Olympic gold medallist Mr Russell Mark will be guest speaker at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga when administrative staff from across CSU meet in the city for a biennial conference. The champion clay target shooter is a special guest at the Admin Future Focus 2012 conference dinner from 6.30pm on Tuesday 20 November.  With a theme of sustainability at CSU, the conference has attracted more than 160 administrative staff from across the University, including Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Canberra, Dubbo, Goulburn, Orange, Sydney and Wagga Wagga. The event is being held to ‘foster networking and a sense of community among administrative staff from all University campuses, faculties, schools, divisions and units’. Hailed as one of Australia’s best ever shooters, Mr Mark has competed in six Olympic Games. He won gold in Atlanta in 1996 and silver in Sydney in 2000 in the double trap events. Admin Future Focus 2012 will be held from 1pm on Tuesday 20 November to 3pm on Wednesday 21 November. Read the full program here.

A new venue at which to taste and purchase Charles Sturt University (CSU) wines in Wagga Wagga has opened its doors. Overlooking the University’s vineyard and commercial winery, the new $500 000 Cellar Door is part of a larger project in the precinct which will be completed in the new year. On Thursday 15 November, members of the CSU Wine Club will gather at the new Cellar Door from 5pm to 7.30pm to celebrate its opening. CSU Winemaker, Mr Andrew Drumm, said, “The enlarged space in the new Cellar Door allows us to cater for tours and events. There is also a smaller area that we can use for small groups. It is a great place to showcase not only the wines that locals are used to, but also a few new ones that we have recently introduced, especially, the NV Sparkling, the first to be produced from our vineyard in Orange.” On the 2012 Vintage, Mr Drumm said, “The last season was overshadowed by the rain and the floods, but we’re optimistic about this year.” The Cellar Door is open from 11am to 5pm Monday to Friday and 11am to 4pm on weekends. To place a wine order, telephone 02 6933 2435 or send an email.

"One of the greatest challenges of modern neuroscience is understanding what happens to the brain as we age and why it becomes vulnerable to diseases such as Alzheimer’s,” said Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher Dr Adam Hamlin. Dr Hamlin, from CSU’s School of Biomedical Sciences, will talk about our Amazing Brain in a free, public lecture in Tumbarumba on Wednesday 28 November. Almost 280 000 Australians suffer from dementia and that figure is expected to rise as the population ages. Dr Hamlin will outline current breakthroughs in our understanding of the processes that occur in neurodegenerative diseases and what scientists are doing to find potential treatments for these conditions. A national Health and Medical Research Council Fellow, Dr Hamlin is carrying out research to discover more about brain cell death in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Read more about Dr Hamlin’s research on CSU News here.

In a first for Australia, a new research network will be launched at Charles Sturt University (CSU) on Thursday 8 November to focus on environmental justice and governance in Australia. The new group is part of CSU’s Institute for Land Water and Society (ILWS)  and will be known as the Environmental Justice and Governance for Social Change Strategic Research Area. Co-leaders of the new group, Dr Helen Masterman-Smith, an environmental sociologist, and Associate Professor Vaughan Higgins, a rural sociologist, said, “This new Strategic Research Area is one of the first research concentrations or networks in Australia that focuses on the fields of justice and governance in environmental issues, including climate change.” To launch the new group, a public workshop, Environmental Justice and Governance: Strategies for building environmentally sustainable and socially just communities will be held from 10 to 4pm on Thursday 8 November at the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre at CSU in Wagga Wagga. Pre-eminent Australian environmental sociologist, Professor Stewart Lockie from The Australian National University, will give the keynote address from 10.30am to 12noon. . To RSVP, contact Dr John Rafferty on 02 6051 9406 or email. A full workshop program is available from the ILWS here.

About 60 Year Six students from Peak Hill Central School and Kandos Public School will participate in workshops at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst on Tuesday 13 November as part of a Future Moves program, Check It Out Day. The event gives the students first-hand experience of a university. Ms Tonya Graham, Future Moves coordinator, said, “By introducing young people to the experience of university study we hope to encourage them to become more engaged in school studies and more confident to consider tertiary study as a later option. The Future Moves program is directed at students who have the potential to succeed in tertiary education and who come from families with little or no experience of higher education. Students who participate often say, ‘I never considered university, but now I really want to go’. Events like the Check It Out days are a great way to start a conversation with students and their families about the options available to them when they finish school.” The Year Six students will engage in a range of fun interactive workshops delivered by CSU courses staff, including paramedics, nursing, art education, communications, and theatre/media. The day will conclude with students dressing in graduation attire for a mock mini-graduation.

There will be plenty of flappers and feathers on show at this year’s 2012 Vintage Dinner at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga, with the evening showcasing a 1920s theme. The Head of CSU in Wagga Wagga, Mr Adrian Lindner is hosting the popular event on Friday 9 November, now in its 35th year. Pre-dinner drinks will be held under the lemon-scented gum trees from 7pm with a three course dinner served at 7.45pm at the Convention Centre, CSU in Wagga Wagga. Guests will be entertained by renowned Sydney jazz band, The 1920s Jazz Gang. Tickets for the annual event have been sold out.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Orange will host a public lecture on Friday 2 November examining the biggest change in the delivery of education since the advent of the personal computer. CSU Associate Professor Philip Uys, Director of Strategic Learning and Teaching Innovation at the University's Division of Learning and Teaching Services,  will deliver the lecture and said ‘mobile learning’ technology was poised to revolutionise education. CSU has been engaged in mobile learning since it began to offer podcasts in 2008, allowing students to download recordings of lectures they could listen to on their mobile devices at their own convenience. Since then the University has added mobile interfaces to an ‘e-portfolio’ system that students can use to build an online portfolio of their work, and to a ‘CSU Replay’ facility which offers audio and video recordings of lectures and other material available for download through Apple’s ‘iTunes U’. The current focus is on developing educational material that can be shared across a number of mobile devices and consumed by students in short bursts throughout the day. Read more on CSU News here.

The success of schools in Finland has been praised in recent times, with teachers attaining high status in the community and students topping international test results. Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Education in Albury-Wodonga will host an informal and informative question and answer session with guest Dr Tuija Turunen, a senior lecturer in teacher education with Finland’s University of Lappland, to address questions on the Finnish model. A former teacher and teacher educator in Finland, Dr Turunen is a research fellow at CSU. She also has a son attending an Australian high school for the past three years. Dr Turunen will present her insights into both school systems. The informal Q & A session is open to the public and will start at 5.30pm on Monday 5 November in the CD Blake Lecture Theatre, CSU in Albury-Wodonga, off Elizabeth Mitchell Dive, Thurgoona.

A Charles Sturt University (CSU) ecologist will present his ideas on how looking into history can help conserve and manage freshwater resources, including the Murray Darling Basin. Dr Paul Humphries, a researcher with CSU’s Institute for Land, Water and Society (ILWS), will present a public lecture on the use of historical approaches to understand past environmental conditions. “This will tell us how the Murray Darling Basin has got to the state it is in today, and how this knowledge can be used to set more realistic environmental targets and so help improve river management,” Dr Humphries said. The lecture will start at 4pm on Thursday 1 November in Room 202, CD Blake Lecture building (751), CSU in Albury-Wodonga, off Elizabeth Mitchell Drive, Thurgoona.