Hey kids, let’s put on a show!

This will not be too hard for staff and students at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, based at Edith Cowan U, Mount Lawley. Audiences, sorry prospective students at Open Day can sit-in on classes, watch rehearsal of shows and see how backstage works. Hard to beat as a way of working out what’s what with WAAPA. It’s on Sunday week.

Although, it’s been a while between wins

Melissa Lucashenko wins the 2019 Miles Franklin Award, for her novel, Too Much Lip published by University of Queensland Press.

It’s a first for her and a third for the press, the other two wins being for Peter Carey novels, in 1989 (Oscar and Lucinda) and 1998 (Jack Maggs). The only other university press to publish a Miles Franklin winner is UWA Press, for Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions (2017).

Swinburne U is accredited by the snappily titled Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business

It joins Bond, Curtin Deakin, Griffith, La Trobe, Macquarie and Monash universities, plus QUT and the universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle, Queensland, Sydney and UWA, as well as UTS and UNSW. All are AACSB accredited to teach business. No Australian institutions are AACSB accredited in accounting (although UNSW, Uni Sydney and UnI Melbourne were back in 2013 ( CMM   August 22 2013).

AACSB accreditation is the base for international recognition as a serious business school. But a nod from the Association of MBAs helps, (Flinders U, Monash U, QUT). So does a tick from the European EFMD Quality Improvement System, (Bond U, Uni Melbourne, Monash U, QUT, UWA, Uni Queensland, Uni SA, Uni Sydney, UNSW).

She is standing down as dean of science at Uni Melbourne to return to research

Professor Day has US$3m from the US National Institutes of Health for malaria research. She will work at the university’s Bio21 institute, where she has researched during her five years as dean.

Deputy dean Aleks Owczarek will act, “until further notice.”

Yesterday’s protest was peaceful, with no repeat of last week’s scuffles

Campus observers put the crowd at 75 or so, with one suggesting that as demonstrations go “it was a bit of a fizzer,” which will be what the university hoped for.

The issue that inspired the protest, the university’s accepting Chinese Government funding for its Confucius Institute is not live, for now. But a boil-over in Hong Kong would put the PRC funded CI back on the campus agenda.

Chris Semasarian (Uni Sydney) is the incoming editor-in-chief of journal Circulation: genomic and precision medicine, “with time differences in Australia, will be the journal that never sleeps,” (he tweets).   North American staff are warned.

The peak postgrad body is calling on NSW to give international students public transport concessions – again

The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations in coalition with other umbrella student organisations and NSW campus based bodies (everywhere except UNE and Macquarie U) wants the state government to provide concession fares to FT international students. Failing that it proposes universities fund such a scheme.

This is part of a continuing campaign (CMM March 7), which derailed in 2016, when, CAPA states, the NSW state government quietly cancelled a limited concession introduced when Barry O’Farrell was premier (oh come on, O‘Farrell, big bloke – liked a bottle of quality red).

CAPA estimates extending travel concessions to international students would cost the state $168m.

TEQSA tweets that its call for papers (conference in November) is open to August 4 – using a cartoon of a cartoon crocodile with jaws anticipatingly open to illustrate the point. But pay no heed to advice that one should never smile at a crocodile.  Last time CMM spoke at a Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency event few in the audience wanted to eat him alive.

The (very long) 2019 Eureka Prize shortlists are out.

Teams and/or individuals from 30 plus universities, research institutions, even a few companies are listed.

There is a wide spread of entries across the 17 categories. On CMM’s count ANU leads, represented in six.

There are dogs in space on campuses across the country

Yesterday CMM reported UNE has dogs on staff in the counselling unit –it’s not alone. La Trobe reports “well-being dogs” plus 20 pups in-training, or about to be, at Bendigo and Bundoora campuses to work with veterans with PTSD.

Murdoch U’s Library has a team of seven of (presumably Dewey-dogs) who visit  from the School of Vet Science and Animal Hospital, “to help our students and staff de-stress”.

And Swinburne U has a research programme on all the roles guide dogs fill.

But when it comes to support Swinburne U has another programme to crow about –chooks at its student residences. Apparently. they “strengthen the sense of community among students living on campus by encouraging responsibility, social connectedness and outdoor activity.”  They also lay eggs.

The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education announces the 2019-20 equity fellows. Nicole Crawford (Uni Tas) will investigate mental wellbeing of mature-age students from remote and regional communities. Katelyn Barney (Uni Queensland) will examine impacts of intensive outreach camps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

In great timing, Southern Cross U appoints writer Melissa Lucashenko as inaugural Barry Conyngham Creative Arts Fellow. Ms Lucashenko won the 2019 Miles Franklin Tuesday night.