Australian actor Bill Kerr is in Wagga Wagga for two weeks under Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Visiting Artists’ Program. The star of film, stage, television and radio will give two guest lectures at CSU Wagga Wagga Campus from 3pm on Wednesday 22 March and Wednesday 29 March. The first lecture will reflect on his life as a child actor in Wagga Wagga from 1933 and his work in British films until 1967. The second lecture will cover his work in Australian films from 1981, including Gallipolli and The Year of Living Dangerously. The lectures will be held in the Performing Arts complex, on CSU Wagga Wagga Campus.

The Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACCC) and the Friends of Ireland will hold their third annual ecumenical service on Friday March 17 to remember the legend and history of St Patrick and its continuing significance for Australians today. “For better or worse, Irish identity has always been related to religious expression,” said CSU Professor of Theology, Reverend James Haire. He will conduct the ecumenical service at the ACCC chapel on the corner of Kings Avenue and Blackall Street in Barton, ACT at 12.30pm. Federal Labor Senator Ursula Stephens, a Catholic and one of two Irish-born Australian senators, will speak on the place of the Irish in contemporary Australia and how Australians might celebrate St Patrick’s Day and their Irish heritage while acknowledging the pain of the past for Irish people

Is it fair that educational achievement can depend on where you live? Anecdotally, it is known that young, inexperienced teachers fresh out of university are usually sent to unpopular destinations such as western NSW. Another assumption is that school students in these areas have uneven educational outcomes. Now these "hunches" have been verified by the Rural (Teacher) Education Project, and the search is on for some solutions. "It’s all about attracting, preparing, retaining and renewing teachers for the bush," said project leader Professor Bill Green from Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Faculty of Education. "One key issue was that location matters. You’re getting young teachers working with often the most disadvantaged groups. They have energy and enthusiasm and embrace innovation, but the downside is they don’t have experience." Some of the early recommendations to emerge include nominating certain isolated schools as professional development centres, better preparation of student teachers, changing staffing patterns so that groups of teachers are appointed to a region, and involving local communities and government agencies so that young professionals are connecting socially. More complete findings are due next month.

Diabetes is the fastest growing disease in Australia and a Charles Sturt University (CSU) research project that has run for the past four years aims to develop a cost-effective early warning system to detect diabetes in people living in regional Australia. CSU researchers are using simple blood and heart monitoring tests and eye and foot observations to compare known people with diabetes with "normal" people aged over 40 years to develop this system. "Rural Australians have poorer access to health services that could detect early symptoms of diabetes that affect their eyes, feet and hearts," said research team leader Dr Herbert Jelinek, based on CSU’s Albury-Wodonga Campus. The researchers will make their next round of observations of people in Albury-Wodonga starting next Monday 24 April for two weeks.

As the Federal Government urges innovation in housing and urban design to take Australia’s ageing population into account, one scenario could be acres of empty ‘McMansions’ as older people flee to smaller homes with easy access to healthcare and social ties. Community for All Ages – Building the Future seminars were recently held all over the country to discuss the topic. Facilitated by Dr Keith Suter, he will now put together a formal report and other findings and recommendations. Celia Bevan, senior lecturer in Gerontology at Charles Sturt University, says "one of the interesting things to come out of this circuit of conferences is that architecturally, we should be looking at housing which is adaptable", homes that are accessible for everybody, regardless of age or ability or mobility. It’s called Universal Design, but unlike architecture, the emotional needs of older Australians are anything but universal. "There are people who absolutely love retirement villages and that life suits them, but then there are other people who do not. To just look at an ageing population and say well, this is the kind of housing they would want would be as disastrous as leaving it as it currently is." But can governments successfully legislate for change? Probably not, according to Ms Bevan. "The will has to be there and the cultural shift has to occur. Obviously architects and the housing industry have to be able to see that there’s something in it for them, because our whole philosophy around housing is around profit as well. The industry has to be persuaded to see that it is in their interest to engage in a new form of housing."

Last week the Federal Government announced its high-profile appointments to the Youth Mental Health Foundation Advisory Board to advise on ways to improve access to mental health services for the nation’s 12 to 25-year-olds. Experts agree that young people in Australia are increasingly troubled by various forms of mental disorder, including Dr Lynelle Osburn, a lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga. “Why is it a growing problem? One reason is an increasing intolerance of kids who are a bit different.” She says the vulnerable are easy to recognise. “Young people who leave home in an unplanned way, are isolated, are taking extreme risks or have substance abuse problems, who have eating or stress disorders. There is a growing number of young people who are on medications like amphetamines or Ritalin, or using various party drugs.” Another CSU academic Dr Janki Shankar, lecturer in mental health also in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, is on the Australian Association of Social Workers Mental Health Interest Group. She says “the current system is failing because of a lack of support services, particularly in rural areas. There are hardly any psycho-social rehabilitation programs that are targeted to youth, there’s almost nothing for people who need early intervention services.”

A leading group of veterinary educators has given their stamp of approval to Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) veterinary course, the first such course offered in regional Australia. The Veterinary Science Accreditation Advisory Committee which visited CSU’s Wagga Wagga Campus last week has recommended accreditation for the University’s new Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree. The committee of six veterinary practitioners and academics from Australian and New Zealand universities will recommend to the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council that they provide provisional accreditation of CSU’s veterinary program. CSU’s first dedicated building for veterinary science, the $4.5 million Pre-Clinical Centre for teaching anatomy and physiology, was formally handed over to staff and students last week. Professor Kym Abbott, Director of Veterinary Science at CSU, said the accreditation committee praised the high quality of staff and facilities and the strong support given to the new program by the University.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer Dr Keith Nesbitt’s research on a design pattern for complex systems has won him a 12-month postdoctoral appointment to the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) in Boston, USA. Dr Nesbitt, a lecturer in Information Technology at CSU, has been working in the relatively new field of science known as complex systems. The study of complex systems is about understanding indirect effects and the problems we find difficult to solve. They have causes and effects that are not obviously related. Examples of complex systems include beehives, ant colonies and even the stockmarket, as well as the human brain. NECSI, where Dr Nesbitt will be based, is an independent non-profit educational and research institution dedicated to advancing the study of complex systems. NECSI was established as a collaboration of faculty from Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Brandeis and other academic institutions. “I’m keen to take my research to the next level. That would be the ultimate goal: to try and understand what they call the theory of the mind”, said Dr Nesbitt.

Charles Sturt University graduate David Ford has won the Great Australian Story Challenge with his short film, A Little Bit of Magic. David graduated this year with a Bachelor of Arts (Television Production), and will now spend three months working with Australian Story at ABC TV. “I have a lot of respect for both the program and the ABC. I feel I have the capacity to make good stories, but it is also knowing how to work within a particular production environment. I don’t know where it will take me or what it will hold but it is looking optimistic.” A Little Bit of Magic tells the story of Cliff Armitage, who had an amazing career change since being involved in the gun control policy formation after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. David says making the film was a challenge “because I was doing the lighting, sound and camera, as well as producing and directing and researching”. Last year David filmed a travelogue documentary about his time spent at an African AIDS orphanage, which airs in July on cable TV in Australia, and later in New Zealand and Indonesia.