30 July 2008
30 July 2008
|
| Ahmad Zia one of 300 orphans who will attend the new Vocational School of Music in Kabul. Photo courtesy Circe Films. |
|
| Dr Ahmad Sarmast |
A Monash University project is giving hope to hundreds of orphans in war-torn Afghanistan.
There are an estimated two million orphans in Afghanistan and countless more children scarred by almost 30 years of war and the repressive Taliban regime. They are children who have seen their parents and siblings killed, their homes destroyed and experienced hunger and humiliation.
But a pilot project, designed and developed at the Monash Asia Institute, will see a vocational music school established in Kabul, which could create a new future for 300 orphans and underprivileged children.
The vocational music school is just one aspect of the Revival of Afghan Music Project (ROAM), the brainchild of Monash academic Dr Ahmad Sarmast.
Over the last two years Dr Sarmast has worked with colleagues from the Monash Asia Institute, the Monash School of Music-Conservatorium and the Monash Science Centre, as a group of volunteers called the Friends of ROAM, to implement the pilot project.
"Music is an important part of social and cultural life in Afghanistan. Afghani people believe music is food for the soul," Dr Sarmast said. "But traditional music has suffered over the last 30 years from a combination of factors including Taliban rule, civil war and migration."
The ROAM pilot project won the favour of the Afghanistan Minister for Education who has set aside land for the new school as well as committed funding for the renovation and refurbishment of a temporary music school.
Dr Sarmast has also been appointed the in-country director of a project to re-establish music education in Kabul in line with the ROAM pilot project and is currently in Afghanistan overseeing the rebuilding of vocational music education.
"The school is the first element of our overall project. It aims to make music accessible to orphans while providing them with a secondary education, which is vital in a country where there are limited employment opportunities," Dr Sarmast said.
"We hope this project will lead to the creation of new Afghan music and encourage the development of the Afghan music industry."
Ahmad Zia said life didn't have much meaning before he found music. He looks forward to learning at the new Vocational School of Music and dreams of becoming a professional musician.
"Music can make my life," he said.
For more information visit the Revival of Afghan Music Project website.
30 July 2008
 |
| Maribyrnong City Council Cr Janet Rice, Monash University Vice-President (Administration) Peter Marshall, Knox City Council Mayor Cr Jim Penna. |
Monash University has endorsed the call for a new east-west rail tunnel in Melbourne, providing a massive boost to public transport, but has urged the State Government to leverage a greater public benefit from the investment by extending the Footscray to Caulfield tunnel to Clayton.
In a submission to the East-West Link Needs Assessment Report by Sir Rod Eddington, Vice-President Administration Peter Marshall said the broader transport needs of Melbourne's outer east could be addressed by extending the rail tunnel to Clayton and Rowville.
Mr Marshall said the proposal was in line with the report's criteria of making transport contribute to Melbourne as a 'knowledge centre' and also contribute to the growth of the Clayton Specialised Activity Centre under the Melbourne 2030 planning blueprint.
The Clayton campus is based within a 'knowledge centre' that includes the Australian Synchrotron and the CSIRO. The Specialised Activity Centre includes the University and nearby Monash Medical Centre.
Mr Marshall said in his submission that extending the rail tunnel from Caulfield to Clayton would enable the State Government to address long standing community demand for improved public transport services in the Clayton-Rowville urban corridor.
"As the University emphasised in our submission to the Monash Bus Review undertake by the Department of Transport earlier this year, the Specialised Activity Centre is overly reliant on bus services for public transport. When we consider the delay and inconvenience encountered by the significant numbers of staff and students who need to change transport modes at the Huntingdale train station, with evidence of overcrowding on some of the bus services from the station to the Clayton campus, our commitment to the provision of a more direct and timely means of public travel to the campus is a genuine priority," Mr Marshall said.
He said at present only 24 per cent of staff and students caught public transport to the Clayton campus. 67 per cent used a motor vehicle. There are 21,000 car trips each day to the Clayton campus.
The University had a goal of making public transport the mode of travel of 37 per cent of staff and students by 2020 and reducing car travel to 47 per cent of trips.
"Monash University, along with a number of high profile institutions based within the Specialised Activity Centre, constitutes an important 'knowledge centre' that has a key role in the development and promotion of Victoria and represents a significant destination in metropolitan Melbourne."
In conjunction with Knox City Council, the University is using the social networking Facebook technology to involve staff, students and residents in a lobbying campaign to back the Monash submission to the Eddington report.
Knox Mayor Cr Jim Penna said he hoped thousands of Monash University staff and students would sign the on-line petition. "It's time for the State Government to get serious about public transport in the east," Cr Penna said.
To access the petition go to the pt4me2 Facebook group web page or visit the pt4me2 website. See also Monash University's submission (pdf 327kb).
