QUT Central Administration 2 George Street Brisbane 4000 Telephone (07) 3864 2111 Registered by Australia Post – Publication No. QBF 4778 Q u e e n s l a n d U n i v e r s i t y o f T e c h n o l o g y N e w s p a p e r ■ I s s u e 1 5 7 ■ F e b r u a r y 1 8 – M a r c h 3 , 1 9 9 7
by Andrea Hammond
Children aged three to five years are being sought as volunteers in Australia’s first trial of an asthma education program devised by QUT’s Centre for Applied Studies in Early Childhood.
Centre researchers want to recruit 120 toddlers and small children with asthma which has been diagnosed by a medical practitioner as moderate to severe.
Associate Professor Heather Mohay, the centre’s director, said the program aimed to keep children healthy and enjoying life by establishing good habits of taking their preventative medication.
“We have realised you really have to teach children how to manage their asthma as soon as they start to have symptoms, because non-compliance is a major problem – the kids get an asthma attack and they end up in hospital and/
or missing school,” Professor Mohay said.
“This program started because we realised that children didn’t understand the condition – the fact that asthma is often intermittent. So you may feel quite well, but you may need to take your medication because it prevents attacks.”
Professor Mohay said it had been established children who had asthma before the age of five had a high risk of continuing to have lifelong asthma.
“We looked around for education programs for young children and found there was absolutely nothing – all the programs were aimed at a minimum of seven- to eight-year-olds and, mainly, at 10- to 11-year-olds and we thought that was ridiculous,” she said.
“The theory was that children as young as five were unable to learn health- related information, but we were quite convinced children much younger could learn things if it was taught appropriately.
“Obviously, little kids can’t read, so we have started with video tapes which are based on sound principles of learning, are developmentally appropriate for children of that age and are very Australian.”
The program is being supported by the Asthma Foundation of Queensland
As first semester begins, QUT is welcoming 30 per cent more new international students to its ranks than last year.
The bumper intake is yet to be finalised, according to Vice- Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson, but current enrolments show around 850 fee-paying students from mainly South-East Asian countries are taking
Volunteer toddlers sought for asthma training trial
Uni welcomes 30 per cent more international starters in 1997
their places in undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
“We’re very pleased that this is our 10th year of record international enrolments,” Professor Gibson explained.
“The majority of our degree students this year come from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan but, in fact, we will
be welcoming degree students from more than 50 countries and all continents.”
Of its 30,000 students expected in 1997, QUT will have more than 2,000 new and continuing international students.
“Additionally, we have a further 360 students in English language and preparatory programs, again mainly from
Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan,” Professor Gibson said.
He said that, not only would QUT benefit from the presence of international students, but the local economy would see an injection of tens of millions of dollars as the students paid for accommodation, transport, food, entertainment and other items.
– Trina McLellan
and conducted with the assistance of Dr Brent Masters, a respiratory physician at the Mater Children’s Hospital.
PhD student Leisa Holzheimer – who has also written a colourful story book for the program – has been testing three, fun, five-minute teaching videos which star puppets Cassie, Cooky and Agro as well as Play School personality Benita.
“We know there are around 25 per cent of children who will experience asthma symptoms some time during their childhood,” Ms Holzheimer said.
“About 5 per cent of these children with asthma will require medication on a daily basis and these are the children that we are wanting to target.”
The parents of half of the 120 children enrolled in the trial program will be sent
the videos, the book and health history questionnaires, with mothers asked to keep a diary for three months to record children’s willingness to take medication, symptoms, number of visits to doctors and their quality of life.
Their records will be compared against health history questionnaires and diaries kept by mothers of the remaining children, who will not have had access to the videos and books until the end of the three-month period.
“We really want to see how effective these resources are in terms of not only increasing children’s knowledge about asthma and its management, but also what impact this might have on children’s health and health-related behaviours,” Ms Holzheimer said.
Earlier this year, more than 400 children throughout Brisbane and the Wide Bay region used the videos and the book through local kindergartens, playgroups and child care centres.
“The first phase was conducted to determine if the education materials were an effective teaching tool for increasing children’s knowledge about asthma,” Ms Holzheimer said.
“With the second phase we want to evaluate the effect of increased knowledge about asthma on children’s management skills and health status.
Parents interested in joining QUT’s Children’s Asthma Education Research Project should call Leisa Holzheimer on (07) 3864 3281 or (07) 3282 3651 (home) or 041 771 8608 (mobile).
When it comes to 'puffer time' for their young sibling, the Lumley triplets of Calamvale
— Sarah and Timothy — know just how to give Rachel plenty of support
QUT to run tourism conference
Page 2
Trio promotes Pacific uni
Page 4
New head for Oodgeroo unit
Page 6
From the Inside… by David Hawke
by Tony Wilson
Professor David Gardiner relishes a challenge and that’s just how he sees his new job as Pro- Vice-Chancellor (Planning & Resources) at QUT.
Appointed to the new position earlier this year, Professor Gardiner has worked at QUT for more than 20 years and, for many of those years, as Dean of the Faculty of Law.
Professor Gardiner said he believed planning was central to the successful future of any university, particularly in light of changes in Commonwealth funding and the current review of higher education.
“I am excited by the challenges of the current environment,” he said. “I think the writing was on the wall, even before the current Coalition Government, that the public purse was unlikely to continue to fund higher education to the extent it had in the past.
“The challenge to universities is to become more self-reliant upon the expertise we have and to look at the services we wish to provide to students, corporations, governments and business.”
Professor Gardiner predicted the coming year, “the era of the West review”, would be a
“very exciting time to be around”.
Viewing himself as an agent of change, a role he has played throughout his career, Professor Gardiner recalled the transitions he had made in his career to date.
“Before coming to QIT in 1976, I was practising as a barrister in New South Wales and teaching law part-time at Sydney Uni,”
he said. “I contemplated an academic career which would have made me a junior academic in a large prestigious law school surrounded by legal luminaries, but I decided it wasn’t for me.
“However, when the opportunity came to go to QIT and help set up a new law course, I jumped at the chance to get in on the ground floor.”
Professor Gardiner said that, in his new role, he expected to play a leadership role in
the university, fostering change in planning and resources areas which would better equip QUT to manage future challenges.
“The challenge in the resources area is to get a more stable forward prediction of where we are at, in terms of future sources of funding.
“Internally, it is to ensure the efforts of people at whatever level achieve returns to them of resources commensurate with performance,” he said.
“The planning section has two faces – we are the outside interface with DEETYA and other places, in terms of all of our statistical numbers and things such as the Educational Profile. But the other part is the university’s own corporate planning system.
