Australian actress Ms Lyn Collingwood will be in Wagga Wagga this week to launch the 2012 season of the University Theatre Ensemble (UTE) on Wednesday 14 March. Well known for her long-running role as Colleen Smart on the television show, Home and Away, Ms Collingwood’s career in film, television and on stage spans 37 years. Lecturer with the Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Communication and Creative Industries, Mr John Saunders, said, “It is indeed a great honour to have Lyn visit us as the special guest at the launch. I remember vividly her remarkable performance as Dot Cook (Mum) in the Riverina Theatre Company’s One Day of the Year back in the early nineties.” The UTE season launch will take place on Wednesday 14 March at The Riverina Playhouse, Cross Street in Wagga Wagga from 7pm to approximately 8pm.

A new seminar series from Charles Sturt University (CSU) and Wagga Wagga City Council to assist local small businesses kicks off in the city this week, with a session on marketing. Dr Lan Snell and Dr Heather Crawford from the University’s School of Management and Marketing will present the first seminar from 5.30pm to 7.30pm on Wednesday 14 March in the Civic Centre, Baylis Street in Wagga Wagga. The session will explore marketing issues facing small businesses, including digital marketing, an introduction to online consumer behaviour, search engine marketing, and the application of various social media tools for marketing. Further seminars in the series on finance and human resources will be held in April and June. Read more on CSU News here.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Dubbo and Orange will come alive with science when the Science@CSU comes to town next week. The Faculty of Science at CSU is among the largest and most diverse science faculties in Australasia, with approximately 9 000 students and hundreds of staff in seven schools across six campuses. The Faculty teaches and conducts research in a variety of science and health disciplines including veterinary science, dentistry, nursing, environmental studies, forensic biotechnology, wine science, agriculture, and allied health. Dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor Nick Klomp, will present a summary of some of the exciting initiatives currently planned or being implemented in the various science disciplines at CSU, including new courses, current and future collaborations in research, and professional training made possible because of new international staff appointments and multi-million dollar investments in research and training facilities across CSU campuses. Science@CSU will visit the Dubbo Campus from 4pm to 5pm on Monday 19 March and the Orange Campus on Tuesday 20 March. Read more about Science@CSU here.

The Dean of the Faculty of Business, Professor Lesley White, will host a ceremony to present 11 prizes to outstanding students in the Faculty of Business at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst on Wednesday 14 March. “The prizes cover a range of disciplines including accounting, taxation, management, marketing, information technology and computer science, and I am delighted that they are made available to outstanding students by organisations which understand the importance of supporting our future business leaders,” Professor White said. Sponsors include the Central West Law Society, Pearson Australia, St George Bank Ltd, the Association of Taxation and Management Accountants, CPA Australia Ltd, Devro Pty Ltd, LexisNexis Australia, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Twenty three Dean’s List Awards will also be presented to acknowledge outstanding academic performance by students in the Faculty.

Policies aimed at increasing the pace of developing renewable energies could accelerate global warming, according to Dr Rod Duncan, a lecturer in economics at Charles Sturt University. It wouldn’t be the first time regulations have had the opposite of the desired effect. When US Congress introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, Detroit car makers responded by producing petrol-guzzling SUVs. And when Mexico City implemented no-drive days where a car could only be used every other day, the citizens reacted by buying a second car. “Air quality in Mexico City got worse, because the second car tended to be an old bomb,” said Dr Duncan. And what does all this have to do with alternative energies? “If cheaper alternatives are being developed, oil producers will have an incentive to pump oil faster and sell it cheaper. The renewables could be worth it in the long run, but at least temporarily, you may actually make the global warming problem worse.”

It’s not just the lessons taught in the classroom that Charles Sturt University (CSU) student Mr Dave McGowen will remember from his recent exchange to Australia but those handed out on the football field. Mr McGowan was one of five students from CSU in Ontario who travelled to Australia to complete their final practicum for CSU’s Bachelor of Primary Education Studies. Mr McGowan spent three weeks at the Buninyong Public School in the regional NSW city of Dubbo. He said the experience has given him more examples of how to deal with different classroom situations. “The curriculum seemed pretty similar although I found the students were given more time to do the work and practise or think about things.” Mr McGowan also immersed himself in the local culture, playing a game of Australian Rules football. “The game was a lot of fun and much tougher than I had anticipated, as it was a full contact match against a good opponent,” he said. “Nonetheless I lived through it and have the battle scars to show for it. It was a truly authentic Aussie experience.”

Carbon emissions trading is a great idea waiting to happen, according to Charles Sturt University’s environment economist Mark Morrison. Dr Morrison says he agrees with Prime Minister John Howard, who said at the APEC summit late last week that any carbon trading system would have to be global to suceed. “The global effort is going to be ineffective unless everyone is going to involved,” said Dr Morrison. “Very few countries are meeting their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Australia is going to be one of the most severely affected countries. The ability of agricultural land in Australia to produce the way it has historically is very unlikely, if you believe the global warming forecasts and I do.”

The Booranga Writers’ Centre at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Wagga Wagga will welcome its first writer-in-residence for 2012, with the arrival of Ms Jennifer Mills. The South Australian-based author has written the novels The Diamond Anchor (2009) and Gone (2011), both published by University of Queensland Press, and the poetry collection Treading Earth (2008). A collection of short stories, The Rest Is Weight, will be released this year. Ms Mills won the 2008 Marian Eldridge Award for Young Emerging Women Writers, the Pacific Region of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2008-9, and the 2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards: Best Short Story. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Hecate, Overland, Heat, the Griffith Review, Best Australian Stories, and New Australian Stories, and she is a regular contributor to New Matilda and Overland. During her residency until Friday 30 March, Ms Mills will be special guest at a writers’ workshop from 2pm on Saturday 24 March at the Booranga Writers’ Centre, building 410, McKeown Drive, CSU in Wagga Wagga and at a public reading at the Riverina Regional Library in Baylis Street in Wagga Wagga from 5pm on Wednesday 28 March.

Ms Maria Williams, the daughter of the late Wiradjuri Elder, Wongamar, also known as Pastor Cec Grant, will honour her father’s legacy at a public lecture in Canberra on Friday 23 March. The 2012 Pastor Cec Grant Memorial Lecture  focuses on the interactions between Australian Indigenous cultures and Christianity, and the history of Indigenous Christian movements. In 2008, Charles Sturt University (CSU) established the annual Pastor Cec Grant Memorial Lecture to recognise and celebrate the work of Pastor Grant, OAM. Ms Williams will present her lecture from 7pm at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACC&C) in Canberra. The annual Pastor Cec Grant Memorial Lecture is supported by CSU, the Wiradjuri Council of Elders, and the Wiradjuri Christian Development Ministries.