Excellence in academic endeavour in the sciences will be celebrated at Charles Sturt University (CSU) on Thursday afternoon in Albury. Dean of the University’s Faculty of Science, Professor Nick Klomp, will present awards and prizes to current students and graduates as well as staff at a ceremony starting at 2.30pm. The Dean’s Awards for academic excellence, staff recognition awards and other student prizes will be presented to recipients based in Albury-Wodonga in the Schools of Community Health, Environmental Sciences, and Nursing, Midwifery and Indigenous Health. The ceremony will be held in the Nowik Auditorium, Guinea St, Albury.

An Indigenous literary academic and leading writer will explain the vital role of literacy in Indigenous self-determination at the next annual Bob Meyenn Annual Education Lecture, to be held this Thursday 22 April at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Hosted by the University’s Murray School of Education, in Albury-Wodonga, the lecture will be presented by Indigenous Literacy Ambassador, Dr Anita Heiss, who will discuss the key ingredient missing in the education system which could easily ensure a fair and equitable life experience for her people. Dr Heiss is from the Wiradjuri nation of central NSW, born and bred in Sydney. She is an author, poet, social commentator, travel writer and satirist and has published non-fiction, historical fiction, children’s fiction and so-called ‘chicklit’. Dr Heiss will present the third Bob Meyenn Annual Education Lecture titled ‘Indigenous literacy: the key to self-determination’ at 7.30pm in the Nowik Auditorium, Guinea Street, Albury.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) will recognise academic excellence among its graduating students with pomp and ceremony in Albury on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 April. Students will graduate from courses in such diverse areas as accounting, nursing, teaching, physiotherapy, environmental science, speech pathology, information technology, podiatry, leisure and health, marketing and occupational therapy in three ceremonies. Highlighting the growing importance of research on the Albury-Wodonga Campus, this year 10 Doctors of Philosophy will be awarded to researchers from the Faculties of Science and Education. The three ceremonies, which are due to be attended by up to 730 graduates with their families and friends, will commence at 10.30am on 22 April at the Albury Entertainment Centre, Swift Street, Albury, and continue on 23 April.

Students in NSW and the ACT will have the opportunity to win cash prizes and donate money their favourite charity when entries open for Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) 2010 Making a Difference competition. CSU’s Making a Difference (MaD) Social Justice Innovation Award is open to all students in NSW and ACT in Year 10, 11 or 12 at high school or a student aged 15 to 21 years at TAFE. “The competition gives young people the opportunity to have an input into the challenging issues such as homelessness, teen suicide, drugs, poverty and crime,” said competition coordinator Mr Bill Anscombe, a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at CSU. “This competition offers young people the platform to tell their story.” Students were asked to write a story, poem or script that addresses any issue of social justice for the chance to win $250 cash and to select a charity of their choice which CSU would then make a $250 donation to on their behalf.

A leading climate change researcher with Charles Sturt University (CSU) believes delaying the emissions trading scheme (ETS) will cost every Australian in the long run. Professor Kevin Parton, a lead researcher with CSU’s Institute for Land, Water and Society, said the Federal government’s decision to delay the introduction of the scheme until after 2012 to wait and see what the rest of the world will do on carbon emissions was no reason to delay. “The three biggest polluters are USA, China and Europe. China is developing green technologies, and Europe already has an ETS. They are going to be way ahead of Australia,” Professor Parton said. “The media has greatly exaggerated the cost of an ETS to the public, leading to falling public support for the scheme. And the government doesn’t want to take the scheme to its first election.” Professor Parton said under ‘business as usual’ without an ETS, Australia can expect to double its average level of income by 2050. “But with the ETS this income doubling would be delayed only one year.”

The challenge in managing an organisation’s development alongside its environmental footprint is demonstrated in Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) 2009 Environmental Scorecard. The document is prepared by CSU Green to critically assess the University’s progress in meeting its sustainability targets for 2011 and 2015. “There was a large amount of development and construction at Charles Sturt University, with a 16 per cent increase in gross floor space since 2006, the baseline year,” said CSU Green Manager Mr William Adlong. “Despite this construction, greenhouse gas emissions from energy use increased by only 1.3 per cent between 2006 and 2009. This reflects the greater energy efficiency of new buildings, improvements in the plant and equipment in existing buildings and staff efforts to reduce energy use in their work areas,” Mr Adlong said. The 2009 Environmental Scorecard also shows mains water consumption across the University fell by more than 32 per cent since 2006, electricity consumption rose by 5.2 per cent from 2006, and emissions from travel increased 4.5 per cent from 2008. Read the full 2009 Environmental Scorecard here.

Interest in the 7th annual Australian International Animation Festival has reached unprecedented levels with more than 2 200 submissions received from 40 countries for the event in regional NSW. Hosted by the Animation and Visual Effects program at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga, the Festival will be held from Friday 14 May to Sunday 16 May at the Forum 6 Cinema in Wagga Wagga. The program includes international films, digital animation, stop motion and Australian made films. Young children are catered for in the Festival line-up as well as a ‘Late Night Bizarre’ show. There will also be free talks and workshops from local and international filmmakers. The full program can be found here.

Preparing students for life in the workplace, with suitable knowledge and skills, work readiness and understanding of occupational culture, has long been recognised as vital by higher education providers. A Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic has raised the issue of what knowledge and skills university educators need to take workplace education forward in the current global era. Professor Joy Higgs AM has received one of nine Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Teaching Fellowships to examine what makes good workplace education and to encourage the widespread use of good practice in universities nationally. “The aim is to better prepare students for the complex workplaces of today,” said Professor Higgs, Director of CSU’s Education for Practice Institute. “Known as practice-based education, it’s a vital part of the education of university students, but there is much of this teaching and learning that is invisible, such as how teachers make decisions about teaching in classrooms. A key goal of this fellowship is to identify and disseminate good practices.”

The way teachers are ‘made’ in 2010 is the subject of a free public lecture at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst at 6pm Wednesday 12 May. The Head of the CSU School of Teacher Education in Bathurst, Associate Professor Ninetta Santoro, will take a historical perspective to understand the present in her lecture examining The Making of Teachers: Teacher Education for the Twenty-First Century. “I will consider what it means to be a student teacher in 2010 compared to past generations, and what effective teacher education might look like in the future,” Professor Santoro said. “The nature of teachers’ work and knowledge has undergone enormous change in recent years due to a wide range of factors including increasingly complex student demographics, developments in information technology, and the ways in which knowledge is produced and transmitted. Australian classrooms are more culturally diverse than ever before, students are more technologically savvy, and school curricula are increasingly complex and expansive.”