“A lot of planning goes on at QUT, but not as much attention is paid to performance against those plans. In the future there ought to be a far greater emphasis on the achievement of plans which should be closely tied to resource allocation.”
While he was keen to get on with the new job, Professor Gardiner said he would miss the interaction with students and academic staff he had enjoyed as dean.
QUT’s contract to supply graduate management education to the Royal Australian Navy has been a major drawcard for international students, according to the acting head of the Graduate School of Business, Associate Professor Tim Robinson.
The unique partnership gave international students with a limited knowledge of Australian universities an immediate testimonial as to the quality of business education on offer at QUT, Professor Robinson said.
QUT won the tender to provide in-house graduate management instruction to officers studying at the Royal Australian Navy Staff College back in May 1996.
The Graduate Certificate in Management now forms part of a staff course for middle-ranked officers from the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force, as well as the American, Asian and Pacific defence forces.
This month four QUT academic staff from the Graduate School of Business, the School of Management and the School of Communication will fly to the on- shore base HMAS Penguin to begin lectures.
They will teach 32 men and women in intensive one- and two-day sessions until April.
“QUT is offering its very first graduate management program interstate for a very prestigious client – the Royal Australian Navy,” Professor Robinson said.
“It is a major achievement. QUT staff travel to India marketing our MBA and, of course, students there – who know nothing about QUT – ask for evidence that QUT is in the ‘right league’.
“When they are told we’ve got a contract to supply graduate management education to the Royal Australian Navy, it’s a language that anybody in any country can understand.”
Naval contract impresses overseas students
by Trina McLellan
QUT’s Continuing and Professional Education unit is providing secretariat services for the inaugural World Tourism Conference to be held in Cairns later this year.
The conference will be the first of its type to bring together policy formulators and decision-makers from private and public sectors from developed and developing nations, according to its organisers, WTC Joint Ventures.
Aided by CPE, the group has been working closely with governments in Australia and overseas as well as key industry organisations and associations.
According to WTC chairman and former president of the Seychelles Sir James Mancham, Cairns will be an ideal venue for such a conference, given its outstanding local attractions, its achievements in the promotion and management of sensitive tourism areas and its world-class convention centre.
“We will be emphasising a number of elements which are important to the development of tourism into the next century,” Sir James explained, “and Cairns, Queensland and Australia are front-runners in most of these areas.”
Sir James said high-profile keynote speakers and workshop leaders would guide the deliberations of the conference through an agenda which covered:
• preservation and management of rainforests, reefs and wilderness areas;
• promotion of indigenous cultures;
• infrastructure development;
• financing;
• communication and technology; and
• education and training.
Sir James said the conference had already attracted international support from the London- based World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), representing the global private sector, and the inter-governmental World Tourism Organisation (WTO) based in Madrid.
In Australia, WTC Joint Ventures has been working with the Australian Tourist Commission, the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation, the Far North Queensland Promotion Bureau and the Tourism Council of Australia in advance of the inaugural World Tourism Conference in early November.
According to Sir James, a number of high- profile people have already agreed to attend the conference, including the prime ministers of Belize (Manuel Esquivel) and Mauritius (Navinchandra Ramgoolam), the presidents of Uganda (Yoweri Museveni) and the Seychelles (France Albert Rene) as well as noted environmentalist and broadcaster David Bellamy.
Conference to take tourism into new millennium
Change role lures Gardiner from Law
From QUT's Council Room, Sir James Mancham officially launches the World Tourism Conference to an eager media contingent
QUT's new Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Planning & Resources Professor David Gardiner
by Andrea Hammond
While the churning waters of competitive swimming and the hushed atmosphere of a darkened theatre may seem poles apart, they have reaped Australia Day honours for QUT PhD student Brendan Burkett and drama lecturer Don Batchelor.
Gold-medal winning paralympic swimmer Brendan Burkett has had his efforts recognised with the Order of Australia, while theatre director Don Batchelor has won the 1997 Lord Mayor’s Australia Day Cultural Award Mr Burkett, 33, lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident in 1986. He is married to Cathy and has a nine- month-old daughter, Ellen.
He won gold in the men’s 50m freestyle swim and silver in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay at last years’
Atlanta Paralympic Games and also captained the 162-member Australia Paralympic team.
No stranger to the powerful rush of patriotism that comes with competing for his country, he also won a silver medal at the 1988 Seoul Paralympics and a bronze at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics.
Mr Burkett is studying for his PhD in biomechanics through QUT’s School of Human Movement Studies and is training for next year’s World Championships, the next Commonwealth Games and the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
He said he was “very excited” about the Order of Australia Medal (OAM).
“I feel really patriotic towards Australia and this makes it even better,” he said.
“It keeps you motivated, keeps you moving and makes you even more proud to be an Australian,” he said.
“Australia means so much to me – concepts such as mateship and battling against the odds in sports and in life – it’s what the country’s been built on.
We really are the lucky country.”
Meanwhile, Don Batchelor, 58, said he was “very pleased” his contribution to theatre and to the community had been recognised through the Lord Mayor’s Australia Day Awards.
He said his family – his brother, sister- in-law and their children with whom he lives – had been thrilled with his win, but were deterred from attending the Lord Mayor’s Australia Day concert and awards ceremony at the City Botanic Gardens by wet weather.
After an afternoon of – rather sodden – entertainment on Brisbane’s River Stage, Lord Mayor Jim Soorley presented distinctive statuettes to the three 1997 Cultural, Sports and Citizen award winners.
Mr Batchelor has been involved in drama and the arts since the 1960s and has participated in the cultural community through directing, writing and acting with ABC radio and television.
He has been a drama teacher with QUT’s Academy of the Arts, and its predecessor institute, the Brisbane College of Advanced Education, for more than 11 years.
Also an active member of the Brisbane theatre community, Mr Batchelor has served on the Warana Board, the Queensland Philharmonic Board, the TN Theatre Company Board and for the Queensland Community Arts Network.
Order of Australia honours winner Brendan Burkett . . . ‘my wife Cathy (and our baby daughter Ellen) and I are really excited and happy — it’s something you’ve got for life’
Lord Mayor’s Australia Day Award winner Don Batchelor . . . ‘thrilled and pleased’ to have work seen as contributing to the Brisbane community
QUT people star in Australia Day honours
by Tony Wilson
A survey has shown students forced by economic necessity to work part- time while studying were at risk of compromising their education, a situation made even worse by increased HECS charges and tighter conditions for accessing Austudy.
The survey of 100 education students by QUT early childhood lecturer Donna Berthelsen and humanities and social science lecturer Mary Power from Bond University showed that part-time work was a component of financial support packages for 74 per cent of students.
