
“I work in the V-C’s office at QUT and the level of service we get from the university is great. Suddenly at UQ, I was just one of 25,000 students, wait- ing in line for things, filling out lots of forms, dealing with hassled counter staff who’d rather I wasn’t there.
“Full-time study helped me think
The Australian/Vogel was judged by three Australian writers. Shortlisted entries were considered by Allen and Unwin for publication, Ms MacColl said.
“It (the Vogel award) certainly changes things as far as your chances of getting something published.”
Ms MacColl said No Safe Place doesn’t reach neat conclusions and “if the book’s about anything, it’s about the failure of institutions to deal with ambiguity and ambivalence.
“I think sexual conduct is charged with ambivalence and ambiguity in terms of what messages mean or don’t mean.
“When you bring that to an institu- tional level, whether it’s the univer- sity or the courts, you’re trying to come down to one story and get rid of the ambiguity and ambivalence.
“It just doesn’t lend itself to that sort of reductionism. These things are complex and difficult.
“Sexual conduct stories are foregrounded in the press at the moment and there’s not much tolerance or empathy from many people engag- ing in the debate. I think we’re trying to come to terms with and understand something that’s almost too difficult.”
Commenting on Helen Garner’s The First Stone (an account of sexual as- sault allegations made against the Master of Ormond College by two women students), Ms MacColl said she found it to be an interesting book about men and women and power at the level of the individual.
“But it’s a loaded account. I think Helen Garner has strong views that are couched in a whole lot of questions, but the strong views still come through.
“It’s a kind of non-fiction that trades as and uses a lot of the conventions of fiction.”
What was not explored adequately in Garner’s book was the failure of the institution to deal with the case, Ms MacColl said.
“What were those women to do 18 months into having made a complaint to the college? The College Council spent ages just thinking about whether they would do anything at all and then months working out what the women’s complaints actually were. Then, after all that, they decided to do nothing.
“From the point of view of the two women who made a complaint about a senior staff member, I guess they were pretty dissatisfied.
“I think the failure of the institution is what’s important here, the failure of our systems in their attempts to re- duce sexual conduct matters to one universally accepted story.
“There’s a really interesting book to be written about this, but I don’t think it’s been written yet.”
Ms MacColl said the 1950s Orr case in Tasmania where a professor was sacked because the university found he had seduced a young female stu- dent was an interesting part of Aus- tralian university history.
“Cassandra Pybus wrote about the Orr case a couple of years ago, rewrit- ing the popular history. Before the Pybus book, it was generally believed Orr was framed by a conspiracy of university managers who didn’t like his politics.
“Pybus looks at a range of evidence and doesn’t shy away from the com- plexity of the case.
“One of the differences between Gross Moral Turpitude and The First Stone is that the Pybus book examines in depth the institutional framework that allowed the case to emerge in the way it did. It tackles the ambiguity. To me, it’s a much more interesting book, a book anyone who works in manage- ment in a university should read.”
However, No Safe Place was en- tirely fictional, Ms MacColl said.
“It’s not based on any university or any real case. One or two members of QUT’s Executive insist they must be char- acters in the book. But the fact is, it’s fiction. I just sat down and made it up.”
Mary-Rose MacColl…‘I just sat down and made it up’
From the Inside… by David Hawke
QUT has a reputation for its sin- gle-minded dedication to under- graduate teaching in courses geared for graduate employment.
We’ve enjoyed high demand for our courses from bright school leavers over many years.
Nowadays of course, students pay a fee for their education through the HECS scheme and like any fee-pay- ing customer, they are much more discerning about what they want.
Students also have many more choices about where they will study now than 10 years ago. QUT needs to do more to maintain or improve its high-demand position.
At faculty level, we need to en- sure our products meet client needs.
Do we ask students what they want?
Do we ask them what they think of what we do? Are workloads appro- priate? Are staff available to stu- dents? Are the national Graduate Destinations Survey and Course Experience Questionnaire built into course reviews?
At university level we need to market our product effectively. Are our advertising campaigns appropri- ate and reaching the right people?
Are we responsive to school leavers and their parents, to mature students with or without university experi- ence? Are all our activities coordi- nated, consistent, driven by client needs? A corporate working party is looking at these issues, coming up with important university-wide changes.
I believe tougher competition among universities is good for stu- dents who, after all, are the key cus- tomers of higher education. Com- petition is also good for QUT where high quality undergraduate teaching and client service will continue to provide an important edge.
Professor Dennis Gibson
How will we improve market share of quality undergraduates?
By TRISH PENNICOTT about life from the point of view of the student at QUT. Wanting to be treated like a person, wanting an an- swer to my questions, wanting some- one to be at the other end of the phone.
“Being a student also helped me imagine what it would be like to make a complaint like the complaint in my book. I felt powerless.”
No Safe Place is a psychological thriller about sexual misconduct in an imaginary university in Melbourne where a student counsellor is accused of sexualising a relationship with a young student client.
“The novel was my MA thesis. I started with an interest in relationships and power and how power works in relationships and then I built the plot around that.”
INSIDE QUT October 10 - 23, 1995 Page 3 FOUR final-year QUT advertising students have again
taken up the challenge of producing a national campaign which they hope will unite all Australians on Australia Day next year.
