News in Brief

ARC success for ACU

ACU researchers Professor Tim Scrase, Dr Vince Geiger and Associate Professor Anandwardhan Hardikar, were recently awarded grants by the Australian Research Council (ARC). 

ARC sits within the Australian Government's Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) portfolio. As part of their commitment to advancing Australian research, they provide a number of significant grants each year.

Professor Tim Scrase, Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Sociology at ACU, was awarded $128,000 over three years for his project Contingent Development in Regional India: Ethnographies of Neoliberal Globalization in Gujarat and West Bengal.

Associate Professor Anandwardhan Hardikar was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship grant of $816,756 to commence in 2011. 

Associate Professor Hardikar is part of the O’Brien Institute, Melbourne, and the Fellowship is tenable at ACU from 2011. His research interest is in diabetes and early diagnosis to reduce complications later in life. 

Dr Vince Geiger is part of a research team which received $210,000 for the project Enhancing numeracy learning and teaching across the curriculum.  

PhD student wins outstanding thesis award

ACU PhD student Dr David Kenyon was recently announced the winner of the NSW Institute for Educational Research (NSWIER) Award for an Outstanding Thesis. 

Dr Kenyon’s study What constitutes success in classroom Religious Education? A study of secondary religion teachers’ understandings of the nature and purposes of Religious Education in Catholic schools investigated Catholic secondary school teachers’ perceptions of what constituted the ‘successful’ teaching of religion. 

Key issues raised throughout the study included: the desirability of critical inquiry and an academic subject orientation; ambivalence about ecclesial constructs like catechesis and evangelisation; and, a need for ‘relevance’ – in both content and pedagogy.

Conclusions and recommendations centred on paying attention to contemporary youth spirituality as a way of informing a more relevant religious education.

The NSWIER award, which has been running since 1972, aims to recognise outstanding research in the area of education. The award is given in line with the NSWIER’s mission of encouraging young researchers and promoting quality educational research. 

Preppies life captured in play

Self-portraits by prep students from Saint Ita’s Primary School, Brisbane

ACU Bachelor of Arts students recently concluded their community engagement project – a play entitled Preppies, portraying a five-year-olds view on life. 

The Brisbane drama students, working with 50 prep students from Saint Ita’s Catholic Primary School, wrote snapshots of a prep’s life views which they combined into a play and performed for the Saint Ita’s community.

Senior drama lecturer Dr Tracey Sanders said a backdrop of self portraits by the preps framed the performance and brought colour and creativity to the school stage. 

“The performance was testimony to the strength and value of community engagement, not only for our students, but also the community that works with us,” she said.

“The stories were a beautiful tapestry of love, family, friendship and faith with an honest and down to earth slant only a five-year-old can bring to our adult worlds.

“My students gained not only a better understanding of the area of Applied Theatre and Community Narratives but also found a genuine wonderment in the world of young children.”

The performance was part of a new core unit in the Bachelor of Arts program, Drama in the Community.

Strange cargo

Apparitions, by BVAD graduate Keegan Hunt

The ACU Gallery was buzzing with talent as the largest ever cohort of Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design (BVAD) students hosted their graduate show Strange cargo at ACU’s Melbourne Campus. 

The 24 budding artists exhibited across a range of mediums, including photography, digital media, collage, sculpture and even ballpoint pen. 

BVAD Lecturer and Course Coordinator Dr Catherine Bell said the show was intentionally designed to be eclectic. 

“It was an assortment of very different works sitting randomly together, as though they had all been washed up on a deserted beach, that was the idea behind Strange cargo”, she said. 

Peter Eglezos won the 2011 ACU Acquisition Award for Outstanding Visual Arts Graduate for his work Musings of a cigarette smoking man. Peter employed a unique technique – violently erasing male figures from magazine pages with a ballpoint pen to explore concepts of identity, absence and presence. 

Alicia Centofanti’s Stencils – a series of intricate paper structures delicately carved with a scalpel –was awarded BVAD Outstanding Achievement in Design. 