A third of the students surveyed were supporting themselves solely on income from part-time work.
Ms Berthelsen said the research showed academics were concerned that the increased need to work detracted
from the amount of time and energy devoted to study.
“Being a student is a full-time occupation if it is done well,” Ms Berthelsen said.
“High-achieving students work at being students, but those who have to support themselves with one or more jobs are often too tired to do well and may become dispirited due to the demands upon them.
“As well, lecturers believe there needs to be time for social and intellectual growth during a university course.
“Students need time to talk and reflect on intellectual issues if they are to be more than technically qualified.
“When time is limited, students concentrate only on those activities which are part of their assessment.”
However, Ms Berthelsen said, academics should guard against letting their own experiences as students cloud
Working ‘robs students of educational potential’
their perceptions of the level of commitment of working students.
“Academics need to remain sympathetic to the circumstances contemporary students find themselves in,” she said.
“Students should be made aware early within their course of study of the time commitment involved, especially those in courses with professional practice components.”
Ms Berthelsen said the financial battle facing students was a missing element in recent debates about changes to the higher education system.
“The national student union has been the only voice on this issue but, in a way, I don’t think they have been really seriously listened to,” she said
“I don’t think policy makers really understand how difficult it can be for students to survive financially these days.”
She said Austudy benefits for students calculated on their parents income assumed a willingness or ability of families to support students that, often, did not exist.
“There is a lot of talk about families feeling the squeeze of economic circumstances and I don’t think a lot of families are in the position they were 10 years ago to support their children through higher education,” she said.
“I’m not sure families feel as strongly about getting their kids to uni.
“I think there is a shift in community attitudes about how important higher education is.
“It is just becoming too difficult and things like increased HECS and tighter requirements to access Austudy shift people’s attitudes further away from making a commitment to university study.”
Donna Berthelsen … ‘Being a student is a full-time occupation’
With Bryan Nason, he also founded the College Players which went on to become the Grin & Tonic Theatre.
One of his most recent and memorable events was directing Cutting A Rug for the Australia Remembers Celebrations in 1995.
“The (Brisbane City) Council thinks I’ve made a contribution to the community and that’s what pleased me, because the Council’s policies in the arts are very community-based,” he explained.
Three QUT students late last year spent a number of weeks laying the ground work for the promotion of another university.
Their work was part of a final-year project for their Bachelor of Business (majoring in public relations).
The project took Carolyn Martin, Kylie Paulsen and Melody File to Western Samoa accompanied by their School of Communication lecturer Judy Gregory.
At present, the National University of Samoa (NUS) is located in very old buildings at Malifa, Apia.
But, in August 1997, the university will move to new buildings which are being constructed at Toomatagi, Apia under a $US30 million Japanese Aid Grant.
The student project was initiated by Professor Bernie Wolff, retired QUT Dean of Business, now Head of Commerce at NUS.
According to Ms Martin, the group’s three weeks stay in Western Samoa — with financial assistance and
Public relations trio promotes Pacific university upgrade
support from the Samoan community
— was a learning experience in paradise.
The group was required to design and produce quality publicity and promotional materials for the new NUS campus and the programs and courses it would offer.
“Our main objective was to promote the new NUS as an important educational facility,” Ms Martin said.
“However, they had no written publicity material, all they had was a university calendar which listed limited descriptions of the university and its faculties.
“We decided we would do a booklet for each of the five faculties — Commerce, Arts, Science, Nursing and Education — a preparatory program booklet on curriculum, a brochure targeting high school students on the appropriate subjects they should select and an overall booklet for the university.
“When the booklets and brochures were designed, our next step was to promote the new university and the importance of education.
“A number of posters were then created and a series of media releases and media interviews were devised to be distributed prior to the official opening.”
Ms Martin said the group met government ministers and were invited to the Education Minister’s village for lunch.
“We ate all their delicacies — including coral sperm and sharkfins — and other interesting food such as breadfruit and taro,” Ms Martin said.
Although it was hard work, Ms Martin said she would do it all again.
“The people there don’t mind Western culture.
“They will always keep their traditional ways but are open to the ideas and suggestions of the Western world,” she said.
“I really appreciated the opportunity to assist a Third World educational facility in its development towards striving for excellence.”
Getting a taste of real world public relations in Samoa were, l-r, Melody File, Carolyn Martin and Kylie Paulsen
Earlier this year a wild mother duck and her seven ducklings decided to call one of the Gardens Point campus’s leafy, secluded ponds ‘home’.
Concerned for their safety, QUT grounds staff cannily erected a temporary fence around the picturesque pond and labelled it ‘university research project’. Mother duck has since taken her young ones out into the big world.
Feathered family calls QUT home
by Andrea Hammond
QUT is set to expand its summer program to give more students the opportunity to fast-track their degrees through a third semester of study.
More than 600 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in the 81 subjects offered through the 1996-97 Summer Program conducted from mid- December to late January.
Student Administration Associate Director Ray Morley said the number of students participating had almost doubled over the previous year’s program.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson said QUT’s Summer Program was an opportunity for students to catch up on units, make up time lost through mid- semester entry or simply to get ahead with their study.
“We’ve had a terrific response this year to only a limited number of subjects on offer - in future we’ll be offering a more
Summer subjects prove popular with students
comprehensive summer program catering for students from all faculties,” Professor Gibson said.
“This initiative is most definitely part of the changing face of education – the days of university facilities lying idle outside the 28 weeks of semester are now over.”
Mr Morley said the majority of 1996-97 enrolments were in the faculties of Built Environment and Engineering, Business, and Education.
“Numbers were evenly divided between undergraduate and postgraduate students,”
Mr Morley said.
“Most of the engineering, law, science and education subjects on offer were undergraduate.
“The Business Faculty offered only postgraduate subjects and very successfully targeted and marketed them to postgraduate students.
“Next year all faculties will be targeting potential students and business subjects will be offered to undergraduate students.”
by Tony Wilson
The level playing field of world trade is an economic fantasy and one which Australia’s leaders indulge at their peril, according to a QUT academic.
Senior lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance Dr Alan Williams said increased tariff reduction would not only have a detrimental effect on Australia’s economy, but would accomplish little in moving other nations towards a free-trade stance.
“It is naive for Australia’s leaders to think they can lead the rest of the global economy into a brave new world of free trade,” he said.
“Even if such a thing as free trade existed
— and it doesn’t in the real world — Australia is a very small player in the global economy and I doubt very much the people who dictate American or Japanese trade policy give much thought at all to what Australia wants or believes is right.”