Last year, the Australia Day Council was so impressed by the efforts of a group of QUT students it adopted their 1995 television, radio and print campaign titled Together We Are One.
The council has given the go-ahead to Joe Carter, Kirsten Weymouth, Clare Ientile and Louise Horton to produce an- other successful formula for its 1996 campaign.
As part of their final-year advertising subject, stu- dents are required to help prepare a campaign involving real clients who later provide professional feedback.
Under the banner We Are Australians — Together We Are One, the quartet is currently hard at work on produc- ing a 30 second television commercial, a radio commer- cial and print material which will be presented to the Australia Day Council next month.
Student spokesperson and the campaign’s creative director Joe Carter said the group wanted to build on last year’s campaign which originally hadn’t been intended for broadcast to a wider audience.
“While the concepts were brilliant, we hope to improve the broadcast quality of this year’s campaign,” he said.
“To achieve this goal, there has been a lot of begging involved.”
Produced on a zero budget, Mr Carter said the cam- paign had been assisted by a number of people.
“We are very grateful to Channel 7’s Commercial Pro- duction Manager Tony Petrie who has donated filming equipment for the six-day shoot,” he said.
“In addition, Production Manager Peter Threlfall has organised digital edit suite time and use of the Silicon Graphics computer which generated the opening graph- ics for the RAQ Fashion Awards.
“Brisbane company Media Odyssey have offered us a week’s worth of video post-production. The company has the latest in PC-based non-linear editing.
“We are also indebted to the former Brisbane band Electric who recorded the theme song.”
Mr Carter said the campaign would be particularly targeted at the 15-24 age bracket.
“Our research has shown that only about one in 20 young people are aware of what Australia Day means,” he said.
Mr Carter is also the winner of a four-week Channel 7 scholarship.
The scholarship is open to all final-year Bachelor of Business students majoring in either Communication, Media and Journalism, Public Relations, Film and Television or Advertising.
His four-week internship, which will finish at the end of this semester, will include writing and producing ads and working in several of the station’s departments.
Advertising students target Australia Day campaign
Advertising students Louise Horton, Kirsten Weymouth, Clare Ientile and Joe Carter shooting on location in the Brisbane suburb of Robertson (Photo by David Campbell)
Campus quickies
Final-year Master of Engineering Management students Murugappan Chokalingam and Hemendra Ghildyal with Doris Sim, the Senior International Manpower Officer from the Singapore Economic Development Board
One-year Business masters from 1996
FROM next year business masters students will be able to complete a full-time degree in just 12 months.
Business Dean Professor Trevor Grigg said a major restructuring of mas- ters degrees, which had resulted from an extensive curriculum review of the fac- ulty’s postgraduate degree programs, would allow students commencing in 1996 to complete their degrees full-time over one year/three semesters or part- time over two years/six semesters.
Previously, students were required to undertake a two-year/four-semes- ter program full-time or a four-year/
eight-semester part-time program.
Professor Grigg said this restruc- turing had occurred in order to keep pace with the career needs of profes- sionals and the imperatives of man- agement and business activities in the 1990s.
“Specifically, the program changes respond to the education, develop- ment and training needs of profes- sionals and managers in an expand- ing international marketplace and to an environment of accelerating tech- nological change and ever-increasing demands by consumers for quality and customisation of services and products,” he said.
“In this climate, the faculty decided it was appropriate to undertake curricu- lum innovation and development, streamline and rationalise several cur- rent programs and reduce their duration.”
Professor Grigg said the new post- graduate programs, to start in first semester next year, had involved reaccrediting existing degrees.
• The Master of Business Adminis- tration Degree will now be offered as two separate programs namely MBA (International) and MBA
(Professional). The (International) program for recent business gradu- ates will be offered full-time only while the (Professional) program for graduates in any discipline will be offered both full-time and part-time.
After one semester in the (Profes- sional) program, students will be able to exit with a Graduate Certifi- cate. Upon completing two semes- ters, students can acquire a Gradu- ate Diploma. In addition, the fac- ulty has plans to introduce an Executive MBA and a Consortium MBA in 1997.
• The current Bachelor of Business honours course will be replaced with a single course multi-strand program offering accountancy, banking and finance, communica- tion, economics, human resource management, international busi- ness, management and marketing.
• Master of Business will offer specialisations in the fields of com- munication, human resource man- agement, industrial relations, inter- national business, management, tourism, arts administration and marketing.
• Master of Business (Research) will be offered with an emphasis on accountancy, banking and finance, communication, economics, human resource management, interna- tional business, management and marketing.
• Master of Commerce will include specialisations in accountancy, banking and finance, business and taxation law.
• Master of Professional Accounting will provide non-business under- graduates with the opportunity to undertake a masters program which will provide them with accreditation with professional accounting bodies.
• Master of Business (Communica- tion Studies). Students can exit with a Graduate Diploma in Communi- cation after two semesters.
Professor Grigg said the new pro- grams would involve a number of initiatives to benefit students.
“For example, students enrolled in the Master of Business (International) program will be expected to spend one semester working in a company overseas or in an export active com- pany in Australia to undertake an ap- proved consultancy project,” he said.
“The Faculty of Business is very excited about the prospects the new postgraduate programs will bring to students and we look forward to a very positive response.”
