A CHILDHOOD REVOLUTION

The Port Adelaide Football Club and UniSA have launched a new high performance partnership. The partnership will involve the development of new courses this year with a view to developing a Masters in High Performance in 2016. 

UniSA is now home one of the biggest archival collections relating to the Downer family and its role in Australia’s political and social history over 100 years. 

UniSA has continued its rapid rise in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, moving from 340 in 2013, to 290 in 2014. UniSA’s result is an improvement of 50 places, the largest rise of any university in South Australia and the second largest rise of any Australian university. 

More than 100 international students will benefit from a new scholarship announced in 2014, allocating $500,000 across a four year period to 2018. Provided by the International Student Entrepreneurship Capital company, established by businessman Raymond Wang, it is the largest privately funded scholarship for international students ever afforded to UniSA.

Internationally renowned wine maker, Wolf Blass, is hoping to nurture the next generation of Australian wine entrepreneurs with the launch of a new 10-year program of Masters research scholarships at UniSA’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science worth $350,000. The first of five two-year scholarships will be available from 2015. 

UniSA’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science has entered into a long-term collaboration with the Barossa Co-op to help the community retail group better understand its customers’ needs, provide its customers with improved products and services, and assist in marketing its planned new supermarket development in Nuriootpa.

One of Australia’s most decorated scientists and former South Australian of the Year, physicist, Professor Tanya Monro is UniSA’s new Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation.

Prof Monro joined UniSA from the University of Adelaide, where she was the Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Nanoscale BioPhotonics and of the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing.

Currently the holder of an ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship, Prof Monro is the author of more than 500 journal and research articles. She was recently appointed to the Commonwealth Science Council.

Australian Research Council (ARC) Executive Director for Humanities and Creative Arts, and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for Research at RMIT, Professor Denise Meredyth will join UniSA in 2015 as Pro Vice Chancellor for the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences.

Prof Meredyth has broad experience across the higher education sector, working in leadership roles in research and research management and has strong personal research interests in education and education policy, social policy, culture and history.

Across her career, Prof Meredyth has been awarded 14 ARC grants totalling $4.8 million and has worked as a chief investigator and node leader for an ARC Centre of Excellence. She has an international research reputation in cultural, media and education policy studies.

Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Council Australia and renowned oncologist, cancer researcher and bioethicist, Professor Ian Olver, AM has been appointed as the new Director of UniSA’s Sansom Institute for Health Research.

With a long career in anticancer drug studies, symptom control, bio-ethics and psycho-oncology, Prof Olver will lead the Sansom Institute’s ambitious program of health research.

Author of more than 200 journal articles, Prof Olver was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to medical oncology as a clinician, researcher, administrator and mentor, and services to the community through leadership roles with cancer control organisations.

Social work and international relations student Lia Lawrie is the new president of the University of South Australia Students’ Association (USASA). Appointed in July 2014, the third-year student will lead USASA for 18 months.

Lia’s goals during her term include raising awareness of USASA so that students know that the Association is there for them, achieving higher levels of student engagement and improving the overall university experience for UniSA students.

Professor Pat Buckley is leading support and engagement for research students across the University in her new role as Dean of Graduate Studies.

Previously Director of the Sansom Institute for Health Research and Dean of Research in UniSA’s Division of Health Sciences, Prof Buckley is now responsible for developing a networked, engaged and supportive environment for students completing higher degrees by research.

A biochemist-turned-physiologist, Prof Buckley has also been a member of the University Council since 2011.

Amanda Vanstone has been appointed Chair of the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art Board at UniSA.

A director on the Port Adelaide Football Club Board and a public broadcaster on ABC Radio National, Vanstone was a long-serving Liberal Senator for South Australia from 1984, and held senior ministerial portfolios in the Howard Government. She retired from the Senate in 2007.

Vanstone brings considerable experience to the role, following her 23-year career in politics and her subsequent three-year posting to Rome as Australian Ambassador to Italy.

Three members of the UniSA community – Elizabeth Ho OAM, Adjunct Professor Dennis Mulcahy and Adjunct Associate Professor Adrian Vicary – have been made University Fellows at the 2014 August graduations.

As inaugural Director of the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, Ho was pivotal in attracting prominent speakers, delivering a program of events that have placed the Hawke Centre firmly at the forefront of public debate.

An Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Water Management and Refuse, Prof Mulcahy was the Head of School of Chemical Technology from 1993 to 2000 and education and training program leader in the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Quality and Treatment. 