30 July 2008
 |
| Dr Leslie Yeo |
Monash microfluidics expert Dr Leslie Yeo has been selected as a finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes in the category of People's Choice Award -- and the Monash community can help make him a winner.
Dr Yeo, one of six finalists for the Sydney Museum's People's Choice Award, will win the award if he receives the most online votes on the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes website.
Voting opens Friday 25 July and closes at midnight on Sunday 17 August, with the winner announced at a gala dinner in Sydney on Tuesday 19 August. Dr Yeo and the other finalists will be profiled on ABC television show Catalyst and their research will be outlined on the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes website.
Dr Yeo and other researchers in the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory, in the Faculty of Engineering, used Albert Einstein's 80-year-old tea leaf paradox principle to separate red blood cells from blood plasma.
Dr Yeo said the discovery could lead to pocket diagnostics such as a microchip-based "smart card" that performs on-the-spot blood tests.
"In an altruistic sense, where this could be really useful in saving lives, for example, would be in the development of a cheap and portable AIDS test kit that can be distributed across Africa where about one in four people now suffer from the disease," Dr Yeo said.
"It is these people, who perhaps have to walk five to 10 hours to a clinic that would benefit most from this technology."
Dr Yeo said the technology could also be used for concentrating pathogens in miniaturised biosensors, providing a rapid early warning detection system in the event of a bio-terrorist attack.
"I'm really thrilled to be nominated for the award," he said.
"More than recognition of the work, the People's Choice Award is an excellent opportunity to share scientific discoveries with the broader community and to inspire school kids about the wonderful possibilities that science can offer."
Monash University PhD graduate Dr Maxine Piggott has also been named a finalist in the Research That Contributes To Animal Protection category. Dr Piggott, who now works at Macquarie University in Sydney, has been nominated for her PhD research into the development of novel DNA methods to study wildlife populations without animal capture or handling.
30 July 2008
 |
| Professor Mike Ewing and Associate Professor Ken Grant |
Professor Mike Ewing, head of the Monash Department of Marketing, has been elected a governor of the Academy which promotes marketing as an academic discipline.
Professor Ewing joins his Monash colleague Associate Professor Ken Grant as the only Australians ever appointed to the Board of Governors of the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS), a prestigious international association for marketing academics.
Associate Professor Grant was a governor from 1999 to 2001 and was made a Distinguished Fellow of the AMS in 1998.
Professor Ewing said being elected a governor was a great personal honour and recognition of the strength of Monash University's marketing program.
"To have the only two Australian governors of this professional body here at Monash is a great achievement for the University," he said.
"We also have three staff members who have published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science so the AMS-Monash link is very well-established, and this awareness and recognition helps us in recruiting staff from the North American system."
In 1995, Monash hosted the Academy's seventh World Marketing Congress and in 2003 Professor Ewing co-chaired the 11th World Marketing Congress in Perth.
Monash has been approached to host the 16th World Marketing Congress in 2013.
For more marketing news, visit the Department of Marketing website.
30 July 2008
 |
| Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions will be launched on Tuesday 5 August at 6 pm. |
Monash Arts faculty staff and colleagues will speak on Australia's love affair with Italy at the upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival which opens on Friday 22 August, 2008.
The panel -- Dr Ian Britain, Chris Wood, Cynthia Troup and Professor Bill Kent -- will speak on a new book Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions that contains personal accounts of people's experiences in Italy including the history of setting up Monash University's Prato centre.
The book features a number of prominent Australian and Italian writers including Peter Porter, Lisa Clifford, Professor Ros Pesman, Brian Matthews and Rory Steele; and several Monash staff including Associate Professor Euan Heng, Dr Peter Howard, Professor Bill Kent, Cynthia Troup and Dr Jane Drakard.
Australians in Italy co-editor Professor Kent said the book and panel discussion would appeal to armchair and actual travellers interested in all things Italian and the history of Australia's engagement with the wider world, as well as researchers, teachers and students.
"The book analyses the significant cultural exchange between Australia and Italy over recent history," Professor Kent said.
"Even though the era of mass migration is now behind us, the flow still goes on."
"Thousands of Australians have settled in Italy -- artists, intellectuals and academics, business people and retirees and there is also an increasing number of young Italians taking the opportunity to live and study in Australia."
Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions, which is published by Monash ePress, will be launched on Tuesday 5 August at 6 pm at Readings Bookshop in Carlton. To attend, please contact Sarah Cannon: sarah.cannon@lib.monash.edu.au
The panel will feature at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Thursday 28 August at 1.15 pm. For more information on the panel discussion visit the Melbourne Writers Festival website.