MAJOR interest by final-year QUT students in beginning their career in Singapore led to recruiters represent- ing six of the nation’s leading compa- nies visiting Brisbane for the first time.
The success of last month’s two- day recruitment mission was due in part to work undertaken by the Careers and Employment Service.
Service Counsellor Alan Richardson said the Singapore Economic Devel- opment Board included Brisbane in its itinerary as a result of an earlier visit to the Gardens Point campus by Sin- gapore’s High Commission First Sec- retary (Education) Regina Mahadevan.
“Ms Mahadevan hosted a careers talk which was a complete success,” he said.
“Afterwards, the Economic Devel- opment Board was inundated with job applications.
“As a result, it decided its recruit- ment mission would travel to Brisbane instead of going just to Sydney and Melbourne as in recent years.”
Ms Mahadevan, who helped coor- dinate the Brisbane leg of the mission, said she had been very impressed by the initial enthusiasm shown by stu- dents during her May visit.
She described the recruitment mission as a success for both employers and stu- dents and which she predicted would now become an annual event in Brisbane.
“Singapore has a labour shortage in the engineering, science and compu- ter fields which will lead to a sustained growth in the recruitment of interna- tional graduates.”
Mr Richardson said the Careers and Employment Service was committed to supporting both the local and international career development needs of students.
“We provide the bridge between stu- dents and employers, and as much as possible, short-circuit the job-seeking process,” he said.
“Currently, we have contact with about 2500 Queensland-based employ- ers and the service continues to grow.
“Each year a campus interview pro- gram is held where about 120 employers from national companies like BHP, Shell, Comalco, the major banks and account- ing firms, Commonwealth and State Gov- ernment departments and engineering consultancies recruit graduates.
“Our job is to present the employ- ers with qualified potential staff and to provide graduates with proper job-
seeking skills.
“This includes assistance with eve- rything from how to write a resume to all phases of interview skills.”
Mr Richardson said he hoped all final-year students would make con- tact with the service and use its re- sources to help them gain employment.
“We hold regular seminars and workshops on job-seeking skills and have a collection of publications, newspapers, videotapes, articles and computer programs to assist with career planning and job hunting.
Detailed information is available in the following categories: Courses, Graduate Destinations, Overseas Work/Study, Career Planning, Job Hunting, Job Vacancy, Special Interest Groups/Equity, Scholar- ships/Student Finances, Occupa- tional Information, Professional Associations/Institutions, Private Employers, Commonwealth Government Departments, State Government Departments and Employer Directories.
For more information about the Careers and Employment Service, telephone (07) 3864 2649.
Singapore employers group on recruitment mission in Brisbane
On the opening day at this year’s games in Darwin all the mascots were on parade and reports are that the rat was involved in an tussle with the Southern Cross university’s mouse.
The rat won this particular battle of the rodents..
University mascots may be banned from the Australian University Games next year.
Its appears a Queensland univer- sity which has a 2.5 metre (seven to eight foot high) grey rat as its mascot has disgraced itself.
By LAURA McDONALD
Professor Trevor Grigg
sponding to the overwhelming inter- est in the workshops by offering weekly open writing sessions to stu- dents who wished to continue improv- ing their writing.
The sessions are held on Fridays 2-4pm in room Z701, Gardens Point campus.
Ms Petelin said WAC began in Au- gust 1992 and was based on similar programs in almost 50 percent of terti- ary institutions in the United States.
She said she believed WAC, made possible by annual grants from QUT’s Teaching and Learning Development Committee, was the only program of its type running in an Australian university.
QUT staff take their work home to be able to work uninterrupted de- spite the fact that, generally, the home work environment is not ergonomic.
The findings are the result of a re- cent study of the at-home work habits of QUT staff by lecturer in occupa- tional health and safety in the School of Public Health Margaret Cook.
The former QUT health and safety manager and president of the Safety Institute of Australia in Queensland did the research titled Home-Based Work Within a University Setting: Im- plications for Health and Safety as part of her masters thesis.
“I was looking at the issue of home- based work, or what used to be called telecommuting, as this is a growing trend as an organisational strategy to manage flexibly,” she said.
“I was interested in looking at the health and safety aspects, particularly when organisations are putting it in as part of their HRM (human resource management) program.”
Ms Cook said she was looking typi- cally at professional people working at home usually two or three days a week, the types of hazards they faced and how management should deal with the problem.
“Management still has responsibility for the health and safety of people while they are working at home,” she said.
Nearly all academics work from home at some stage and it was for this reason Ms Cook chose to do the study on QUT staff and do university case studies.
“Academics are one of the major population groups that have always worked at home,” she said.
Within QUT, 86 percent of staff said they worked at home regularly.
Ms Cook said she defined “work- ing at home” as not just staying at home instead of coming into the office, but also working from home at nights and weekends.
“If you look at it on that basis, 86 percent were working from home at least once a fortnight and it was out of necessity.
“The main reason people said they were working at home was because they weren’t getting their work done at work.
“As a rule, QUT staff were working about 38 hours a week in the office and then another 14 hours a week at home. They were working on average 51 hours a week.
“Certainly when we looked at the sorts of reasons people were working from home they all related to work factors like 76 percent was to meet demands not completed during normal working hours.”
Large blocks of uninterrupted time was also given as a reason for work- ing from home by 76 percent of staff.