Dr Williams said increased deregulation could lead to greater short-term unemployment, especially for the least skilled members of the workforce.
“Reducing tariffs will do one of two things – it will force Australian firms to become more efficient or it will force Australian firms to move into parts of the economy more or less exposed to a world market,” Dr Williams said.
“This idea is quite reasonable where you have resources that can be easily moved from
one sector of the economy to another. But if you have resources, people for example, which are specific to certain geographic locations or specific to some type of work, then those resources will remain idle – which is essentially unemployment.
“I don’t think the workers on a car assembly line are likely to be easily transferred across into the medical services area, where we clearly have some export opportunities.”
Dr Williams said deregulation would produce a more specialised Australian economy which would be vulnerable to trends in world markets.
“The danger of cutting tariffs is that we will become a less diversified economy – we will prosper or perish at the behest of the world economy.”
Dr Williams said successive Australian governments had received economic advice which assumed deregulation was sufficient to solve Australia’s long-term economic problems.
“Many of the proponents of a deregulated economy fail to understand why we had protection in the first place, which was to diversify the economy to stop us riding on the sheep’s back and to provide jobs in the manufacturing sector for the migrants we invited to the country after World War II,”
he said.
“Of course, circumstances change and regulations should be reviewed, but that is vastly different to getting rid of all regulation.”
Level playing field risky and elusive – economist
by Noel Gentner
National gong for Data Communications head
International computer industry newspaper ComputerWorld has named QUT’s Professor Bill Caelli, picutred below right, as a 1996 ComputerWorld Fellow.
Professor Caelli, the head of QUT’s School of Data Communication, was among a select group of five people to be honoured with a fellowship in 1996.
The citation for the award, presented in Sydney in late November, recognised Professor Caelli for his outstanding contributions to computing in Australia.
– Tony Wilson by Tony Wilson
Criminals the world over may prove easier to catch thanks to a research collaboration between QUT and one of Austria’s leading forensic scientists.
Dr Friederike Blümelhuber, the owner and director of the Kriminaltechnisches Privatinstitut in the Austrian city of Linz, and
Collaboration may help nab crims
QUT senior chemistry lecturer Dr Serge Kokot are working on a way to match wool fibres to their source garments.
The technique, which involved analysis of trace elements in the fibres, could be applied by forensic scientists to gather evidence against alleged criminals, Dr Kokot said.
“Police, for example, would be able to say that fibres belonging to a garment worn by a
suspect had been found at a crime scene,” he said.
The Austrian forensic specialist visited QUT’s School of Chemistry in January, presenting seminars and workshops to postgraduate students and scientists from the Queensland Health Scientific Service (Forensic Section) and the Scientific Section of the Queensland Police Force.
Dr Kokot, who organised the visit, said Dr Blümelhuber was a trainer of crime scene investigators, magistrates, judges and prosecutors in Austria.
“Her laboratory specialises in fibre and hair examination, illicit drugs, toxic substances — including narcotics and bee and snake venom
— and analysing and (confirming the age of) ink on documents,” he said.
In addition to working with him, Dr Kokot said his Austrian colleague would be an associate supervisor to a QUT masters student who was researching black wool fibres — the hardest to match — using infrared spectroscopy, he said.
Not only an accomplished scientist of international repute, Dr Blümelhuber was also an excellent role model for the school’s large contingent of female postgraduates, Dr Kokot said.
“Dr Blümelhuber owns and runs her own forensic laboratory and is an accredited court witness in the Austrian judicial system, which draws expert testimony from impartial court- appointed sources,” he said.
“This is different from our country where, in the main, forensic scientists operate separately and remotely from the crime scene personnel, who are usually drawn from the police force.”
QUT chemistry lecturer Dr Serge Kokot watches as visiting Austrian forensic specialist Dr Friederike Blümelhuber examines minute fibres under a microscope.
Postgraduate studies in law at QUT have taken a new direction for 1997.
In response to demand from the profession, a new Graduate Certificate in Law will be offered, with seven specialist areas of law.
This will provide an advanced level of study that exceeds the level of Continuing Legal Education programs, but does not involve completion of a 96-credit-point masters.
The 48-credit-point Graduate Certificate may be completed part-time in one year.
Specialist areas will include environmental law, international law, commercial transactions, planning and resources, litigation, property and taxation.
Postgrad law gets new program Group formed to represent part-timers
Following an intensive seminar organised by QUT last year for part-time academics, the profile of part-timers is set to rise with the formation of a professional association.
Association Secretary Margaret Lloyd – from the university’s School of Maths, Science and Technology Education – said the Professional Association for Part-Time Academics (PAPTA) would support these academics by representing their interests to QUT administrators.
The group, Ms Lloyd said, would:
• provide useful information to part-timers on university services;
• work for more formal processes to be established which recognised the needs of part- timers; and, at the same time,
• provide enhanced networking opportunities.
“Each faculty and teaching unit is represented on the PAPTA organising committee,” Ms Lloyd said.
“The organising committee has also had a number of fruitful meetings with Deputy Vice- Chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake.”
Ms Lloyd said an email listserv group had been created to link part-time academics and to promote discussion within the new group.
To subscribe to the group, part-time staff simply need to email the message “subscribe ptacademics” to [email protected], leaving the subject line blank.
For more information on PAPTA, telephone Ms Lloyd on (07) 3864 5417.
by Andrea Hammond
Government ministers could not afford to own shares after they had taken office, according to the former Governor-General, Bill Hayden.
Mr Hayden, who is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Arts, made this prediction during the 1996 QUT Annual Ethics and Public Life Lecture on Politics, Public Life and the Ethical Imperative in November.
The former Governor-General told a packed auditorium that he believed ministers should sell their investments within a defined period after they had accepted a ministry.
“I am firmly of the opinion that once one opts for public office and, in particular, where one becomes a minister, one cannot possibly continue to own shareholdings at all, or to operate trusts,” Mr Hayden said.
“That is the cost, the sacrifice, and a minister can never evade the appearance of potential conflict while he — or his spouse — holds shares, no matter the mechanism used for holding them.”
Mr Hayden said that, for the 27 years he was a Member of Parliament, he consciously resisted the temptation of buying shares in any private business and the opportunity to derive an
“appreciable amount of wealth” over that time.
“There are intangible rewards in public life that more than compensate for this foregone material improvement,” he said.
Ministers should not own shares – former GG
Mr Hayden said it was not the actuality of conflict or a benefit, but the “appearance” of a potential conflict or benefit which caused the downfall of Howard ministers in the spate of pecuniary interest conflicts at the end of 1996.
