Charles Sturt University (CSU) will host the 2009 Education for Sustainability Conference at the Bathurst Campus on Friday 30 October, with a second optional day on Saturday 31 October. Conference co-organiser, Ms Jan Page, from the CSU School of Teacher Education at Bathurst, said the event will focus on how individuals and families can live more sustainably by growing food in kitchen gardens at schools and in the wider community, and is intended for educators from pre-school to tertiary level and members of the Bathurst regional community. “Food is the largest component of many individuals’ ecological footprints, so growing your own food not only helps to address health issues but also develops knowledge and skills to reduce our environmental footprint and foster sustainable living,” Ms Page said. The conference is being staged in conjunction with the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN), and will include a keynote address by Ms Ange Barry, CEO of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. There will be a number of presentations, including one by Ms Rachel Conolan, a parent with children at South Bathurst Public School, speaking about the school’s community garden.

Sports science lecturers at the Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Human Movement Studies will return to Indonesia on Wednesday 28 October to continue providing intensive assistance to that nation’s elite athletes in the lead-up to the South-East Asian Games in Vientiane, Laos, in December 2009. Lecturers Dr Stephen Bird, Dr Rob Duffield and Mr Benjamin Barrington-Higgs have three tasks to manage on this visit as part of the Sports Science Division for the Indonesian Elite Athlete High Performance Program (Program Atlet Andalan – PAL). “Firstly, we will be very involved in the final preparation training for Indonesian elite athletes, the performance optimisation phase, before the start of the South-East Asian Games,” Dr Bird said. “We will also deliver an intensive four-day elite sports coaching short course for Indonesian coaches and academics. Our third task is to conduct the first applied sports research with elite boxers in Indonesia.”

Early-career researchers will receive advice from more experienced academics and meet other researchers at a similar stage in their careers at the biennial Environmental and Resource Economics Early-Career Researcher Workshop (E-CReW 2009) at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on the Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 November. The head of the E-CReW management committee, Professor Mark Morrison, from the CSU School of Business at Bathurst, said E-CReW 2009 also provides a forum for employers to meet young researchers who will shape the future of environmental research, and for research agencies to discuss current research needs. “The workshop will involve mentors with a strong reputation and experience in environmental and resource economics, and developing researchers looking at vital issues involving climate change, sustainable development, and natural resource management,” said Professor Mark Morrison. E-CReW 2009 is hosted by the CSU Institute for Land, Water and Society.

Academics, students and industry representatives will gather for the official opening of the Centre for Research in Complex Systems (CRiCS) at the School of Computing and Mathematics  at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on Thursday 12 November. The Director of CRiCS, Professor Terry Bossomaier, said, “The natural, biological and social worlds abound with patterns in time, in space, and in human knowledge, and understanding how patterns emerge and evolve is a key research focus of the sciences of complexity. Increasing research activity over the last decade has revolved around human systems. It is this psychological and sociological dimension that is particularly strong in CRiCS which has three main integrated research themes. These are the nature of complexity itself and the theories which characterise it; complexity as a methodology for solving problems in the real world; and complexity as a model for theorising about social systems, dynamics and change.” Guests at the official opening of the CRiCS laboratories will also be able to inspect the Newcrest Mining Research and Robotics Lab, the Computer Vision Lab, the Visualisation Lab, and the Advanced Computing Lab.

Three Charles Sturt University (CSU) professors will discuss the evolution of the ideas of Charles Darwin at a commemorative inaugural lecture and dinner in Bathurst on Tuesday 24 November. The inaugural Somerville Lecture is in honour of Professor Warren Somerville whose collection of world-class specimens is housed at the Bathurst Fossil and Mineral Museum in Howick Street, Bathurst. Professor Somerville will be one of the speakers, and the others are Professor Nick Klomp, Dean of the CSU Faculty of Science and Adjunct Professor David Goldney, a former lecturer and noted environmental consultant. “This will be a wonderful occasion, as it marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on the 24 November 1859,” Professor Klomp said. “This book, as much as or more than any other, has changed the way we understand life on Earth. It is an honour to share the podium with Professor Somerville and Professor Goldney on this historic anniversary.”