Sixty percent cited the availability of more hours in which to work includ- ing usual commuting time, evenings and weekends.
The ability to increase the rate of work was given by 59 percent of re- spondents while flexibility was a reason 59 percent said they chose to work at home.
Other reasons included access to a more pleasant work environment (38 percent), ability to combine personal activities with work, while nine per- cent said it was to avoid personal con- flict in the workplace.
Surprisingly few (22 percent) said it was to better meet family and child care needs or combine care of chil- dren and/or dependants with work.
Ms Cook said that working from home was far from the family advance it was touted as being a few years ago.
“Certainly there are a lot of people saying it works well, for example, to access local child care, but my con- cern is that you are impacting nega- tively on the family because the office is there and people are working at nights and on the weekend and they’re actually taking away from family time,” she said.
While Ms Cook had not been able to look at many home offices, the ones she did look at all had problems.
“It appears that the biggest problem of working from home was the lack of
diversity of tasks. We split our tasks so at work we just spend our whole time meeting people, talking to stu- dents, going to lectures doing admin tasks. What people do all the time at home is mark assignments and do com- puter work. So they are doing very posturally poor activities.
“So people are sitting down for eight or 10 hours and never moving. That combined with the fact that people don’t have appropriate furniture is leading to problems.
“A third of those surveyed said they had regular back and neck pain which came from sitting in the same position while at home.”
Ms Cook said people did not take regular rest breaks. While it was pos- sible to try to educate staff about doing this, it was important to look at a range of solutions.
“We probably need a mechanism where staff can access furniture at the bulk price from QUT. People are also interested in information about setting up a good home office.”
Two of the frequent issues raised by staff were about tax deductibility of office equipment and workers com- pensation, she said.
“One of the interpretations is that if you have an office in your work envi- ronment then creating an office at home is not deductible. It is certainly not cut-and-dried and staff should look into this.
“People also didn’t feel that if they had an accident at home that they would be covered under worker’s com- pensation, but worker’s compensation is quite clear that you are.”
She said that one of the biggest prob- lems faced by QUT staff was that there was no formal program for home- based work which had implications on worker’s compensation.
“But I wouldn’t want to see the uni- versity getting very formalised on it.
In fact that was an area of concern among staff. No-one wants there to be a bureaucracy for it becomes more of a hassle than a convenience to work at home,” she said.
Staff carry workload over into home environment
Software package takes hassle out of staffing rosters
WAC writing workshops offer students ‘the right to know how’
WAC workshop leaders Gerard Ross, Caroline Thurlow and Krista Berga
ALMOST 100 QUT students exploited the opportunity to enhance their writ- ing skills offered by Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) workshops held on September 15.
Senior lecturer in the School of Communication and WAC Coordina- tor Roslyn Petelin said the Know Your Writes workshops introduced students to writing strategies, paragraph and sentence construction, revising, edit- ing and proofreading.
She said students could improve their grades and their chances for em- ployment and promotion by develop- ing strong writing skills.
“Employers have the right to de- mand that new graduates know how to write well,” she said.
“Writing is central to thinking and learning and therefore to academic and professional success. Students who write poorly will be disadvantaged.
“Particularly now that many em- ployers are including writing tests as part of their hiring process.”
Workshops were offered for both un- dergraduate and postgraduate students.
Caroline Thurlow, who with Krista Berga and Gerard Ross led the two undergraduate workshops, said the event attracted students from across disciplines.
“There were a lot of Education stu- dents and a lot from Science disci- plines and Business. We also had so- cial science students and Arts students including visual arts students,” Ms Thurlow said.
“In both undergraduate workshops there were about 30 students and in
Students’ creativity on show in television commercial contest
THE creative abilities of QUT sec- ond-year advertising students were acknowledged in September when the students won their heat of Chan- nel 7’s World’s Greatest Commercials program competition.
The program honours the crea- tive work of commercials from around the world and the competi- tion, sponsored by Yellow Pages, is open to all viewers and budding creative talents.
Weekly heats offer a cash prize of
$1000, with a final prize of $30,000 to be awarded at the end of October.
The competition is designed to of- fer participants an opportunity to put into practice the skills they are studying.
Advertising Course Coordinator in QUT’s School of Communication Alan Hales said QUT’s entry in the competition was a genuine team effort with all 40 second-year stu- dents being involved.
The students’ lecturer is Gayle Kerr.
ETV’s Tom Strickland and Peter Willett produced the video. Steve Slade from QUT’s sound studios did
the audio. Actors in the commercial were students’ friends and a stu- dent’s father put the set together.
“After the announcement I had lots of parents and students phon- ing me at home really excited about the win. I’ve also had phone calls from people in the advertising in- dustry to express their congratula- tions,” Mr Hales said.
He said the School of Communica- tion aimed to have the best advertis- ing course available to students.
“We want to lift the standard of advertising and show leadership.
“QUT holds a very good position for the future of the advertising in- dustry. We will be the people to lift the standards.
“I’ve had four agencies in Sydney and one in Brisbane ring me recently to ask who’s graduating from our course. We are getting a terrific re- sponse from the industry and this (the award) helps even more.”
Mr Hales is president of the Ad- vertising Institute of Australia and has recently been elected chair of the institute’s education committee.
