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May 2008 - QUT Smart Train
Up to 20,000 school children will get to experience science and technology first-hand when the QUT Smart Train travels around the State. The 10,000 kilometre journey will make 24 scheduled stops in rural and regional Queensland during its five week tour from May 9-13 June. Governor of Queensland, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC, officially launched the Smart Train at the historical Workshops Railway Museum at Ipswich on Friday 9 May. Read more.
May 2008 - Talloires Network May 2008 Newsletter
A new web-based tool kit, developed by the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, is available online to help make the most out of community partnerships. The tool-kit contains orientation, preparation, and evaluation tools for community co-educators, faculty, staff, and students. The toolkit is also a "wiki," which allows for input, discussions, and customisation. Read more in the Talloires Network May 2008 Newsletter.
May 2008 - Talloires Network: World Book Day
In applying to attend the CGI U Conference, QUT students Brett Hall and Natalie Alexander made commitments to undertake a project addressing human rights through literacy, an effort aligned with the Talloires Network Global Project.
This student project, in its early planning stages, will coordinate the collection of books, computers and other educational materials and then distribute them to a number of schools throughout the developing world, which are currently in dire need of resources. Read more
April 2008 - Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U)
On March 14 – 16 2008, President Clinton hosted the inaugural meeting of CGI U at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hundreds of students, university officials, and global leaders came together to make a difference within CGI U’s four main focus areas: energy and climate change, global health, human rights and peace, and poverty alleviation. This meeting was about action: before leaving New Orleans, all attendees made a commitment.
24 students from Talloires Network institutions attended this conference, from 11 universities and 7 countries. These students engaged in Talloires Network workshops and are helping to develop the student-led arm of the Talloires Network. QUT students Brett Hall, Todd Phillips and Natalie Alexander attended the conference. Read more in the Talloires Network April 2008 Newsletter.
Visit the CGI U website.
March 2008 – Engagement Strategy Retreat
The Engagement Committee recently met for half a day on 29 February to develop an Engagement Strategy for 2008 and beyond. The forum was chaired by Scott Sheppard, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International and Development) and jointly facilitated by Scott and Vi McLean, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Teaching Quality).
Committee members, key QUT staff and two external partners participated in discussions to agree a way forward as to how engagement should be embedded across the university. The Vice-Chancellor started the day with an address reaffirming the university's commitment to engagement as articulated in the Blueprint - regenerate, engage and experiment . Participants brainstormed ideas and concepts for extending and embedding engagement in the university's core activities by considering the building blocks for an engaged university:
- Championing engagement (including recognising, rewarding and encouraging engagement)
- Monitoring and measuring engagement
- Learning how to engage (staff focus)
- New ways for corporations, industry, professionals and the community to engage with QUT (including Alumni)
- Customising engagement for specific clients
- Strengthening engaged learning for QUT students
- Aligning research interests with corporate partners
Outcomes from these discussions will provide the framework for developing an engagement strategy for QUT.
March 2008 – Talloires Network
QUT has recently become a member of the Talloires Network – a global collective of higher education institutions committed to promoting civic engagement and social responsibility in higher education. The network seeks to foster exchange of best practices and encourage collective action. More details about the network can be found at: http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/
March 2008 – International Association of Universities (IAU)
The Talloires Network has been invited by the International Association of Universities (IAU) to organise a workshop at its forthcoming conference from 15-18 July 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The theme of the conference, Higher Education and Research Addressing Local and Global Needs, will emphasise the responsibilities of higher education institutions to serve the world around them.
Talloires are inviting literacy experts from member universities to help plan and implement the workshop, Promoting Literacy Through the Higher Education Sector: Addressing Regional Challenges. Please contact Pauline Gray at pp.gray@qut.edu.au or on 3138 4318 if you wish to participate. More information about the conference is available at http://www.unesco.org/iau/conferences/Utrecht/index.html
March 2008 – AUCEA update
The AUCEA National Conference 2008 will be hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast and held on the Sunshine and Fraser Coasts in Queensland from 9 to 11 July 2008. The conference's dialogue will centre on:
- Responding to the needs of the region / community
- Measurement and evaluation
- Theory and policy development
- Local engagement with a global importance
Call for abstracts closed on 1 March 2008. Full papers must be submitted electronically by Friday 25 April 2008. For further information about the conference, please visit the AUCEA website at http://www.apapdc.edu.au/aucea/
January 2008 – QUT Smart Train
The QUT Smart Train will once again take its message of innovation and technology to Queensland when it sets off from Ipswich on 12 May 2008. All faculties at QUT are joining forces to create another exciting and worthwhile experience for the rural and regional communities around Queensland. This will be the fifth QUT Train to travel throughout Queensland in the last decade and is one of the State's largest community outreach programs.
