Cargill Beef Australia has been praised for its support of the Charles Sturt University (CSU) student team which competed in the 2008 Australian Intercollegiate Meat Judging Competition (IMJC) in Armidale in July. The company provided sponsorship for the team and allowed the CSU students access to its facilities and staff at its abattoir in Wagga Wagga for training. The training in June also included a group of Japanese university students who visited CSU prior to the competition in Armidale. “This IMJC is unique in that it is the only forum in Australia where students from any educational institute have the opportunity to learn the finer points of carcass evaluation from Australia’s experts,” said CSU Professor of Animal Production Peter Wynn. “None of this would have been possible without the sponsorship and unstinting support from Cargill. Junee Abattoir also gave generously of its staff time and facilities for training with lamb carcasses.   The support of local companies to enhance the practical skills of CSU students across the spectrum is invaluable,” said Professor Wynn.

Research at Charles Sturt University (CSU) will explore the everyday experience of primary school-aged siblings of children with additional needs, particularly at school. Ms Jacqui Barr, a primary school teacher and PhD student in CSU’s School of Teacher Education, said her research aims to give an authentic account of these children’s experiences. “I need to speak with families and children in the Bathurst area who have children in Year 3 or above at primary school and are the sibling of a child with additional needs. The study will involve interviewing the sibling, as well as other significant people in their lives, such as parents, the brother or sister with additional needs, and their teacher. Each participant will be interviewed once, with interviews taking between 15 minutes and 1 hour,” Ms Barr said. The results of the study will be used to inform educators about the significant experiences of siblings of children with additional needs. People interested in participating in the research project should contact Jacqui Barr on (02) 6332 9107 or send an email for more information.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) has appointed a new Head of Campus at Bathurst who has strong long-term links with the community and inland NSW through his upbringing, education, work and sport. Mr Col Sharp, who is also Director of the CSU Office of Planning and Audit, said he was honoured by his appointment. “I hope to strengthen the links between CSU and local communities in order to build understanding of CSU’s role in the community and what it has to offer,” Mr Sharp said. “It is important for people to know that CSU is a large and diverse University with campuses in Bathurst, Dubbo, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Albury-Wodonga, Goulburn and Canberra. Its courses are essential for attracting and developing the professionals who will serve our regions. The University’s distance education courses reach students nationally and internationally, and it conducts research into many issues that are critical to Australia’s future. CSU’s success is fundamental to the current economic strength of its campus cities and surrounding districts, and for their long term future.”

Registered nurses are training to become registered midwives in their local communities and hospitals through a Charles Sturt University (CSU) distance education course which aims to keep midwives in inland Australia. The students will gather at CSU’s Wagga Wagga Campus this week for their bi-annual residential school, where they supplement distance education with face-to-face teaching. Lecturer in nursing and midwifery, Ms Pam Shackleton, says the student midwives remain a valuable asset for the community by working at their local hospitals across Australia while completing the year-long course. “The sixty five nurses who will finish their midwifery training at the end of this year will be warmly welcomed and will go a long way to addressing the Australia-wide shortage of more than 600 midwives,” she said.

Improving the reading, listening and speaking skills of primary and pre-school students is the focus for Charles Sturt University (CSU) speech pathology students, working with the NSW Department of Education and Training and Albury Community Health. Collaborating in a project which is now in its fourth year, CSU students are working in public primary schools at Corowa South, Henty, Jindera and North Albury, as well as in the Koori Kindermanna preschool in Albury. CSU lecturer and project coordinator, Dr Ruth Beecham, said the project ”aims to maintain the provision of speech pathology services as well as  educating CSU students. All the projects cost little and are developed in response to the needs of individual teachers and schools. Because we are looking to prevent communication problems from intensifying in children,  the knowledge and resources produced in these projects are given to teachers and are left with the schools for future use”. Final year CSU student Ms Gemma Coughlan, who has been working for the past 10 weeks at Henty Public School, said her project aimed to develop children's literacy skills while instilling a love of reading and learning.

A Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer has completed a ten year project to enhance and preserve the Bathurst home of former Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley. Dr Robin McLachlan, an adjunct senior lecturer in history and cultural heritage studies at the School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies on the University's Bathurst Campus, said the aim of the project was to create a critical mass of public history ‘products’ in support of the Chifley Home in Bathurst. “This work involved some of my history students, and I led the team of consultants who produced the first ‘product’, a heritage assessment and management plan for the Chifley Home which recommended that Bathurst Regional Council (BRC) purchase the adjoining terrace house for the better conservation of the Chifley Home. BRC now owns that property and has announced that it will be developed as an educational museum and administrative office,” Dr McLachlan said. Another project product is the play A Local Man, co-written by Dr McLachlan and Mr Bob Ellis. The final product was the film documentary The Chifleys of Busby Street – A Community Remembers, which was launched in Bathurst on 25 June.

A visiting world expert will present a seminar on 'communities of practice' for staff and students at the Charles Sturt University (CSU) Bathurst Campus on Monday 7 July. Dr Etienne Wenger, a pioneer and globally-recognized leader on ‘communities of practice’, or a group focussed on a common professional interest, and their application to organisations, will speak about 'Practice-based professional learning: investigating perspectives from social learning theory'. Dr Wenger describes himself as an independent thinker, researcher, consultant, author, and speaker. He is currently working as a consultant at the Open University in the United Kingdom and is author and co-author of articles and books on 'communities of practice' and is a founder of CPsquare, a cross-organizational, cross-sector community of practice on the topic. Professor Joy Higgs, Director of CSU’s Education for Practice Institute, said “Dr Wenger’s work has been adopted in many arenas due to the increasing recognition of the importance of learning and practice communities in many private and public sector workplaces”.

A massive 80 tonne crane will be used to lift and position prefabricated concrete 'pods' for innovative new accommodation on Charles Sturt University's (CSU) Bathurst Campus. Fifteen semi-trailers will deliver the pods on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 June. Mr Andrew Callander, Executive Director of CSU Division of Student Services, said, “The installation of the concrete pods is a significant first step in providing new and much needed accommodation for our students. Construction is on schedule to date, and, weather permitting, the buildings should be completed in six months.” The pods are formed and cast in concrete with three walls and a roof as one. They are then lifted and locked into place onto concrete foundation pads, with plates holding the top of the pods together. The process should see two pods installed per hour, with the builders expecting to complete two houses with a central shared kitchen and bathroom in three days. The new accommodation at Bathurst will house up to 200 students and is expected to be ready for the start of the 2009 academic year.

Governments across Australia have spent billions of dollars on programs to encourage rural landholders to implement sustainable farming and biodiversity conservation practices, but has this money been well spent? Drawing on his research in south eastern Australia, Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic Professor Allan Curtis will address this question when he speaks at the Fenner Conference on the Environment in Canberra on Wednesday 11 March. Professor Curtis will highlight the reality that most conservation work undertaken by private landholders is not funded by governments and that government investment in conservation programs, particularly those that invest in building and engaging human and social capital in rural communities, makes a difference. “The ‘business as usual’ approaches to engaging rural landholders are unlikely to work in the future given the remarkable change occurring as a large proportion of longer-term owners leave the land,” he said.