Victor Morgante A FINAL-year student studying for
his Bachelor of Information Technol- ogy at QUT has developed a compu- ter software package that takes the time-consuming manual work out of preparing staff rosters.
Victor Morgante has already had success in marketing the software pack- age for a staff scheduling system for business and industry, titled Rosters, with sales to restaurants, a child care centre and the Brisbane City Council.
“The Brisbane City Council’s kerbside management section has just purchased four copies,” Mr Morgante said.
“On a comparative basis, it’s not expensive.
“Actually my competitors have a similar product imported from America with a base price of $50,000 while I have been marketing my package around the $1000 mark.”
He said he originally targeted the ma- jor retail department store market, but this had been taken in the past 18 months by a computer package marketed by a bigger and more established firm.
He said he was now targeting the lower priced market segment.
“Because large industries are depart- mentalised, each cost centre has a cer- tain number of employees and my pack- age formulates a roster per cost centre or business unit,” Mr Morgante said.
“The way the package works is by obtaining the determinants of work- hour requirements on a fluctuating ros- ter that will change on a weekly basis.
“Once these work-hour requirements
UK chance for Law grads
QUT Law graduates, under 30, with experience in a firm of solicitors, are eligible to apply for this year’s Spanos and Melrose Award to work in the United Kingdom.
The scholarship is offered in memory of the deaths of Stephen Melrose and Nick Spanos killed in May 1990 by an IRA terrorist attack.
The award consists of return airfare to London, courtesy of
QANTAS, and £1500, but is condi- tional upon the recipient obtaining employment with a UK law firm.
Applications including a resume and short essay describing how working in the UK would benefit the applicant should be forwarded to Lisa Harper, Senior Administra- tion Officer (Law School), Faculty of Law, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane , Qld, 4001 by December 8.
the postgrad there were about 40.
“We had limited numbers to 20, but we didn’t want to turn students away for the very reason that we wanted to cover the disciplines. The premise of WAC is integrating writing across the disciplines, so we were very pleased to get that representation.”
Ms Thurlow said the workshops were structured as a hybrid lecture incorpo- rating an “easy-to-use handbook” al- lowing students to read and participate.
“There was an exercise for each of the sections we covered like generation, evaluation, synthesis, editing and revis- ing. The exercises were very simple but representative of those kinds of tasks.”
Ms Thurlow said WAC was re- are known, the package system will
automatically generate a staff roster given award structures.
“The system also does not have a fixed union award program as the award criteria can be modified.”
Mr Morgante said he had aimed to make the product as generic as possi- ble so it could be transposable across a number of industries.
He said he had now reached the stage where firms had shown interest in mar- keting the product.
Mr Morgante said although the soft- ware he’d developed was quite a valu- able piece of intellectual property, he saw his future in consultancy.
INSIDE QUT October 10 - 23, 1995 Page 5 the luncheon was part of the Open Campus Program, which aims to help the local community recognise the benefits of having a university in close proximity.
Staff, who picked up the tab for the lunch, and their guests enjoyed shar- ing educational experiences.
GETTING to know each other as neighbours brought staff members from the School of Curriculum and Professional Studies and 21 senior citi- zens from the Sunsetholme, Normanby, together for a special luncheon on September 28.
Held at the Kelvin Grove campus, A RESOURCE manual containing more than 300 entries of programs and services available to the elderly in the Brisbane area has been developed by QUT School of Social Science students.
The manual, which provides infor- mation for older adults, their families or care-givers, was developed by the school in collaboration with the Council on the Ageing Queensland (COTA Q).
The manual which represents one semester’s work by students in the Aged Services 2 class, was demon- strated to more than 50 members of COTA Q at a meeting late last month.
Lecturer in Aged Services in the School of Social Science Dr Laurie Buys said the aim of the project was to develop a resource manual to be used by COTA Q volunteers to answer enquiries from older adults, service providers and others who sought information regarding government or community services available in Brisbane.
She said agency listings were gath- ered in a variety of areas, including housing, health, respite care, educa- tion and recreation.
The council’s Seniors Infolink De- velopment Officer Sandra Woodbridge said her motto was that “the next call should be the right call” and the re- source manual would enable volun- teers to respond to callers with the most up-to-date information available.
Dr Buys said students had gained first-hand experience of the process that older adults went through when seeking answers to questions or infor- mation on services.
“The majority of agencies were very helpful, but some were difficult to con- tact and others were reluctant to spend
time providing information,” she said.
Information, such as lengthy ‘on hold’ waits, prerecorded answering machine messages and ease of con- tact, was recorded for each agency in the manual.
Mrs Woodbridge said this informa- tion would be useful in reducing frus- tration levels of callers.
Dr Buys said the project enabled students to gain a good overview of programs and services available to older adults in the Brisbane area.
“This type of knowledge is impor- tant to practitioners working in human services and these students now have the information available at their finger tips,” Dr Buys said.
She said the project also was a posi- tive way of linking practice to theo- retical frameworks discussed during the semester.
Dr Buys said there had been a number of enquiries to purchase the manual from COTA Q.
The initial concept was that the re- source manual would not be for sale, but the final decision on the matter would rest with the council, she said.
Mrs Woodbridge said since the official hand-over there had been numerous enquiries from community service providers about the availabil- ity of the resource manual.