“Most commentators missed the relevance of
‘appearances’ and nearly all missed the point that standards for political leaders are expected to be higher than those imposed on the general community,” he said.
Mr Hayden said he believed that even the option of blind trusts – touted by Mr Howard as a possible solution – would not conform to the ethical expectations that were realistically placed on leaders and ministers.
“When we are dealing with ministerial pecuniary interest codes, it is unsatisfactory to have codes that are designed to fit the pecuniary interests of the ministry – the obligation to adapt must be clearly on the Minister or the politician – not on the rule,” he said.
“The fact that such codes are so easily malleable and that governments can seek to publicly justify this malleability, does place a question over their efficacy.”
In his lecture, Mr Hayden also said:
• ministers selling their investments should take
“the honourable and ethical path” and reinvest them through the banking sector or superannuation; and
• public service whistleblowers bringing to light the wrong-doing or wrongful intents of a
government or minister should be protected by legislation.
Mr Hayden served in the Australian Parliament for 27 years as the Member for Oxley, was a Senior Minister in the Whitlam and Hawke governments and was Leader of the Opposition from 1977 to 1983.
Former Governor-General Bill Hayden
As students and staff begin a new year – and many of you are at university for the first time – it is opportune to note just how diverse Australian society and, even more so, our universities have become.
With 30,000 students and 3,000 staff, QUT is a very large university by world standards and, like many of the world’s famous universities, we have a truly international learning environment.
Our international students come from 60 countries around the world, but most are from the Asia-Pacific Region, in particular, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Taiwan.
In an increasingly international business and employment market, there are great professional and personal benefits to local and international students alike in learning to appreciate other cultures.
A special message about your diverse uni community
I encourage local students to consider doing part of their course overseas.
QUT has exchange arrangements with institutions world-wide as well as an international bursary scheme.
At this university we take pride in the diversity of our student and staff body and have taken steps to improve access to our courses for groups under-represented in higher education.
These include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, those with disabilities, women pursuing careers in engineering and technology, socio- economically disadvantaged people as well as those from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
In our tolerant QUT community, we can all enjoy the respect and understanding of our colleagues which mark a mature university.
We are here to learn, to inquire and to strive to understand the views of others. I invite you to be an active member of this community.
Professor Dennis Gibson
A word from the Vice-Chancellor
by Trina McLellan
For two QUT students completing three intensive years of study, there was little time to relax before they were back to work on the other side of the world.
The students — Albert Katryan and Eon Boucher, pictured below — are
Pioneering pair head for home
cadets employed by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) and, by mid- January, they were each working in one of Guysuco’s eight mills, tackling process and quality control issues and participating in the introduction of new technology for the Tate & Lyle- managed plants.
Having recently been the first two Guysuco cadets to complete Bachelor of Applied Chemistry degrees at QUT, the pair arrived back at work just as Guyana’s crushing season started to move into full swing.
Aged in their early 20s, the pair have worked hard while in Brisbane, not only completing their requisite subjects in the minimum time, but also taking extra subjects in mechanical engineering in each of six semesters at QUT.
“We had limited free time while we were studying, so we didn’t get much of a chance to relax or see the sights,” Mr Boucher admitted. “We just had our heads stuck in our books most of the time.”
When classes were finished each semester, the pair spent valuable time in a variety of Australian sugar mills, including Tate & Lyle’s Millaquin mill in Bundaberg, the Rocky Point export facility and a northern New South Wales mill called Broadwater mill near Ballina.
Mr Boucher, who comes from the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, and Mr Katryan – who comes from Corriverton, a rural community on the border with Suriname and only slightly north of the Equator – said they had really enjoyed attending university in Queensland.
“Despite the fact we come from an equatorial country, it has been a lot hotter here in Brisbane than we had expected it would be,” Mr Katryan said. “But it’s not that hot once you’re at uni and we really appreciated the greater range of facilities available at QUT, the advanced technology laboratories and media- equipped lecture theatres. They’re just not available in universities at home.”
Mr Katryan said Guysuco had been so pleased with the success of its first two cadets that four more would be sent to Queensland to begin classes in 1997.
More than 2,500 people crowded into the Kidney Lawn and surrounding areas at Gardens Point last Wednesday night for the official QUT Orientation welcome.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson addressed the happy crowd of new local and international students, their parents and friends, as did the Registrar, Ken Baumber, and QUT Guild president Lance McCallum.
The crowd was also entertained by a live band and an action-packed 8.5-minute orientation video put together by the Electronic Media Production unit and narrated by two Academy of the Arts graduates, Margaret Harvey, from the Torres Strait, and Daniel Kealy of Moorooka.
Stalls lined surrounding the Kidney Lawn carried information from the university’s service areas as well as its
clubs and societies, with food and drinks available to those willing to queue for a while.
Tours of the Library and other facilities ran before and after the formalities.
As most classes begin this week, QUT will have around 30,000 students being taught by some 3,000 staff across three campuses and by distance education.
Oodgeroo leader shows culture can coexist with career
by Trina McLellan
For the new manager of QUT’s Oodgeroo Unit, Penny Tripcony, taking her new position was as much a career move as a private realisation of her cultural destiny.
The unit supports indigenous students academically and socially, encouraging them to come into and graduate from courses which will give them the qualifications to reach their potential.
Ms Tripcony joined the unit last September with a strong work and academic background in indigenous education.
“Most recently I was working at the University of Queensland for a couple of years,” she explained. “For six years before that, I had worked in a management position with the
State’s Education Department (as principal policy officer for indigenous education matters).
Prior to that, I worked for many years as an Aboriginal education adviser in the Victorian Ministry of Education.
“After the stints in government, I was ready for a break from
‘being in charge’, so I took a job at UQ where I was second in charge and it was great . . . for a while.
“Bit by bit, though, I again felt the urge to get back into the role of manager, to lead others and make a difference in doing so.
So, in that sense, this job came along at just the right time.”
The quiet and carefully spoken Ms Tripcony said she, personally, had few preconceptions of her new role and employers before she joined.
“I really didn’t know what to expect when I came to QUT,” she said. “I had been aware of QUT’s strong role and reputation in the education of teachers in this State.
“QUT seems to prepare people more for the practical side, especially in all levels of education and that’s where most indigenous people have studied in the past.
“But I was also aware of the history of how the Oodgeroo Unit came to be and how, in its early forms, it was moved from place to place quite a lot.
“Some people even wished me ‘good luck’ in such a way that, despite my background, I began to suspect that the task really might not be for me.