Find out more about the QUT Smart Train
November 2007 – Breakfast for Champions
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Coaldrake hosted a Breakfast for Champions on Wednesday 14 November in honour of our external partners who play a major role in QUT’s successes in engaging with the community and industry. To mark the occasion, QUT’s new engagement publication Challenging Boundaries: Perspectives on community–university engagementwas also officially launched.
Approximately 100 internal and external guests attended the breakfast at the Gardens Theatre Foyer, some of whom were representatives from partnering projects showcased in the book i.e. the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries and Brisbane Airport Corporation.
Guest speakers, Mr Jim Carden, Corporate Relations Manager at Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) and Professor Martin Betts, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering spoke about the value of the QUT-BAC Partnership and reflected upon the importance of understanding and accepting each others’ vision and culture as the key to developing the trust that so clearly exists between these two organisations.
We had extremely positive feedback from many of our external partners who thought it was a great opportunity to hear about the partnerships that QUT has with the community and industry and to also be able to touch base and share their experiences with their respective QUT partners.
A copy of the Challenging Boundaries publication is available online at www.challengingboundaries.qut.edu.au
October 2007 – Queensland Multicultural Festival
The 2007 Queensland Multicultural Festival was held at Roma Street Parklands on Sunday 14 October. The festival, now in its fourth year, is held annually to celebrate cultural diversity in Queensland.
More than 45,000 people attended the festival which featured a broad range of activities including music, dance, craft, photography, children’s and family activities, and over 35 international food stalls.
As a major sponsor of the festival, QUT staff and students participated in various activities on the day. Student ambassadors provided course information to festival attendees, introduced acts on the QUT Community Dance Stage, and conducted visitor surveys on behalf of Multicultural Affairs Queensland. QUT staff including the Registrar Dr Carol Dickenson, Prof Susan Street, Sharon Tickle, Elizabeth McDade, and the Engagement team attended the sponsor function and met with the Minister for Multiculturalism, The Honourable Lindy Nelson-Carr MP.
QUT Dance Stage
L–R Breeanna Spires, Sharon Tickle, Dr Carol Dickenson, Hon Lindy Nelson-Carr MP, Prof Susan Street, and Elizabeth McDade
June 2007 – ARC Linkage Grants
QUT topped the state for number of projects funded in the latest round of ARC Linkage grants, securing more than $4.35 million for 17 individual projects.
One of the projects is set to play a significant role in delivering future water security to Australia.
The Linkage Projects scheme encourages traditional research academics and organisations outside the higher education sector to develop long-term strategic research alliances.
Other projects to receive funding include:
- Development of reliability driven rural electricity supply
- Firm early development and performance (FEDP): A panel study
- Web service reputation management, and
- Improving child safety in cars
A full list of linkage projects proposals (PDF), summarising funding for QUT and partners starting 2007, is available here.
June 2007 – Engagement Project Teams
The QUT Engagement Committee has established six new cross-university project teams for 2007 to support and facilitate engagement outcomes.
The 2007 project teams include:
- Developing hard data sources to help ground claims – led by Dr Lawrence Stedman, Principal Policy Advisor
- Creating a doorway to potential partnerships – led by Bernie Murchison, Corporate Relations Manager
- Creating places for staff learning about engagement – led by Melissa Nugent, Senior Development Officer (Engagement)
- Examining ways to strengthen engagement activities in the promotion process – led by Human Resources (individual TBA)
Additional initiatives are underway to finetune the Incentive Funding Scheme and harness opportunities for developing engagement models through T&L large projects.
May 2007 - Engagement Innovation Grants
$200,000 of seed project funding for engagement was advertised in April of this year. 31 Applications were received from across the University. Successful projects will receive between $10,000 and $30,000 support funding for their engagement initiative, which will be made available in early July 2007.
Sue Savage (Assistant Dean Teaching and Learning, Built Environment & Engineering), Iyla Davies (Assistant Dean International and Community, Law Faculty) and Melissa Nugent (Senior Development Officer Engagement, International & Development) are assessing the applications.