30 July 2008
The Taxation Law and Policy Research Institute (TLPRI) from the Faculty of Business and Economics has provided invaluable input into the Federal Government's review of Australia's tax system.
The TLPRI recently hosted two conferences in Sydney that were attended by some of the world's leading experts, including twelve Australian Commonwealth Treasury officers and New Zealand Treasury and Inland Revenue tax policy officers.
Speakers included tax experts from Monash and other top Australian universities, as well as leading international universities and organisations.
A review of Australia's tax system was announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd following the 2020 summit earlier this year.
The 18-month review will look at all aspects of federal, state and local government taxes.
TLPRI Director Rick Krever said the conferences provided timely input into Australia's tax review process.
"The Institute has a long history of contributing to tax policy debate in Australia," Professor Krever said. The TLPRI is dedicated to taxation law research and includes teachers and researchers, research fellows, and graduate students completing research in the area of taxation law and policy.
For more information visit the Monash University TLPRI website.
30 July 2008
 |
Current and past staff, alumni, and community members will come together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the University's Peninsula campus on Saturday 2 August.
The celebration will include the launch of a new book about the history of the campus, the dedication of a campus time capsule and new work of art, displays and tours, and an audience with Monash alumnus, satirist and impersonator, Max Gilles.
The Peninsula campus, in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston, has a teaching and research focus on health, development and wellbeing. The campus was originally a teachers college. Following initial talks with Caulfield Institute of Technology in the early 1980s, the college became the Frankston campus of the newly-formed Chisholm Institute of Technology in 1982.
On 1 July, 1990 the Peninsula and Caulfield campuses of the Chisholm Institute amalgamated with Monash. Since that time, the campus has developed into a thriving institution with a range of courses on offer including early childhood and primary education -- mainstays from its historic roots.
The opening of the new Eastlink freeway makes the Peninsula campus even more accessible to students and staff.
Past staff members from Peninsula, who haven't received an invitation to the anniversary celebration should contact Tanya O'Brien on +61 3 9904 4339.
Still Learning: A 50 Year History of Monash University Peninsula Campus will be available from Monash ePress in August.
For more information on the courses on offer at Peninsula visit the Monash University Peninsula campus website.
30 July 2008
 |
| Medical student Anneliese Willems |
Gippsland-based medical student Anneliese Willems will represent Australian medical students at an international conference in Jamaica in August.
Ms Willems is part of a 16-person delegation from Australia to the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations assembly. Ms Willems said the meeting was a step towards taking on a possible leadership position within the association next year.
If successful, Ms Willems will then have the opportunity to seek the position of Director of the Standing Committee on Public Health (SCOPH) with the association from November 2009.
"I would love the opportunity to serve the medical student community as a liaison between medical students across the globe and public health organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the UN," Ms Willems said.
Director of the Gippsland Regional Clinical School Associate Professor Daryl Pedler said it was wonderful to see local students keen to take their place on the world stage.
"Our students are aware of the global health issues and take an interest in how they, through Monash University and from Australia, can contribute locally and globally," Associate Professor Pedler said.
"It also means students like Anneliese can gain an enormous amount of knowledge that they bring back to their local communities."
For more information on studying medicine at Monash, visit the Gippsland Medical School website.
30 July 2008
 |
| Pamella Motlhageng |
The Monash South Africa Student Women's Forum (SWF) has hosted a 'Live your dream life' seminar to equip young women at the campus with the tools to set and achieve their life goals.
The forum encouraged participants to 'think big', identify their dreams and take steps to plan for their futures.
SWF chairperson Pamella Motlhageng said participants learnt that brilliance was achievable regardless of circumstance.
"It is all a matter of believing you can achieve, seizing the moment and harnessing opportunities to use to your advantage," Ms Motlhageng said.
"We hear every day that a positive attitude, alongside hard work, will reap fine results but often we need to be reminded by those who have achieved success."
The forum heard from well-known motivational speaker Matty Reid.
"If you want to catch the bus of life, you have to make the first move," Ms Reid told participants.
The SWF was launched at Monash South Africa last year to provide a platform for students to realise their potential to become leaders in their respective fields.
For more news from MSA visit the Monash South Africa website.
2 July 2008
As we enter the budget setting process this year, we are faced once again with the dilemma of trying to deliver education at world's best standard and internationally first rate research in the face of funding for Commonwealth-supported undergraduate places and funding for research projects from ARC and NHMRC which fail to meet the real costs of these activities.
This problem has progressively worsened over the last dozen years with an absurdly inadequate formula for indexing the Commonwealth Grants Scheme which has delivered approximately two per cent per year increase when real costs have been rising by four to five per cent over the same time. By contrast, the secondary schools allocation has been fully-indexed and we now have the paradoxical situation where the Commonwealth allocates more funds each year to private schools than it does to its public universities for education.