“However, I grew up in and around Stradbroke and Moreton Islands and, maybe because of the unit’s name — Oodgeroo (from the district’s late beloved Aboriginal elder known to white Australia as poet Kath Walker) — some of our elders urged me to take the position.
“They reassured me that they believed the job was for me.”
Ms Tripcony said she had since been pleased with several things about QUT.
“I was understandably concerned about how such a small unit would work across three campuses. But the communication technology — internal phone lines, voice mail, mobile phones and email in particular
— mean we manage quite well, especially our lecturers who are based at our small Carseldine and Gardens Point offices . . . and they’re out and about quite a lot.”
“I’m pleased to see QUT maintains a practical approach to its courses and is constantly involved in leading-edge
developments and focusing on employability,” Ms Tripcony said.
“That is what makes the university so worthwhile to students.”
The Oodgeroo Unit provides academic support, advice and friendship to a growing number of indigenous students — around 250 across all faculties this year — and has made a small grant to each faculty to support recruitment and retention of indigenous students. Over time, the unit has forged partnerships with several faculties and helps deliver classes which have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander component.
This, Ms Tripcony believes, is why QUT is an attractive place for indigenous students.
“Pleasingly, we have strong growth in the postgraduate area and with fourth-year training for teachers wanting to upgrade their qualifications,”
Ms Tripcony said.
“However, with the differential HECS and the rising costs of tertiary study, we anticipated a fairly large fall away in undergraduate numbers. Thankfully, while those numbers have come back from last year, it has been nowhere near as drastic as we thought it would be.”
Ms Tripcony’s biggest surprise on joining QUT, she said, was not so much the imbalance of indigenous students to non-indigenous students, though that is so, but the lack of indigenous staff on all three campuses.
“Indigenous people constitute 2.4 per cent of the State’s population,” she said.
“At QUT, indigenous students make up just .83 per cent of the student body.
“But, when we needed two, non- Oodgeroo indigenous staff members to sit on our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee, we searched and searched before we could find anyone. In the end, we identified only four and they were all in relatively low-level positions.”
Far from reading the situation as deliberate exclusion, Ms Tripcony believes most people at QUT want to know how to help and include indigenous people at all levels.
“Indigenous people come in all different skin colours and it’s not always easy to recognise their origins.
“Accepting the identity of indigenous students and staff — and their pride in being indigenous — is what they need most,” she said.
“This, and valuing their contribution — not just tolerating their presence — is a recognition that everyone can bring in something of value and use.”
Perhaps it is her strong core of Aboriginal values which give Ms Tripcony a clear insight into what today’s busy university decision-makers need to keep in mind.
“Service to the community is service to students and service to students is service to the community, but not everyone has realised that,” Ms Tripcony said.
“Perhaps our notion of the QUT community may be too constrained by the notion of campus. Students go back to their broader community at the end of the day, a community with its own sets of expectations, and it is easy to overlook that.
“If QUT really wants to be a student- focused institution, we have to listen more to existing and potential students,” she said.
Penny Tripcony . . . ‘we all need recognition, value and
acceptance’
Thousands flock to official orientation launch
Come the start of the tertiary year, new university students are usually preoccupied with checking timetables, registering for classes, finding out where things are located on campus, organising accommodation and tackling the transport maze.
Indeed, some are still coming to grips with these arrangements months later!
However, for prospective tertiary students with a disability, the task can be all the more daunting, even off- putting if the perceived obstacles are too great.
Many are weighing up their options years before they even finish high school.
But determining just how accessible university courses are has been made much easier in the past few years, thanks to a special program called Unitaste.
The program brings high school students with disabilities into a busy university for a few days to attend lectures, work their way around a typical tertiary campus – QUT at Gardens
Point – and further explore their areas of interest.
Unitaste co-ordinator Glenda Page welcomed to QUT’s Gardens Point campus 29 students with disabilities from 22 different South-East Queensland high schools between December 10 and 12.
“It was an opportunity for students with disabilities to experience university over a short period and to test for themselves whether a university course, and university life, would be a viable option for them,” Ms Page explained.
“But it was not a ‘show and tell’. It was full-on ‘immersion’ where they used libraries, computers and their own
‘nouse’ to move around the campus and discover what they need to know.”
During their three-day visit, Ms Page added, the students gleaned insights and advice from 17 mentors who had not let disabilities stand in their way as they tackled their tertiary studies at QUT and the University of Queensland.
Program lets disabled high school students taste university life
“It is important for Unitaste students to hear what it is like first-hand and not simply from academics and administrators,” Ms Page said.
“What we aim to do is provide them with a valuable experience and adequate information for them to make up their own minds about what, if any, courses they might pursue.
“And their ability and eagerness to learn has been reflected in the high standard of their presentations at the end of their visit.”
As in past Unitaste visits, feedback has shown the students have appreciated the chance to become familiar with QUT and its facilities and services, she said.
Extremely positive reports about students’ Unitaste experiences had come from teachers and parents, Ms Page said.
“They certainly report individual students are more focused and more motivated to achieve their goals.”
– Trina McLellan
Donna McDougall of St Patrick’s College in Gympie receives a Unitaste certificate of attendance from QUT Chancellor Cherrell Hirst
by Tony Wilson
QUT’s growing collection of Aboriginal art has received a boost with the acquisition of a work by renowned indigenous painter Rover Thomas.
Curator of the QUT Art Collection Stephen Rainbird said Thomas’ painting, Cyclone Tracy, was the most significant of the 128 pieces added to QUT’s art collection last year.
“I had been looking at buying a Rover Thomas painting for the collection for the past six months,” Mr Rainbird said.
“He is a major figure, not just in Aboriginal art, but in contemporary Australian art and this is borne out by the fact that his work is now included in most major public art collections around Australia.
“He has been given the rare honour of a major survey exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra and he and fellow Aboriginal artist Trevor Nickolls represented Australia at the 1990 Venice Biennale.”
Mr Rainbird said the acquisition of Cyclone Tracy was timely as the artist, now in his 70s, will soon retire from painting.
“Rover Thomas spent most of his life as a stockman in the Kimberley
Collection gains piece by key Aboriginal artist
region of north-west Australia. He didn’t actually start painting until the early 1980s, which would have put him
in his late ’50s or early ’60s, but that’s not unusual for Aboriginal artists,” Mr Rainbird said.
“He is a prolific artist and has produced a substantial body of very high quality work.”
Mr Rainbird said Rover Thomas had
“a particular style which is very simple, very elegant and very abstract”.
“His work encapsulates the spirit of the Australian landscape which is probably his greatest contribution as an artist
“He is one of those very rare painters who has provided us with a unique vision of the Australian landscape. In that sense, he follows in the footsteps of artists like Fred Williams and Tom Roberts.”
