The 2011 Central West RoboCup Junior Challenge robotics competition will see students from schools across the region build and operate mini robots at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Orange on Tuesday 21 June. The coordinator of the competition, Mr Allen Benter, a PhD student and researcher at the CSU Centre for Research in Complex Systems (CRiCS) in Bathurst, said, “Charles Sturt University has been the official sponsor of the RoboCup Junior Challenge in the NSW Central West for the past two years with the event successfully taking place in Bathurst last year. Staff at the University have provided technical advice to students and their teachers, have been judges at previous RoboCup events, and in October last year we held a training workshop on campus in Orange for students and teachers. It’s very exciting to now see this developing field so enthusiastically embraced by schools in the region.”

The push for a medical school in Orange continues to gather momentum with Charles Sturt University (CSU) launching the Doctors 4 the Bush  website this Thursday 16 June. CSU recently submitted a detailed proposal to the Federal government to gain support for the establishment of an Integrated Health and Medical Education Precinct. This proposal aims to provide medical and health training for students and boost the number of health professionals for regional Australia to redress the shortage of doctors in the bush. The website has been established to allow supporters of this initiative to keep up-to-date with the latest information on rural doctor shortages and will feature updated information on CSU’s proposal and the opportunity to register support for ‘a fair go for the health of rural Australia’. The website will be officially launched by Medical Program Development Community Consultative Committee member Ms Audrey Hardman, OAM, at CSU in Orange on Thursday.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Orange will welcome approximately 150 new students on Sunday 19 February when they arrive to register for on campus accommodation before the start of Orientation Week (‘O Week’) on Monday. They will join about 300 continuing students for the start of session one of the new academic year a week later on Monday 27 February. Dr Heather Robinson, the Head of Campus at CSU in Orange, said, “Orientation Week is always an exciting time, and we look forward to welcoming new students and the many parents who will visit on registration day. It is important to make the students’ tranistion to university life as smooth as possible, and all our staff are focused on this goal.” The students will register for their on campus accommodation between 12noon to 4pm on Sunday 19 at the Templers Mill Bar on campus. An accommodation information session for students and parents is scheduled at 4.30pm, to be followed by a barbeque. The University expects about 3 000 new domestic students and 260 new international students on its NSW campuses for its first intake this year, and a further 5 000 new domestic distance education students.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) researchers representing the areas of emergency management, community psychology, and economics, will host a meeting in Molong on Wednesday 8 February to discuss community preparedness for flooding, and their expectations relating to warnings, response, and recovery. Mr Ian Manock, lecturer in emergency management at the CSU Australian Graduate School of Policing said the meeting follows a postal survey distributed to residents in early January which sought responses to questions about community preparedness and expectations related to flooding in the Molong area. “This is part of a broader research project being conducted by the University which aims to analyse how a number of rural communities in both Australia and Bangladesh prepare for and react to flooding,” Mr Manock said. “Although different in terms of culture, economy, and size, the communities share similarities in that they are all exposed to flooding on a regular basis, and are all located outside major urban areas. We aim to use the experiences of the communities to identify strategies that can improve community preparedness, enable government agencies to better understand community expectations, and hopefully reduce the impact of future flooding on these rural and semi-isolated communities.” The community meeting is at 7pm Wednesday 8 February in the Molong Community Hall.

Resources collated in a national education project, to be launched in Canberra on Wednesday 26 October, will provide a major boost for early childhood education students says Professor Sue Dockett, project team leader from Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Murray School of Education. “Funding for the Early Childhood Education Workforce Project was available for only a limited time, so it has been really important that the outcomes of this project are sustainable. Although funding for the collaboration will finish, the resources will have a life of their own. They will have an influence far beyond the life of the project and will be freely available across the country. Regional and remote communities, in particular, will benefit in lots of ways. The studying teachers are working in communities where there aren’t many educators and they should feel valued and important. This project recognises the value quality educators give to a community. They can upgrade their qualifications and stay within their chosen community It’s a chance to look at career options without necessarily having to change location, so quality education is accessible and the profession is gaining and retaining the best qualified educators.”

This Thursday, Charles Sturt University (CSU) will be the venue for a significant public event organised by ActionAid which will see Ugandan mother of 11, Ms Polly Apio speak about her life in Africa. According to ActionAid, one billion people will go to bed hungry tonight. Not because there’s not enough food to go around, but because the food system is broken. Ms Apio offers a solution. She grows crops on a small family plot producing enough for her family and a little extra to sell. Women like Ms Apio grow up to 90 per cent of the food in sub-Saharan Africa and, if they had access to the same support and services that their male counterparts have, could alleviate hunger among the most vulnerable people in the world. At the public discussion Ms Apio will cover food security in sub-Saharan Africa, the role of women farmers and why sustainable small scale agriculture is so important for Australia as well as Africa.

After 10 years in the role, Professor Kevin Parton will step down as Head of Campus at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Orange at the end of the month, and staff will acknowledge his contribution to the campus at a lunch on Wednesday 29 June. Professor Parton will return to his substantive role as University Professor within the School of Business and his research work with the Institute of Land, Water and Society. “I have enjoyed assisting in the development of individual staff members of the campus in Orange, of the University generally, and people beyond the University,” Professor Parton said. This last 10 years has seen massive change at the Orange Campus in both courses of offer and in infrastructure developments. New courses include pharmacy, dental science, physiotherapy and clinical science, together with a reorganisation in area of agricultural business. The infrastructure changes include new student accommodation, extensions to the learning commons, a new lecture theatre, a cycleway from the city, significant improvements to the sporting facilities, many new teaching classrooms, together with new laboratories, the dentistry complex and physiotherapy building. “Before I left Canada to come to Orange, I was attracted to the role as a leader of change. University planners 10 years ago had foreseen some of the changes that are going on today. Likewise, some of the changes will take another 10 years to unfold and are now on the drawing board,” Professor Parton said.

International scholarship recipient Ms Julia Gatsek has spent two months at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Orange examining the link between anxiety, depression and chronic pain. CSU School of Biomedical Science academics Dr Andrew Delaney and Dr James Crane have hosted the German undergraduate student who is visiting the University on a scholarship funded by international pharmaceutical company Roche.  “Julia has been with us since August working in our research laboratory and running behavioural experiments,” says Dr Crane. “Thanks to the support of Charles Sturt University who subsidised her accommodation, Julia is working with our team until 7 October. To have the recipient of an internationally recognised scholarship working with us on this important project increases the standing of the University in the international biomedical sciences community. We hope it will lead to more collaboration between our research group and neuroscientists in Germany.”

In recognition of the 2011 'International Year of Chemistry', a public lecture hosted by Charles Sturt University (CSU) and Wagga Wagga City Council will explore how a series of seemingly unrelated chemical discoveries changed the course of history. Professor of Chemistry at Macquarie University in Sydney, Peter Karuso, will trace chemical connections from the humble shipworm to the discovery of antibiotics. "I'm hoping to show people how important chemistry is to their lives by showing how chemical discoveries have changed the course of history over and over again," he said. "Chemistry is so interesting and so powerful that it deserves the best and brightest minds. I hope in some small way to inspire young people and their parents to take an interest in things chemical as I am sure that chemistry will be at the heart of solutions to many of our current and future problems."