Open Day of the day

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.

ARC performance audit out today

For once it’s the Australian Research Council that is sweating on an announcement

The Australian National Audit Office report on the ARC is due for tabling in the House of Representatives today. The ANAO announced the audit in January, (CMM January 25), to look at the ARC’s administration of the National Competitive Grants Programme and whether it aligns with government research and innovation objectives.

In an undoubted coincidence, yesterday the ARC was promoting the on-line availability of its publication, Making a difference: outcomes of ARC supported research , which is here.

UQP’s brilliant career

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 now bigger in bized

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).

Back to the lab for Uni Melbourne’s Karen Day

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.”

All quiet at Uni Queensland

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.

No stopping these presses

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.

Just the ticket: call for NSW to give international students travel concessions

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.

 

Sure, you can smile at a crocodile

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.

 

 

Many Eureka nominees

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.

Working dogs of the day

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 reportswell-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.

Appointments

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.