A group of Charles Sturt University (CSU) staff and students will be out to highlight the importance of healthy feet for children and their parents during the Children’s Fair in Wodonga on Sunday 14 October. With the start of national Foot Health Week also on Sunday, the CSU group is keen to focus of children’s feet, highlighting the first steps to good foot health. “Childrens’ feet are still forming – undue pressure can cause deformities that children can carry through life,” says CSU podiatry lecturer Ms Caroline Robinson. She said the CSU group is keen to show children and parents about the best ways to care for feet during the Fair, using fun activities such as footprint painting, foot measuring and shoe matching. The Children’s Fair will be held between 10am and 3pm, Sunday 14 October at the Wodonga racecourse.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) third year veterinary students are marking a milestone in their commitment to graduate from the University of inland Australia. A Halfway Festival is being held by the students to celebrate the halfway point in their six year veterinary science degree. The three day celebration begins on Friday 5 October at the CSU Wagga Wagga Campus with a breakfast and continues on Saturday 6 October with a charity rugby match between the Riverina Southern Inland Rugby premiers Wagga Agricultural College and a team of veterinary students. Proceeds from the match will support the Aussie Helpers charity, which assists drought stricken families. The CSU students, their parents and faculty staff will later attend a dinner, hosted by the DIrector of Veterinary Science at CSU, Professor Kym Abbott. The Halfway Festival concludes on Sunday 7 October with a "barefoot" lawn bowls competition.

Award winning Australian author Ms Catherine Jinks aims to inspire the Riverina region’s budding writers at the launch of a program designed to develop the skills of young authors. Catherine Jinks, who writes historical fiction for young adults, will be in Wagga Wagga on Thursday 4 October to launch Cyberwriters, a project for young authors of historical fiction devised by Booranga Writers' Centre member Ms Jen Thompson. The visit by the internationally celebrated author is funded by a Country Arts Support Program (CASP) grant from Regional Arts NSW and is presented through the collaboration of the Booranga Writers’ Centre at Charles Sturt University (CSU), the Eastern Riverina Arts Program, the Museum of the Riverina and CSU.  Ms Jinks will present a one-only reading and open-microphone discussion session in conjunction with the launch of Cyberwriters at the Wagga Wagga Historic Council Chambers.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) students and staff are being encouraged to roll up their sleeves and support the Wagga Wagga Blood Bank’s first ever Club Red Corporate Challenge, a blood donor program designed for businesses and community organisations. The Club Red Corporate Challenge is aimed at rallying everyone in the Riverina business community throughout 2007 to help save lives. The challenge runs until the 31 December 2007 and importantly each blood donation could save up to nine lives. CSU's Roxanne Loche says, “Giving blood is an ideal way for us to get involved in a vital community service. Staff can organise to donate in groups to boost the team spirit. Donating blood makes us feel great in the knowledge that we are helping to save lives”.

The Dolls Have Souls is an exhibition of drawings and textiles by Ms Julie-Ann Tylor. The works are contributing towards her Master of Visual and Performing Arts from Charles Sturt University (CSU). They are drawn from her intimate memories of much loved family heirlooms, a set of dolls, inherited by the artist. Ms Tyler says “My mother’s small legacy of the tiny set of Guatemalan Trouble dolls have become a symbol of a rite of passage. The making of art has been a ceremony of transcendence, from the role of a daughter, to the eldest surviving daughter, the default matriarch of the family. The dolls have become a vehicle for describing not only events in my mother’s life, but also as an overlay for episodes in my own life”. The Dolls Have Souls exhibition is on display in the HR Gallop Gallery, CSU Wagga Wagga Campus, which runs from Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 September 2007.

Morwell's La Trobe Regional Art Gallery is hosting the Charles Sturt University (CSU) exhibition of major works selected from its extensive collection which has grown from four hundred works in 1993 to almost two thousand. Exhibition curator Thomas Middlemost says, “This is the first full and considered viewing of the artwork, which normally hangs in public spaces on CSU’s four main campuses in Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga. Contrasts is an exhibition about the nature of institutional collecting as much as Australian art history. It examines the birth and expansion of CSU through the artwork collected by its predecessor institutions". Mr Middlemost says, "This is not a collection formed with a single vision but a compilation of a number of contrasting personalities, artistic styles and defunct collections. Setting artworks against each other to do battle or to make love makes for interesting viewing," he said.

With increasing links being identified between occupational organophosphate-based pesticide exposure and cancers, the need for a more sensitive screening test than the existing test has become apparent. Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer in biomedical sciences, Dr Helen Moriarty will present a seminar entitled A novel screening test to detect low level occupational exposure to organophosphate-based pesticides on Thursday 27 September 2007 that suggests a solution. Dr Moriarty has identified a simple test that uses blood from a finger prick sample. Since many users unknowingly expose themselves to pesticides, a successful screening test will enable safe handling practices to be monitored and adjusted as necessary. This application is anticipated to make a major impact on the prevention of many environmentally induced cancers.

The publication of the play A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer Mr Ray Harding, will be launched at the Ubud Writers’ Festival in Bali on 27 September 2007. A Terrible Beauty deals with the October 2002 Bali Bombing which claimed more than 200 lives, 88 of them Australian. "It's wonderful that this publication can be launched in Bali, near the site of the tragedy that this work reflects upon," Mr Harding said. "It's a celebration of the triumph of hope and goodwill which many of us didn't think would be possible a few years ago." This is Mr Harding's fifth play and it had its world premiere performance at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre in June 2006. The play's publication launch will be accompanied by a performance of the play by an all-Indonesian cast. The launch will be officiated by Finley Smith, organizer of the writers' festival, together with former senior CSU theatre lecturer, Bill Blaikie and Kersena Dewanto, the festival's artistic director.

Charles Sturt University will be represented in the new system to assess where Federal Government research dollars should be spent in 2008. Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Research) at CSU, Professor Paul Burnett will chair one of the 13 assessment panels for the Research Quality Framework. The panels will assess the research applications submitted by higher education providers and will award a rating for quality and impact. As Head of the University's Centre for Research and Graduate Training and being responsible for the administration of research and research training at CSU, Professor Burnett will head the Psychology, Psychiatry, Neurological, Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences panel. With five degrees, Professor Burnett is a counsellor, counselling psychologist and educational and developmental psychologist.