Mr Rainbird said Cyclone Tracy, painted in 1996, was typical of Thomas’ work, combining traditional visual elements and ochre pigments with contemporary ideas of abstraction.
“As well as levelling Darwin in 1974, Cyclone Tracy also had a profound effect on the people and landscape of the Kimberley region,” he said.
“This painting can be read on several levels.
“The artist has actually described the motifs in the painting as representing the eye and the spout of the cyclone, but the shapes also suggest other things including a boomerang and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”
Cyclone Tracy was purchased with the assistance of Friends of the QUT Art Collection through the QUT Foundation.
QUT Art Collection curator Stephen Rainbird admires Rover Thomas’ Cyclone Tracy
Not quite a uni student yet, baby Rachel Jordan sits in on QUT’s 1997 welcome for around 130 Q-Step students Following last year’s Federal Budget
which allocated funds for a limited number of scholarships at the same time HECs rises were announced, QUT will award 46 Equity and Merit Scholarships.
These are to be shared between the Oodgeroo Unit which caters for indigenous students, students with disabilities, and students supported by the Q-Step program.
Q-Step aims to increase the proportion of students from low-income backgrounds coming into higher
education. Early last week the program welcomed 130 new students to QUT.
Co-ordinator of the Q-Step program Derek Bland said students who received scholarships would have an added incentive to continue on to graduate.
“They will get basically a free tertiary education and will be relieved of the burden of debt once they have graduated,” he said.
Australian universities received 1,000 scholarships in 1997, a figure the Federal Government has pledged to double in 1998.
New scholarships announced
Across the university, there have been a number of initiatives over the past few years to ensure the QUT community becomes more sensitive to the needs of all students and staff.
Some of those initiatives have involved introducing policies which state the university’s approach to broader, social issues
— such as a strong opposition to sexual and racial harassment; equity in recruitment and work/study environments; provision of services to assist disabled students.
Programs have been run in culturally responsive teaching and learning for staff and, at a curriculum level, work is going on in every faculty to incorporate cultural and
QUT aims for diversity, not division
related elements into various course structures. Progressively, course materials are being reviewed, student forums established and staff development opportunities are being pursued.
And, in a growing number of places, there are mentoring schemes to foster the students (and staff) who come from socio- economic, cultural, gender, racial and religious backgrounds which are different to those of the majority of their peers.
In such an environment, cross-cultural communication skills become vital to the success of such initiatives.
Late last year, QUT ran a special workshop for educators who wanted to
explore and create learning experiences which inspire and empower people to value human diversity.
Presented by three experts from the REACH Center in Seattle, Washington, the workshop moved beyond awareness training.
The trio — Gary Howard, Colleen Almojuela, an American Indian, and Japanese American David Koyama — suggested universities needed to engage all the perspectives open to them and to look at a more “systematic” change when it came to cultural awareness.
They took the workshop participants from awareness of multi-cultural issues to exploring personal approaches to diversity in the workplace and how to bring about institutional change.
Workshop co-ordinator and Academic Staff Development Unit lecturer Patricia Kelly said the three-day intensive “train-the-trainer” session was a chance for the 30 attendees to “expand their repertoires and gain confidence in their ability to bring about change in their faculties”.
“Eventually, we hope to train a pool of lecturers who can spread the message,”
Ms Kelly said.
– Trina McLellan
(L-R) REACH workshop presenters David Koyama, Colleen Almojuela and Gary Howard take a quick tour of QUT
The Guild has also recently launched a fund-raising program called the
“Friends of QUT Sport” project and is seeking tax-deductible donations to support QUT’s participation in inter- university sport.
For further information about either project, call Mr Gordon on (07) 3864 1684.
• • •
WHILE southern universities are struggling to fill their quotas for their education courses, first-preference applicants for QUT’s Faculty of Education courses have risen 15 per cent over the previous year, according to the Dean of Education, Professor Alan Cumming.
As a result, the OP cutoff in the Bachelor of Education (Primary) has improved from OP13 to OP12 while the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) has improved from OP10 to OP8.
Professor Cumming said he was particularly pleased to see the results were strong for both undergraduate and postgraduate education courses and that the QUT result continued to defy a national trend of falling enrolments in teacher education courses.
• • •
THE new acting director of QUT’s Academic Staff Development Unit, Professor Gail Hart, has been appointed to the Federal Government’s new Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development.
This new committee supersedes the previous Committee for Advancement of University Teaching and the Commonwealth Staff Development Scheme.
Professor Hart, who has stepped into the ASDU head role from the School of Nursing, has taken over from Professor Phil Candy who has taken a position at Ballarat University in Victoria.
• • •
BUSINESS Faculty students Angela Scheers and March Bahnisch have been presented with the 1997 Suzanne Lines
by Tony Wilson
Universities are better able to cope with shrinking budgets and staff upheavals if they have a solid work and family program, according to a report published in the United States.
Late last year, QUT’s work and family co- ordinator Jane Barker attended a conference at Stanford University at which the New York- based Families and Work Institute presented the results of the first comprehensive study of work and family issues in the American higher education sector.
Ms Barker said she believed close study of the results would benefit Australian university administrators faced with reduced Commonwealth funding, increasingly complex human resource issues and the current review of Australian higher education.
“One of the key findings of the report was that institutions which had been through upheavals — such as reduced funding and
by Andrea Hammond
QUT Associate Professor Gary Ianziti, pictured above, is deeply immersed in the life and times of Renaissance Italy – from the comfort of his Carseldine office overlooking myriads of blue-grey gum trees.
Professor Ianziti is the benign face of 20th Century scholarship, studying the forgotten manuscripts of 15th and 16th Century documents via millions of metres of microfilm mail-ordered from Italian libraries.
Hand-written letters, speeches and memos in Latin – by authors the calibre of historian and diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli – are the source of his study, The Writing of History in Renaissance Italy.
Many of the documents make mention of three men often seen to epitomise the excitement, adventure and curiosity of the Italian Renaissance – Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.
“In my collection, I have a letter from Machiavelli about a battle scene that Leonardo (da Vinci) was supposed to depict.
“Machiavelli uses that letter in his history (writings), but he also makes it available to Leonardo to paint a huge battle scene in the town hall in Florence,” Professor Ianziti said.
“There are difficulties in working with incomplete library catalogues and delays in receiving material but,
QUT rep inspects work and family ‘benchmarks’
Professor ponders Italian Renaissance from afar
basically, the sort of research that I’m doing requires that you have been collecting material for a long time.