For further information about QUT's engagement project support funding, please refer to the overview support funding document (PDF) and the 2007 Engagement Innovation Grant guidelines (PDF).
May 2007 – New Engagement Committee
The new University Engagement Committee met for the first time on Thursday, 10 May 2007. This high level policy committee comprises:
- Deputy Vice Chancellor International & Development (Chair)
- Registrar
- Executive Deans of Faculties of Health and Built Environment & Engineering
- Policy Advisor to the Vice Chancellor
- Assistant Dean International and Community, Faculty of Law
- Director of University Advancement & Alumni.
At their initial meeting the Committee discussed external committee representation and settled on the engagement project priorities for 2007/08.
View the terms of reference for the Engagement Committee.
May 2007 - AUCEA update
The 4th Annual AUCEA Conference 2007, will be hosted by Charles Darwin University in Alice Springs from 2–4 July. The conference’s dialogue will centre on:
- Workable models for community engagement
- Best practice engaged teaching, learning and research
- Diverse approaches and activities for meeting distinctive needs of communities
- Systems for measuring economic, social and environmental outcomes.
For further information about the conference, please visit the AUCEA web site at: http://www.apapdc.edu.au/aucea/
November 2006 – QUT and BAC come up trumps at B-HERT Awards
QUT and Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) emerged as winners of the hotly contested award for best research and development collaboration at the recent Business/Higher Education Round Table Awards Dinner held in Melbourne on 14 November. The QUT and BAC partnership won for their project to turn Brisbane airport into an airport city. The B–HERT citation praises the project's symbiosis citing QUT as the R&D arm of BAC and the airport as a living laboratory for QUT research. For further information on the B-HERT awards please visit: http://www.bhert.com/
November 2006 – Eidos roundtable and report launch
QUT participated as a panel member at a recent Eidos Institute roundtable held in Brisbane on 20 November to discuss the Institute’s recent report on measuring community engagement. Grabs of the report entitled ‘In Search of Evidence – Measuring Community Engagement: A Pilot Study’ can be viewed on the Eidos website's News & Events section. Watch this space for the full text report.
October 2006 – Bayside Leg Club opening: A story of engagement in practice
QUT's role in the establishment of Queensland's newest branch of the Leg Club® was acknowledged during the opening of the Bayside Community Wound Service at Cleveland on Monday 2 October 2006.
The collaborative partnership comprising QUT's IHBI researchers, Spiritus Care Services (formerly St Luke's Nursing Service) and the Redlands Shire Council is responsible for the extension of the continuum of care to people with medical conditions affecting their legs, particularly ulcers, in Brisbane's bayside suburbs.
The Leg Club®, modelled on a concept developed in the United Kingdom, combines the clinical care of ulcers with social support to significantly improve the health of sufferers of leg ulcers, as uncovered by QUT researchers.
Find out more about the impact the Leg Club® is having as a community engagement initiative.
September 2006 – Achieving Engineering Excellence through Engagement
One of QUT's recent engagement success stories was recognised at the 2006 Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards where a joint submission by QUT, Powerlink, Energex and Ergon received a highly commended in the Reports, Procedures and Systems category. The partnership project was rewarded for its work in addressing the potential skills shortage in electrical power systems engineering.
August 2006 – Cheque in for Engagement Incentive Fund winners
This month the Development Office will distribute $150,000 in Engagement Incentive Funding. The Fund is a key initiative of QUT's Engagement Strategy that aims to promote and support collaborative activities to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for QUT and its partners.
One of the nine successful projects will enhance collaborative activity between QUT and the Cerebral Palsy League of Queensland's Equipment Technology Services. Thirty thousand dollars will support this partnership as it develops a much needed mechanism to increase the production and availability of customised seating and wheelchairs for sufferers of Cerebral Palsy. This will have particular impact in rural and remote areas where access to this equipment is currently limited.
Professor Mark Pearcy (left) from the Faculty of Built
Environment and Engineering and the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation,
and Mr Laurie Boyne (centre) from the Cerebral Palsy League of Queensland receive
their cheque from Development Office staff member Ms Melissa Nugent (right).
Engagement resource – QUT’s Professor Arun Sharma co–writes B–HERT position paper
QUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Commercialisation) Professor Arun Sharma has co–authored a B–HERT position paper – Universities' Third Mission: Communities Engagement (PDF document) – on how community engagement could be valued and funded.