“We have not decided about the sale of the manual as a number of issues will have to be clarified, such as pro- cedures for up-dating the information contained,” Mrs Woodbridge said.
Mrs Woodbridge and Dr Buys agreed that updating the resource manual was a possibility for an ongo- ing collaborative project between QUT and COTA Q.
Resource manual outlines services for elderly people
QUT’s School of Nursing played host last month to the Head of the Faculty of Nursing at the National University of Samoa Ms Fulisia Aiviano.
Ms Aiviano visited QUT as part of an AusAID-sponsored profes- sional development program where she observed the role of the Head of the School of Nursing Professor Michael Clinton.
Ms Aiviano has had previous con- tact with the school through the South Pacific Placement Program where groups of eight students travel to Western Samoa to gain practical experience in hospitals and clinics.
In gratitude for the hospitality ex- tended by Samoan nurses to the QUT students, the School of Nurs- ing presented Ms Aiviano with a video camera and tripod for the Sa- moan Faculty of Nursing.
The equipment was funded equally by the school and AusAID.
While at QUT, Ms Aiviano had the opportunity to meet and talk to the next group of third-year students preparing to go on placement in Western Samoa. The group left on October 7.
Clinical facilitator Min Hutton who accompanied the group over- seas said the students would cover
many of the same areas they would in a placement in a Queensland hospital as well as gaining a unique insight into community medicine.
“In Samoa they basically do their clinical prac like they do here in the hospital. They work on the wards and they do dressings and patient care,” she said
“They also do a lot of community nursing. Western Samoa’s health care is very much oriented to the community and family setting.
“For example, there is only one nursing home on the island. Tra- ditionally the elderly are taken care of at home by the extended family.
“The district nurses go out to the families and do their assess- ments and then do appropriate referrals to the hospital if need be.
“They also do immunisation of the children and the maternal and child health care is very much the responsibility of nurses as well.”
Mrs Hutton said the students would also gain valuable commu- nication and cross cultural skills.
“When they go out to the fami- lies they have to sit on the floor in the traditional way and see the cus- tomary things they have to respect.”
TIPS on how organisations and individu- als can attract the print and electronic media’s interest and attention are now available in a video training package.
Launched late last month, the video package is directed towards assisting community groups to show how to work effectively with the media and to attract and retain its interest.
Titled, Think Big, Think Clever, the video was put together by Older Peo- ple Speak Out Inc. (OPSO), and pro- duced by QUT’s Educational Televi- sion Facility.
The 33 minute video draws on the expertise of experienced electronic and print media people who share impor- tant information about how and why the media operates as it does.
The launch of the video at the Par- liamentary Annexe on September 27 coincided with the presentation of this year’s OPSO Media Awards in
ABC’s Rod Young, Haydn Sargent and Anna Reynolds, Channel 9’s Rick Burnett, Channel 10’s Tracey Spicer, Channel 7’s Carolyn Tucker, broad- caster Rod Henshaw, Sunday Mail’s Ken Blanch, Quest Newspapers’ Paul O’Rourke and editor of RACQ’s Road Ahead Jim Mathers.
Ms French said their input would give community groups an insight into the reality of busy newsrooms, an under- standing of how the media worked and what the media needed to cover a story.
The ability to attract and retain the media’s interest was essential for any organisation or individual wanting to publicise events or services, to raise money and to lobby for change.
Ms French, a retired senior lecturer in journalism at QUT, is involved in a host of voluntary organisations and a wide range of ministerial advisory committees.
journalism and advertising.
“We began to give awards last year to journalists and photographers in the media who most accurately depicted the reality of older people in today’s society instead of resorting to conven- ient but incorrect stereotypes,” OPSO chairperson Val French said.
“A new category for advertisers was introduced this year in the awards as advertisers are often the worst offend- ers in relying on stereotypes.”
The OPSO Media Awards are part of each year’s International Day for the Elderly celebrations and are spon- sored by the Commonwealth Depart- ment of Human Services and Health and the State Family and Community Services Department.
Special awards were also presented to 10 journalists associated with the video’s production.
These awards were presented to
Media training package on video
Latin American academic links need to be greatly expanded
A VISITING scholar in the School of Language and Literacy Educa- tion at QUT says there is a strong case for increasing emphasis to be placed on academic and cultural in- volvement with Latin America.
Robert Austin said there were plenty of Australian government policy state- ments in areas of multiculturalism, but actual practical knowledge and recogni- tion tended to lag behind.
Mr Austin has been involved in or- ganising a series of seminars titled Lan- guage, Literacy and Latin America, with guest speakers’ topics involving Cuba, Nicaragua and Chile.
The final seminar in the series will involve Mexico and will be held on Tues- day, October 24.
The guest speaker at the seminar is Dr Beatriz Calvo of the University Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, Chihua- hua, Mexico, whose topic will be Lan- guage, Popular Education and the Chal- lenge of Democracy in Mexico.
Earlier this year, the school’s Di- rector of Research Associate Profes- sor Colin Lankshear and Mr Austin in a memo to Education Faculty Dean Professor Alan Cumming “floated” an approach to internationalising curricu- lum and research collaboration based
on Spanish language communities.
They said they believed that the Latin American-Caribbean communities con- stituted a highly viable “niche” market.
The faculty has provided strong sup- port for the initiative and has included it in its approved strategic plan.