The extent of the problem we face in this country was reinforced to me when I spoke at the National University and Design Forum. The speaker immediately preceding me was from the University of Pennsylvania. She stated that the student number at her university was 20,000, the recurrent budget $4b and the endowment $6.6b. In other words each year they have three times as much money as we have to educate one third the number of students and an endowment 25 times ours. Even so, their endowment is modest when compared with Harvard's $36b.
I mention this not in the sense that we should despair, but rather to emphasise that like other Australian universities we have to be both very smart and very efficient to be able to compete internationally. Monash has performed superbly in these respects but each year the dual constraints of decreased public funding for education and a highly regulated environment with respect to the fees we can charge undergraduate domestic students make the problem more difficult.
In this context, it is essential that the Bradley Review of Higher Education and the Cutler Review of Innovation convince the Government that our universities must receive more funding if they are to continue to be internationally competitive. This is necessary not merely because of our international standing and reputation but because the future of our economy depends on an adequate supply of well-educated and innovative new graduates and on research to allow our industries to compete on innovation and quality rather than forlornly trying to compete on price. We must also have quality universities to do the research necessary for environmental sustainability. This of course relates to water, clean energy and agricultural sustainability where technological and economic solutions are urgently needed.
At the very least, an outcome of the Bradley Review has to be either markedly elevated public funding of Commonwealth supported places or else deregulation of the fees charged to undergraduate domestic students. More radical solutions such as portable learning scholarships for students in a deregulated environment make a lot of sense from the point of view of flexibility of choice for students and breaking down boundaries between the VET/TAFE sector and universities so they should also be considered.
The Cutler Review must lead to full-funding of research. At present, for every dollar of research funding received from ARC and NHMRC the University has to subsidise around 40c as the infrastructure funds attracted by the grants have not kept up with the increase in the research funding. Quite simply, it costs forty per cent more to do the research than the funding granted.
Of course, more profound outcomes from the Cutler Review might also be hoped for, such as major funding to encourage research clusters incorporating universities, CSIRO and industry – there is no more exciting such cluster than that around the Monash Clayton campus.
Another element contributing to the eddies and currents of the debates around the reviews is the concept of "Compacts". They have been a feature of the Labor Party platform since the Macklin white paper of 2006. Nobody is sure what they will encompass and how they will be administered. They are intended to cover areas such as community and industry engagement, regional development and special initiatives for disadvantaged groups and to encourage diverse missions for different universities.
The sector in general and Monash University have high hopes that the real value to the Australian community of our universities might be recognised following the handing down of the reports of the two reviews. It is essential that this leads to significantly more funding or a more deregulated environment. Anything less will be to the real detriment of the future of our country.
Meanwhile, we face a very difficult budget setting process for 2009.
30 July 2008
 |
Name: Steve Ogden-Barnes
Org. Unit: Australian Centre for Retail Studies
Title: Program Director
Dept: Marketing
How long have you been with Monash University?
Six years. I moved from the UK to Australia after finding the advertisement for my job online. Proof of the power of the internet to change lives.
Prior to working at Monash, where were you located and what was your role?
In the UK, I taught at Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University College and prior to that I spent 11 years working for a retailer in the UK.
What challenges are ahead in your current role?
Keeping up to speed with the changing world of retail and changing consumer trends is always a challenge. However, the biggest challenge is getting audiences to understand that by applying the lessons learnt by overseas retailers to their own businesses, they can make a real difference to competitive positioning and business success.
What is it about your job that holds your interest or is particularly satisfying?
I enjoy the travel opportunities that the role brings. In August for example, our retail study tour will visit Shanghai, Dubai, Madrid, New York and Las Vegas. Priceless!
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
Vancouver, Canada. A great and diverse city and a fantastic base from which to explore the natural beauty of British Columbia.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
Don't let someone else's bad planning become your crisis.
What is something about yourself that most of your colleagues wouldn't know?
I'm interested in the history of pirates and piracy -- my son Samuel was named after the English pirate "Black Sam" Bellamy.
Archive of 60 seconds with...30 July 2008
 |
On Thursday 31 July, 2008 the Australian Synchrotron will celebrate its one-year anniversary.
Monash University welcomed a new era in scientific research with the official opening of the Australian Synchrotron by Victorian Premier John Brumby on Tuesday 31 July, 2007.
The Australian Synchrotron is a machine the size of a football field that accelerates electrons to almost the speed of light allowing scientists to examine the structure of matter at an atomic scale.
Monash is one of 11 investors in the synchrotron and has established the Monash Centre for Synchrotron Science to enable the University's researchers to take advantage of its location adjacent to the Clayton campus.
Visit the Monash Centre for Synchrotron Science website or the Australian Synchrotron website for more information.