“For me, the important thing is it (using microfilm) allows me to be able to look at the sources the historians are using and whether they use their sources critically or in a more utilitarian way.
“In some ways, the distance involved in living in Brisbane, Australia, is an advantage.
“I think, sometimes, people are so captivated by the mythology of the Renaissance that they fail to look at it more objectively.
“I have lived, worked and studied in Italy for a total of 10 years – 30 per cent of my adult life – so I have been close up and I know what that’s like.
“Now it’s interesting to see what the study appears like from a huge distance.
“I think it might be one reason why I have a more critical edge.”
Professor Ianziti began his research in 1990, during a three-year appointment at the University of Trieste.
He said he focused on 15th and 16th Century Italian history because that was the period universally identified as the time when modern history and modern historical methods took shape.
“I was intrigued by the history of history writing and looking at what were some of the real concerns of historians who wrote history – rhetorical, literary, formal, political, personal and having to do with ambition, careers and so forth,”
Professor Ianziti explained.
“I hope that is something I bring with me to my history teaching here at QUT – to encourage my students to try looking at history not as a mere bundle of facts, but as something constructed by historians.”
Professor Ianziti has been working with the help of research assistant Lynn Croft and a three-year, $60,000 Australian Research Council grant.
downsizing — had the strongest and most well- established programs,” she said.
“They identified that the campuses which fared best had a strong strategic approach to human resource management and part of that was maintaining the morale and commitment of staff.
“They assessed the institutions on policies — both formal and informal — programs and culture and compared these to programs in the corporate sector which (in the US as well as Australia) is streets ahead of universities in implementing work and family programs,” Ms Barker explained.
“Only 29 American universities measured up and I was able to visit seven of these – Stanford, Cornell, the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Michigan State and the University of Michigan.”
Ms Barker also visited the work and family research centre at Boston University.
“QUT is more advanced in work and family than some universities in America, but in comparison to the leading campuses we are way
behind, especially in the area of direct support to staff,” she said.
“They, of course, have been doing it for much longer – most of them have had their programs up and running for four or five years.
“But they are also better resourced and staffed than at QUT where there is one temporary position to cover the whole area.”
Australia, however, was ahead of the US in backing up work and family policies with legislation, she said.
“The legislative framework in Australia is much stronger than in America where these programs rely mainly on the goodwill of the institution,” she said. “In Australia, for example, there have been the parental and carer’s leave test cases, the Industrial Relatons Reform Act and now the Workplace Relations Bill.”
Australian Universities should capitalise on that advantage, Ms Barker said.
Ms Barker’s four-week visit was administered through the QUT Professional Development Program for General Staff.
EARLIER this month, the university bade farewell to Deputy Registrar David Greenwood after more than 21 years’
service.
QUT Vice-Chancellor Dennis Gibson said that Mr Greenwood, who had decided to retire after major heart surgery late last year, would be keenly missed by his colleagues.
• • •
STAFF on extended leave will be able to keep in touch with what’s happening at QUT with two new services to be launched this semester.
Work and family co-ordinator Jane Barker said that staff on extended leave could continue to receive copies of Teaching Technology and Computing News by forwarding their details (name, school/section, campus, period of leave and home address) to Jason Copeland in the Division of Information Services.
Staff on extended leave can also receive copies of Inside QUT during their absence if they send similar details to Joanne Garnett in the Public Affairs Department.
• • •
THE University’s Academic Board has confirmed the status of five research centres at QUT for the next three years.
The centres include the Centre for Molecular Biotechnology (a research centre), the Centre for Media Policy and Practice and the Centre for Public Health Research (both school centres), the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Centre for Asset Management (both collaborative centres).
• • •
ASSOCIATE Professor Richard Johnson, from the University of Hawaii, has begun a six-month appointment as adjunct professor in the School of Early Childhood.
• • •
FINAL-YEAR aerospace avionics engineering student Ryan Regan was one of five finalists for the recently presented Schneider Award of Excellence.
Mr Regan received $500 in the annual award, which is open to final-year electrical engineering students.
• • •
FROM this year, QUT’s Student Guild will offer up to six scholarships to help QUT students complete their education while still competing in their chosen sport.
Athletes in any sport in which QUT competes at a NCUSA or AUSF level will be eligible to apply for the two full scholarships (each worth $2,500) or four half scholarships (worth $1,250 each), according to Guild spokesperson Don Gordon.
News in brief
Memorial Scholarship in industrial relations.
Sponsored by the Australian Services Union and the Brisbane City Council, the annual scholarship is in memory of the late BCC employee Suzanne Lines and will fund this year’s HECS fees, Guild fees and textbook expenses for the two students. Both students are completing a Graduate Diploma in Industrial Relations.
• • •
MARKETING student Sharon Slattery has been named the 1996 Coca-Cola Scholarship winner.
The scholarship, worth $10,000 over three years, was presented to the Faculty of Business student by the General Manager of CCA Beverages, Pat Molloy, at a recent function in QUT’s Council Room.
• • •
BUSINESS student Lani McFarland has been presented with the Metway Bank Scholarship for second-year students majoring in banking and finance.
• • •
MORE than a hundred well-wishers gathered in the Council Room in late January to bid goodbye and good luck to the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Officer Mary-Rose MacColl.
After working at QUT for a decade, Ms MacColl is now writing full-time after the successful launch of her first book, No Safe Place, towards the end of last year.
• • •
BOUQUETS to the busy staff of the Gardens Point printery. With the rush of work prior to the start of first semester, they were kept busy 24 hours a day processing 5,646,954 copies in the month up to February 11.
• • •
BRICKBATS to the people who set the refectory prices. Eagle-eyed staff and students report hikes of around 30 per cent on some items since last semester.
Staff are finding it particularly hard to swallow when their pay packets have grown significantly less.
QUT senior lecturer Dr Anne Hickling- Hudson has won two awards for a PhD thesis on adult education in Grenada, analysing the subject from 1980, through the upheaval of the 1979 revolution and the 1983 US invasion, to 1995.
Last year Inside QUT reported Dr Hickling-Hudson’s thesis, Literacy and Literacies in Grenada, won the 1996 Gail Kelly Award for the Outstanding Dissertation of the Year from the North American Comparative and International Education Society.
Thesis wins second award
She has since been awarded the 1 9 9 6 O u t s t a n d i n g T h e s i s i n Education Award from the Australian A s s o c i a t i o n f o r R e s e a r c h i n Education.
Dr Hickling-Hudson has taught at QUT and its predecessor institutions since 1987, but did her PhD through the University of Queensland.
She said the two awards highlighted QUT’s new expertise in international education.