Professor Lankshear said excellent opportunities existed for QUT to build strong research links with Latin Ameri- can institutions.
“Our areas of specialised excellence and our university mission made Latin America and the Caribbean a logical and important focus for future Pacific rim collaborations,” Professor Lankshear said.
Mr Austin saw the seminars as begin- ning a process of opening up academic relationships with Latin America.
He said the seminars were breaking new ground and showing the value of Latin American studies to the university and the community at large.
“I think it is interesting to have a look at what the emphasis in Queensland, if not Australia generally, at present is in regard to languages policy,” he said.
“This policy has Asian languages, particularly Japanese, privileged over all others.
“There is certainly an argument for the Chinese language, because it is the most
widely spoken language in the world.
“However, the world’s number two language is Spanish which is well ahead of English as number three.”
Mr Austin said the current demo- graphic prediction was that Spanish by the year 2010 would be the number one language of the United States.
“We have to ask ourselves what is driving a language policy here which does not give students in schools access to Spanish, but gives them access to other languages which rate well down the list”
Mr Austin said.
“We need to examine the economic and political agendas driving these kinds of decisions.
“Spanish is a language of high cul- ture and it is curious that it cannot seem to get into the top languages of the State.”
Mr Austin questioned why the Span- ish language was relatively invisible in the education profile of higher educa- tion compared to other far less widely spoken languages.
Mr Austin said Dr Calvo’s seminar address would include the issue of rela- tionships between languages and education.
The seminar beginning at 5pm will be held at QUT’s Kelvin Grove campus in room B201.
Seniors were lunch guests
Samoan visitor Fulisia Aiviano (left) met with students Charlotte Woodward, Kathy Burley and Kymelle Athorn before they left for Western Samoa with clinical facilitator Min Hutton (right)
Nursing hosts
Samoan visitor
R E S E A R C H
QUT research projects win postgrad awards
FOUR QUT research projects have benefited from Australian Postgraduate Awards (Industry) announced last month by Employ- ment, Education and Training Minister Simon Crean.
The awards, funded jointly by the Commonwealth and a range of industry partners, are offered to students undertaking research directly related to industry needs.
Students receiving the awards are given a stipend of almost
$20,000 for each year of research and may also be eligible for relo- cation, removal and thesis allow- ances.
The QUT projects funded this year include PhD research into risk-based cost functions for optimising rail track maintenance in association with Queensland Rail; Master of Engineering
research into innovative cold- formed steel framing systems in buildings in conjunction with Textor Metal Industries Pty Ltd;
PhD research into strategic hu- man resource management in Queensland, also with Queensland Rail; and PhD research into speech processing for forensic ap- plications in conjunction with the Queensland Police Service.
Mr Crean said the awards were an integral link between universi- ties and industry and contributed to a sound base for sustainable eco- nomic growth and employment.
“In this way the awards not only prepare high-calibre research stu- dents for a career in industry or academic research, but they also help build long-term relationships between universities and indus- try,” he said.
Fellowship research to look at impact of cancer on families
PATSY Yates, a senior lecturer in QUT’s School of Nursing, has been awarded an international fellow- ship worth more than $A18,000 to research the social adjustments made by people caring for a fam- ily member dying from cancer.
Ms Yates will use the fellowship from the Oncology Nursing Founda- tion to examine how social adjust- ments influence the social and psy- chological well-being of surviving relatives.
“What I’m looking at is adjust- ments across the whole spectrum of someone’s life,” she said.
“Everything from their relation- ships with other people, to their health, to their financial situation, their work situation, how it affects all aspects of their lives.
“A lot of those social issues for families are being overlooked. What we know is that when someone cares for a relative with cancer it’s an extremely traumatic experience that affects their life in many ways.
“I’m also looking at how the fami- ly’s experiences before their rela- tive’s death affects their well-being after because we often think that when a person dies from cancer that that’s the end.
“ O n e o f t h e c o m m o n t h i n g s people say to me during my inter- views is ‘yes, it’s all over for my relative, but it’s not over for me’.
“We often think that the trajec- tory of illness stops when the patient dies but that’s not really the case for families.”
Ms Yates said a better understand-
ing of the processes of adjustment would enable nurses to care more fully for patients and their families.
“Traditionally with nurses look- ing after people with cancer, we’ve looked mainly at the needs of the patient, but we haven’t really focused on the family needs as much.
“Because nurses have a role in pro- moting all aspects of a person’s well- being, not just their physical health, it’s also important to look at their social and psychological well-being.”
Ms Yates is collecting data for her research by speaking to family mem- bers of people who have died from cancer.
“I’m going out and interviewing people using an unstructured inter- view in the first instance and then asking them to complete more struc- tured measures of well-being.
“I go to these people’s homes and spend two or three hours sitting, listening to people’s stories of what they’ve been through. I’ve inter- viewed 90 people so far over the last 12 months.”
The Oncology Nursing Foundation fellowship will also allow Ms Yates to travel to the University of Wash- ington in Seattle to have the latter stages of her research supervised by Professor Kathleen Stetz, an Ameri- can professor in oncology nursing.
Ms Yates said the Oncology Nurs- ing Foundation was an American group with a membership of around 25,000 oncology nurses.
