CSU Media wishes you all a happy and safe festive season and looks forward to working with you in 2007.

The Politics of Water - What Are the Real Issues? is the topic of a Politics in the Pub discussion by Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Professor Shahbaz Khan in Sydney on Friday 10 November. Internationally regarded for his work in hydrology and water management, Professor Khan joined the University in the middle of 2004 when CSIRO Land and Water and CSU jointly funded the position of Professor of Hydrology to head up work in the critical research areas of land and water management. Having worked on nearly every continent of the world, particularly in developing nations, Professor Khan is the Regional Coordinator for UNESCO’s International Hydrology Program, HELP (Hydrology Environment, Life and Policy), based at CSU. Politics in the Pub started in the Harold Park Hotel in inner-city Glebe in 1988 and forums are held at 6pm each Friday in the Gaelic Club, Devonshire Street, Surrey Hills.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) and TAFE NSW Riverina Institute will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) next week to give people in Deniliquin the opportunity to study for a Diploma-Degree in Social Work. CSU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Ross Chambers said “We see our partnership as an important step in providing regional students with access to education. Social work is more relevant than ever to the needs of our rural and regional communities, and job prospects are very high as we are seeing gaps in service delivery accentuated by our worst drought in history.” Charles Sturt University is acknowledged as a leading provider of social work graduates. Professor Chambers and Ms Rosemary Campbell, Director of the Riverina Institute, will officially sign the MoU on behalf of their institutions. 

A Charles Sturt University (CSU) student has made his mark on one of Australia’s premier cycle races. Dean Windsor, who is currently studying Primary Education, won the fourth stage and came fourth overall in points in the five-day Jayco Bay Cycling Classic. The Classic is the world’s fastest criterium series according to organisers. Dean says he is delighted to have done so well. “All the professionals race this, and it is important to get a win early in the season. It is quite a top quality field and a top class event.” Next up is the Road National, a 150 kilometre race around Ballarat, and Dean says he is looking forward to a trip to Europe later this year, as well as “a few tours in Asia. My CSU lecturers are very supportive, so it is possible to combine my studies with the cycling,” he said.

Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) National Radio News (NRN) was Highly Commended in the ‘Excellence in the Spoken Word’ category by the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) at its annual conference in November 2006. NRN manager, Mr Peter Hetherington, said “The highly commended award is a well deserved result for the whole NRN team which consists of only three full-time journalists and six casual cadets who are CSU communications students.” Mr Hetherington said this was the first time in several years NRN has entered in any awards. “It lifted the morale of the staff to be competing on a national level, with the standard of the NRN entries very high. It also showcased the ability of cadet staff to a broader audience, and demonstrates the unique news experience NRN offers to students who are selected for cadetships.”

After six months teaching Year Seven students in a small American curriculum school, Charles Sturt University graduate Lijana Poga decided to switch to volunteer work in an impoverished area south of Manilla in the Philippines. There she found herself working with kindergarten students and developmentally delayed orphans in an unusual classroom setting – a rubbish dump. She was living with an Australian family who run a mission organisation which provides food and schooling to 1 000 children. “I started sponsoring a girl while I was at school and always wanted to volunteer. I decided to go to university and study Education so I had something to offer.” Lijana has returned to Dubbo where she will be teaching in the city’s West. “I’d just like to tell other Education students that there are so many opportunities out there from teaching from international schools to volunteer work. It’s definitely worth looking into.”

Former US vice-president Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which details the affects of global warming, has become the third-highest grossing documentary in the United States to date. It seems the film’s message is not lost on Australian audiences either, according to Dr Mark Morrison from Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Marketing and Management, Bathurst Campus. He is working on a CSIRO project looking at the value the community has for reducing global warming.”We are measuring the community’s willingness to sacrifice future income to mitigate the affects of global warming. It is very interesting - we are finding that although about ten per cent of people don’t want to sacrifice any income, there is a very large proportion who don‘t care about the cost, they just want it fixed.” He says the preliminary findings were presented at a conference in New Delhi recently.

Tennis lovers rejoiced yesterday when the Australian Open got underway in Melbourne. The Open marks the beginning of the tournament year for tennis players, so for the past eight weeks, they have been concentrating on reaching peak fitness, according to Dr Rob Duffield, lecturer in the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Once the frenetic pace of the tournament year gets underway, “It becomes quite difficult to find time for physical conditioning, so a lot of tennis coaches and tennis players do their fitness work on court using practice drills. The problem with these drills is that you don’t really know what’s going on,” said Dr Duffield, who spent part of last year quantifying the physical responses to popular tennis drills. His results will be published soon, and will be beneficial to tennis coaches. “Coaches can say well, this kind of drill is very aerobic and will improve physical fitness, while that kind of drill will increase shot velocity and shot accuracy,” he said.

Are we riding the rails of success or running off the track? That answer could be found at The Future Frameworks for Regional Rail symposium, hosted by the Charles Sturt University (CSU) and the Railway Technical Society of Australasia (RTSA). To be held on Thursday 1 February 2007 at the CSU Wagga Wagga Campus, the symposium will examine what can be done to rejuvenate regional rail transport. CSU’s Associate Professor Ian Gray and speakers from Canada and across Australia will address representatives of the rail industry, regional communities, industry and government, sharing ideas on how to keep rail networks viable and on track in regional areas. CSU’s Professor Ian Gray says, “trains offer a huge carrying capacity, trucks offer flexibility, so it makes sense to combine the benefits of both”. Professor Gray believes, “rail could make a comeback by combining with road transport to create an integrated system, if planning and management was done at a regional level”.