A win for VU

 Victoria U’s block model wins an award from LMS provider Brightspace

VU has “customised and automated the Brightspace LMS” for its block teaching model and the company thinks this is very good indeed. VU is awarded a Brightspace Desire2Learn excellence award, which celebrates, “inspiration and innovation in digital education, and learning and development.”

Uni Newcastle signs with Thai royal academy

The university plans to partner with a royal Thai academy to offer a dual med engineering degree

VC Alex Zelinsky has signed an MOU with (deep breath) Dr Her Royal Highness Princess Chulabhorn Mahidol of Thailand, to develop a dual degree with HRH’s Chulabhorn Royal Academy.

The four-year programme combines medical innovation and engineering degrees. Students will start with 18 months in Thailand, followed by two years at Uni Newcastle and a final six months on business and entrepreneurship at Chulabhorn RA.

Graduates are expected to work in med tech companies and start-ups.

This will be a bolster for Uni Newcastle’s med science standing in SE Asia. In April it was one of three Australian and 100 overall international med schools whose graduates were dropped from the Singapore Government’s approved for practice register (CMM April 23).

Ten decades of dentistry in SA

Uni Adelaide celebrates its dental school’s century  

There’s a dinner in October and a seminar on what next.

It could have all been worse for the state’s only and one of the world’s leading dental schools, first in Australia and 29th in the world in last month’s ARWU discipline ranking. Back in 2014 the Labor state government talked about pulling the public dental service contract from Uni Adelaide and there were rumours that Uni South Australia was interested. It was all connected to the cost of making space for the state dental clinic in the new Royal Adelaide Hospital complex.  Then Uni Adelaide VC Warren Bebbington, a bloke who knows how many beans make five, found $50m to fund space for 30 years.

Up in lights at Bundoora

La Trobe U is selling tickets to the award of an hon doc to Shah Rukh Khan at the Bundoora campus

Mr Khan is a very big indeed Indian film star, in Melbourne next month for a film festival. The ticket sales goes to Mr Khan’s charity but CMM wonders whether LT U has been watching the rushes from a Curtin U production.

Back in April Curtin U created the Meng Fei scholarship, when the star of China dating show, “If you are the one” was in Perth.

CMM suggests the “Sha Rukh Khan La Trobe scholarship scheme would be great box-office in India.

AFP alerts Chinese students

The Australian Federal Police has a new warning for the Chinese community, “particularly international students,” of “complex social engineering fraud and telephone scams”

The AFP’s examples include people being targeted by fraudsters claiming to be from the Australian Tax Office, the Chinese Embassy or PRC public security officials.  “Scams take advantage of people’s trust in authorities and fear of doing the wrong thing” the AFP warns. The police also offer advice – of the tell them nothing, take them nowhere ,variety

It’s only a matter of time until scammers start claiming to be from the contract cheating police.

Unis where entrepreneurs star

There’s a “moderate boom” in entrepreneurship in Australian universities

 Alex Maritz and Quan Nguyen (both La Trobe U) and Martin Bliemel (UTS) make the conclusion in a major research-survey, to be published in the journal Education and Training.

There’s ordinary news: “There is a sparse and inconsistent distribution of programmes and initiatives at Australian higher education institutions, particularly against the backdrop of rapidly expanding start-up and entrepreneurship eco-systems,” they warn.

And good news: However, they also find reason for “optimism for growth of the discipline,” pointing to, “proactive growth of new players,” such as Flinders U, Uni Canberra and La Trobe U.

How they know: Supported by a comprehensive analysis of theory and practise, the authors update a 2015 survey to rank all universities on 12 attributes, covering teaching programmes, subjects, chairs, entrepreneurs in residence, incubators and eco-systems, plus statistical analysis of content in plans.

Where’s strong: They find substantial change in the top ten between 2015 and ’18; Uni Adelaide was first last year and second in ’15. It is followed by, UTS two (nine in 2015), Uni Queensland, three (four), La Trobe U, four (21), Flinders U five (18),  Swinburne U six (one), Uni Melbourne seven (five), RMIT, eight (seven), Uni Canberra nine (19) and Uni SA ten (eight).

Where’s getting better : includes Murdoch U (33 in ’15 and 19 last year), Deakin U (34 improving to 17)  QUT (up from 11 to 22)and CQU (27 last year and 37 in 2015).

Where’s not fussed: There is not as much movement over time at the other end; Victoria U 30 (26), Charles Sturt U 31 (32), Monash U 32 (31), Charles Darwin U 33 (36), Southern Cross U 34 (25), James Cook U 35 (29), Edith Cowan U 36 (24), UNE 37 (38), Uni Southern Queensland 38 (30), Australian Catholic U 39 (35), Uni Notre Dame 40 (39).

All up:  Increases in senior appointments and development of incubators and accelerators means a “moderate boom” in EE, the authors include

BHERT passes the torch

The Business Higher Education Council plans to wind-up after this year’s awards, (CMM July 8) but it appears its work will go on

The awards for industry-university collaboration will now be announced at Engagement Australia’s conference on August 29-30 and there is talk of EA taking them over. The conference theme of the university as civic institution embedded in community this augurs well.

A different case for change at Monash U

The current round of enterprise bargaining talks at Monash U started so long ago that CMM reported them in Latin

In the hope of moving things along, the National Tertiary Education Union has work bans in place for Open Day next month. The union also has made its own video version of a Monash U student recruitment campaign, “if you don’t like it change it.”

“Whether you want to change your life, your career, your community, or the future, it starts at Monash. Join us and leave the world in better shape than you found it,” the university urges.

The union’s version suggests that things need to change at the university itself, including for 70 per cent of staff who are in “insecure work.”  “Take a stand for an education built on fair jobs,” it suggests.

There’s no chance anybody will confuse the two.

Appointments, achievements

Shaun Goldfinch is the Australia and New Zealand School of Government’s inaugural WA Government Chair in Public Administration and Policy. He will be based at Curtin U and moves from Victoria U of Wellington.

Griffith U research professor Allan Cripps is the new chair of the Children’s Health Alliance, an initiative of the Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service and the Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Sarah O’Shea and Janine Delahunty (both Uni Wollongong) win the Higher Education Research and Development Journal article of the year for their, “Getting through the day and still having a smile on my face: how do students define success in the university learning environment?”  You can read it, here.

The University of Melbourne announces the 2019 chancellor’s prizes for PhD theses;

Katherine O’Connor (Melbourne Graduate School of Education)

Tyne Sumner, (Culture and Communication)

Andrew Price (Mathematics and Statistics)

Michela Mariani (Management and Geography)

 Joshua Foreman (Ophthalmology Ear and Eye Hospital_