“For them to give it (the fellow- ship) to someone outside the States is really exciting.”
PROMOTING a higher awareness of social justice among all staff is the aim of a university-wide sur- vey on equity issues.
Equity Coordinator Nina Shatifan said a questionnaire would be sent randomly to a group of academic and general staff dur- ing the week starting October 16.
“It is important that we obtain feedback from staff on their un- derstanding of equity at QUT so that an effective and relevant edu- cation program can be designed to meet the needs of the university community,” she said.
“This survey will identify the
level of understanding of, and identification with, QUT’s equity policies, plans, objectives and strategies.”
Ms Shatifan said the project would also investigate the extent to which staff were involved in the implementation of equity initiatives.
The survey is part of the Back to Basics project being conducted jointly by the Equity Section and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit.
Funding has been provided by the Committee for Quality Assur- ance in Higher Education.
Equity issues survey
“They present themselves as if they had been around for the last 200 years.”
Dr Symes said schools were now moving towards the vernacular and opting for Australian idioms perhaps in line with a more nationalistic trend.
Some of those particularly Austral- ian mottoes adopted included one from north of Brisbane which had “Hard yakka” as its slogan while another chose the even less poetic “If you don’t dig the hole, the post will fall over”.
“Perhaps this also reflects a trend towards a cultural diversity that is glo- bal rather than European in school communities,” they said in their paper titled The Genealogy of the School:
an iconography of badges and mottoes.
“Even more dramatic is the adop- tion of Australian idioms as mottoes, a token of the emergent nationalism.”
While mottoes were one of the few remaining areas of social life where Motto researchers Colin Symes and John Synott
They present themselves as having been
around for the last 200 years
within private schools are socially advantaged in terms of achievement anyway so the issues of striving to succeed is not such an important consideration,” Dr Symes said.
“At the more elite level of society the values that consolidate these so- cial groups are the ones we saw being reproduced in the motto ideologies, the values of loyalty, honour of more chiv- alric notions that we can loosely re- duce to common phrases like the ‘old school tie’ network.”
The researchers said that schools adopted Latin mottoes which few could translate, to demonstrate their traditionalist credentials, thus adding an air of mystique. Yet many schools now were opting for more progressive slogans as a conscious marketing decision.
“The Queensland University of Technology has been notable in this regard adopting a logo instead of a coat of arms and, instead of a motto, a slogan of ‘A university for the real world’, an ironic commentary on the reputation of the older universities as remote institutions whose learning is tangential to the needs of the nine- ties,” the paper said.
Both researchers said they were in- terested in the way schools presented themselves and the imagery they used.
They said their research had found that mottoes tended to come from the principals of the schools in consulta- tion with influential parents in the school rather than out of the education department.
Mr Synott said mottoes had also become the butt of jokes among stu- dents as a subversive practice or way of resisting the ideology of the domi- nant values.
Students at one Brisbane boys’
school which had adopted the motto Nil sine labore (No gain without work) interpreted their school motto to be
“no sign of work”.
But overall, people tended to re- member their old school mottoes, they said.
“For some reason, while most people forget a lot of what they learnt at school, they do recall their motto, their school song, as well as the school war cry 50 or 60 years later,” Dr Symes said.
Mr Synott said that while books had been written on mottoes their research was distinctive because it was an attempt to give an in-depth analysis of the meaning of mottoes within a particular institutional context.
‘
’
T
HE disappearance of the Latin motto in our schools and its replacement with more Australian images is the subject of a new study by QUT social theorists John Synott and Dr Colin Symes.The report of their research, which has just been published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, highlights the amazing uniformity across Queensland’s school mottoes and the trend towards more corporate slogans.
In what is believed to be the first analysis of its kind, Dr Symes, a lec- turer in the School of Cultural and Policy Studies and Mr Synott, acting coordinator of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit, drew their conclusions from a sample of 500 Queensland primary and secondary schools from both the state and pri- vate sectors.
According to Mr Synott and Dr Symes, the use of Latin in Australian schools was a means of inventing a counterfeit tradition.
“We were interested in how institu- tions including schools invent tradi- tions through the process of badging and mottoes. They try and link them- selves back to the longer traditions of education and invent traditions to ap- pear much older than they actually are,” Mr Synott said.
“Often schools which were estab- lished in the 1960s, especially private schools, developed a uniform of the most traditional sort and a badge and so forth, pretending to have a history and, in fact, they don’t because they have only been established in the last 20 or 30 years.
DEADLINES
This issue of
Inside QUT
is the third from last for 1996.People wishing to forward items for the last two issues should note the following dates:
Published - October 24 Deadline is October 13 Published - November 7 Deadline is October 27
Latin was still employed as a matter of design, private schools still pre- ferred Latin expressions such as Honor Supra Honores (honour above glory) or Semper Digne (always dignity).
Although mottoes were supposed to individualise a school, the researchers said the repertoire of mottoes across the schooling system could basically be reduced to five or six broad catego- ries which were chivalry, religion, knowledge, achievement and aspira- tion, work and combinations of these.
They noted the greatest difference between state and private schools was with private schools having a tendency to shy away from mottoes which es- poused effort and achievement opting instead more chivalrous notions.
In the main, the pupils who attended such schools had already acquired such capacities as a result of their home backgrounds, they said.
“What we are saying is that students