In his career at UniSA, Assoc Prof Adrian Vicary has been Head of School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, Chair of Academic Board and ex officio member of the council of UniSA, Dean of International and External Engagement in the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences and acting Pro Vice Chancellor of the Division.

Seven of UniSA’s teachers have been recognised nationally with Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.

The University received three citations – for two individual teachers and one for a teaching group. UniSA’s award recipients were immunology lecturer Dr Maurizio Costabile; radiation therapy stream coordinator and lecturer Eileen Giles; and an across-university team comprising Dr Patricia Kelly, Diana Collett, Dr Elena Sitnikova, Elizabeth Smith and Siaw Mei Sim.

Adelaide pastor and founder of the Welcome to Australia movement, Brad Chilcott, was the recipient of the 2014 individual award for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding.

Chilcott is the lead pastor of the Activate Community in Bowden, South Australia and founded the movement locally in 2011 to foster a culture of welcome for new migrants and refugees.

Queensland Eidfest Association won the award for the organisation which has made a contribution to the Australian community and improved relations between Muslim and non-Muslim people.

The awards were developed by UniSA’s International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding in 2012 in conjunction with the Australia Day Council of SA.

UniSA awarded former President of Ireland, Professor of Criminal Law and advocate for peace in Ireland, Mary McAleese, an Honorary Doctorate in September 2014, following her delivery of the University’s annual Nelson Mandela Lecture.

McAleese became President of Ireland in 1997 at a time when the journey to peace, following hundreds of years of sectarian violence, was at a critical point.

She served as President from 1997 until 2011 and made history as the first Northern Irish native to be elected president.

UniSA Vice Chancellor, Professor David Lloyd said honouring McAleese was acknowledgement that it is the commitment of leaders to long and often difficult or confronting negotiations, which drives the path to peace and keeps nations on that path.

Professor Brian Burdekin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from UniSA at the 2014 August graduation ceremonies. Australia’s first Federal Human Rights Commissioner, and author of the 1989 report on youth homelessness that so shocked the nation, shared his insights from his international career in human rights with nearly 400 fresh graduates.

Currently Visiting Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden and Professorial Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Prof Burdekin is an international advisor to many national Human Rights Commissions around the world.

The award acknowledges Prof Burdekin as an enduring champion for vulnerable people worldwide.

The University honoured Australia’s former Governor General Dame Quentin Bryce, AD, CVO by awarding her an Honorary Doctorate that acknowledges not only her public service to the nation, but also her consistent support for women, children, young people and families.

Dame Quentin was the first woman appointed to the Faculty of Law at the University of Queensland, the first Director of the Queensland Women’s Information Service, the national Sex Discrimination Commissioner, the founding chair and chief executive officer of the National Childcare Accreditation Council, Principal and CEO of the Women’s College at the University of Sydney, and only the second woman to be appointed Governor of an Australian State.

UniSA has awarded Dr Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and one of the world’s most savvy Internet futurists, an Honorary Doctorate.

Dr Cerf was honoured for his enormous contribution to global communications, science and Internet innovation at a special event held at UniSA in November 2014. At the same event, Dr Cerf delivered a booked-out public lecture, which explored the Internet – its past, its present, and its future.

Dr Cerf was instrumental in the founding and formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that is responsible for assuring the reliable and stable management of the unique identifiers of the Internet (IP addresses, domain names and protocol parameters). He was also a prime mover in the development of the first commercial email system connected to the Internet.

You can watch Dr Cerf’s lecture below. 

UniSA’s new Hawke European Union Centre for Mobilities, Migrations and Cultural Transformations was officially launched by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in October 2014. 

UniSA has launched the new Centre for Business Growth at UniSA Business School with ANZ as the foundation sponsor. 

UniSA has formed a partnership with world renowned musician and composer James Morrison to establish the James Morrison Academy of Music in Mount Gambier. 

Adelaide’s West End now comes alive every Thursday night with cultural organisations across the precinct extending their opening hours as part of ART AFTER DARK. Launched in 2014, ART AFTER DARK is led by UniSA’s Samstag Museum of Art and supported by the Adelaide City Council.

UniSA has launched South Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Alumni Chapter, the Deadly Alumni. 

UniSA graduates in China now have an alumni chapter to call their own, after UniSA launched its China Alumni Association in Beijing in October 2014 under the umbrella of that nation’s highly esteemed Western Returned Scholars Association.