“The interesting thing about paper is that it is a vulnerable material that can take on new forms while being on the edge of collapse”, Alicia said. 

In Apparitions, Keegan Hunt combined a series of oil paintings with contemporary digital processes to create both controlled and random effects on individual portraits– and received the BVAD Special Distinction Award for her work. 

The Visual Culture and Social Justice Award was presented to Judith Egli for The best dad in the world: in memory of that lost family artefact, my foremost artistic endeavour – a series made from various cut papers. 

“The show is a culmination of the strong creative momentum that has developed among these students throughout the duration of the course,” said Dr Bell. 

“It’s been so exciting to see these students seek out and embrace opportunities for industry placement during the course and I am very confident that they will go on to become very successful artistic practitioners in the future.” 

iArtist3 Exhibition

iArtist3 is an exhibition by Melbourne Bachelor of Education (Primary) students exploring visual arts and media arts through appreciation, practice and curriculum. 

The theme In Memoriam is homage to the recent Callum Morton exhibition at the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Each student has produced a portfolio which reflects workshop and lecture experiences and also a final piece of work as the culmination of their In Memoriam studies.

The varied responses to In Memoriam such as audio visual artworks, sculptures made with concrete and digital paintings created on iPads are testament to a deep engagement on the part of the students and to their understanding of their roles as visual arts educators.

iArtist3 is on at the ACU Gallery in Melbourne from Monday 5 December to Friday 9 December.

Graduate bags teaching excellence award

Tarryn Berning

ACU graduate Tarryn Berning has been awarded a 2011 Queensland College of Teachers Excellence in Teaching Award. 
Tarryn, who graduated from a Bachelor of Education (Primary) at the Brisbane Campus in 2008, won the Dr Roger Hunter Excellence in Beginning to Teach Award for her work at Payne Road State School. 

Students in Tarryn’s grade 3 and 4 class face a range of challenges including diagnosed disabilities, developmental delays and behavioural problems. Shorter lessons, smaller groups and a range of innovative strategies including meditation, a drama club and an enriching school campus have generated academic improvements.

ACU’s economics course received the highest ranking for its category in the 2012 Good Universities Guide.

This is the second consecutive year the course has received top marks for Teaching Quality, Generic Skills of our Graduates and Overall Student Satisfaction. The popularity of the program has been acknowledged with the introduction of a Bachelor of Arts and Economics - offered in Sydney from 2012. 

Top marks for economics in Good Uni Guide 

Economics lecturers Dr Tony Stokes and Dr Sarah Wright

 

Dr Tony Stokes, Senior Lecturer in Economics for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said the results were not a one-off, but follow on from the University’s excellent performance in economics over the last few years. 

“This achievement reflects the efforts and achievements of my fellow economics lecturer, Dr Sarah Wright, and our team of high quality and dedicated sessional staff,” he said.

Dr Wright was recently awarded an ACU Citation for Excellence in Learning and Teaching for developing teaching approaches and resources that engage students and enhance their learning by catering for their individual learning styles in economics. 

She presented a paper about the teaching approaches used by the department at the Australian Conference of Economists.

Princeton academic presents to ACU students

Princeton University academic Professor Denis Feeney recently gave a presentation to History and Curriculum students at ACU’s Melbourne Campus.

The video presentation comprised a short introductory lecture into his book and class text, Caesar’s Calendar. A scholar who researches the study of time, Professor Feeney spoke about issues of history chronicling and gave an insight into our heritage of history scholarship. 

Currently the Giger Professor of Latin in the Department of Classics at Princeton University, Professor Feeney has extensively studied Latin literature and Roman culture. Achieving his Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University, Professor Feeney has held numerous academic posts at universities across the UK and US including Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard Universities.

Education lecturer Stephen Spain said thanks must be extended to Dr Madeleine Laming and Sr Geraldine Larkins for their assistance in preparing for the presentation.

“Professor Feeney was very impressed and interested in the way in which his literature had been utilised by ACU students and subsequently is now interested in visiting ACU to conduct a lecture in the near future,” he said.