A final-year advertising student at the Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Communication is relishing the prospect of living on the upper east side of Manhattan in New York while he undertakes a 10-week placement with one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. Mr Martin Peat, who is completing the four-year double degree Bachelor of Communication (Advertising) / Bachelor of Business (Marketing), was chosen for the prestigious scholarship with BBDO Worldwide.  Mr Peat said he has made an effort to gain as much industry experience as possible while studying for his degree and recently completed an internship at the OMD media agency in Sydney. “I also work at Nova 96.9FM radio station in Sydney, which has given me a greater opportunity to explore the media side of advertising. I’m thrilled to be given this opportunity to learn from the world's best and gain international experience. BBDO is located in the heart of Manhattan, the birthplace of modern advertising, and I feel extremely privileged to be able to experience it first-hand. I don't think many other students get this once-in-a-lifetime chance, and I’d like to thank Charles Sturt University and the International Advertising Association,” Mr Peat said.

Teachers from nearly 200 schools across the region have been invited to attend a special introductory training day at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on Friday 27 November in preparation for the NSW central west region RoboCup Junior Challenge to be staged at the University at Bathurst in June 2010. Mr Allen Benter, the coordinator of the 2010 RoboCup Junior Challenge and an associate lecturer at the CSU School of Computing and Mathematics at Bathurst, said this is the first of the preparatory workshops CSU will hold for supervising teachers whose students want to participate in the Challenge. “We at Charles Sturt University are very excited to be able to promote computer sciences to young people in this way,” Mr Benter said. “RoboCup is an international competition/conference promoting artificial intelligence and robotic research around the world. RoboCup Junior is aimed at primary to secondary school children and focuses not only on engineering and computing skills, but also emphasises sportsmanship, teamwork, cooperation and organisational skills. This workshop for teachers will assist them to guide their students through the process of constructing and programming a robot to compete in one of three events dance, rescue or soccer. The winners of the regional competition will then advance to the state competition.”

Two senior Russian academics from Vladivostok will visit Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 November. Mr Errol Chopping, Courses Manager at the CSU School of Computing and Mathematics at Bathurst, said the visit by Professor Valeriya Gribova, Professor of Computer Science at the Far East Russian Academy of Sciences, and Professor Evgeni Nurminskiy, Professor of Mathematics at the Far East National University, follows visits in January and September this year by himself and CSU’s Dr David Tien, the first-ever visits by Australians to the Academy in Vladivostok. “This landmark visit by Professor Gribova and Professor Nurminskiy is the second part of our outreach initiative into Russia, and is designed to cement a sound working relationship between Charles Sturt University and Russia,” Mr Chopping said. “During our visits to Vladivostok we met the Austrade ambassador, the Australian Ambassador to Russia and the embassy’s First Secretary, and also scheduled meetings with the Russian Minister for Tourism and Trade in Moscow. Subsequently, we were able to invite the two Russian academics to visit Australia, and we have worked on sharing and collaborating on research, holding English-speaking summer schools in Russia, two-way student and staff exchanges, and joint computer science conferences.”

Two Charles Sturt University (CSU) researchers have celebrated their prestigious Fellowships as guests of the Hon. Kevin Rudd, MP, Prime Minister of Australia, and Senator the Hon. Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. On Wednesday 28 October, Associate Professor Gary Luck and Professor Sharynne McLeod were among over 600 distinguished scientists, science leaders and science educators invited to attend the Prime Minister's Science Prizes Dinner in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra. Associate Professor Luck from the School of Environmental Sciences at CSU at Albury-Wodonga and Professor McLeod from the School of Teacher Education at CSU at Bathurst were named as Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellows by Senator Carr in September. Read more here. As an ecologist, Professor Luck’s Fellowship will facilitate his work on Integrating the conservation and ecosystem-service value of Australia’s Catchments. Professor McLeod was awarded the Fellowship to work on Speaking my language: International speech acquisition in Australia.