[ :: Bond University - Humanities and Social Sciences Newsletter

Welcome to the first Faculty newsletter for 2011 heralding what is sure to be another successful year for Humanities and Social Sciences at Bond.

During this semester we held a highly successful Dean’s Awards evening on 11 February celebrating the academic achievement of our students from the final semester of 2010. The evening was attended by almost four hundred members of the Faculty community including students, friends, family, sponsors and staff.

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EVENTS

BOND UNIVERSITY FILM AND TELEVISION AWARDS (BUFTA) ROADSHOW

Mr Steve Guttormsen hit the road during March and April to present the annual Roadshow for the Bond University Film and Television Awards (BUFTA).

Visiting schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Steve held presentations on the awards in conjunction with workshops on lighting, sound, editing and the development of storylines. These workshops form an integral part of helping students to adapt their unique stories to the dynamic field of film and television. Each session concluded with a viewing of last year’s winning BUFTA film. Steve will visit schools in and around Perth in May.

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DEANS AWARDS 103

On Friday February 11, Humanities and Social Sciences Dean Professor Raoul Mortley welcomed almost 400 students and guests to the Cerum Theatre, for the 2010 September semester Dean’s Awards ceremony.

265 awards were presented on the evening to the top achieving students across all subjects in the Faculty, as well as those students who made the Dean’s and Vice-Chancellors’ Lists of Academic Excellence.

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MAJOR DONATION MAKES WAY FOR “MINDFULNESS”

On Wednesday 9 March, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Centre for East-West Cultural and Economic Studies hosted an inaugural public discussion forum on “Mindfulness”.

Chaired by the Dharma Master, Heng Chih and supported by the Centre’s generous benefactor, Mr Alan Chan, the seminar on “Mindfulness” was attended by a broad spectrum of the Bond community including general staff, academics and external guests.

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FACULTY DIRECTIONS

After three months of extensive building work, renovations have recently been completed on Levels 1 and 2 of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences side of the Arch Building. The renovations provided a fresh outlook to many existing offices and reconfigured other administration spaces to incorporate a new meeting room and storage areas.

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WHERE A HSS DEGREE TAKES YOU

CARLY FIGHTS THE GOOD FIGHT ACROSS THE GLOBE

When Carly Sheehan graduated with a degree in International Relations at Bond University in 2002, she went straight to Canberra with her qualifications in hand and an eagerness to work in a government role as a foreign officer. Once she arrived however, she was faced with the harsh reality that obtaining work in those roles was scarce and fiercely competitive.

Carly returned to university, completing a Master of International Affairs at the Australian National University while working in an Australian Government department unrelated to her field. Following her graduation, Carly began working for the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID,) an agency that coordinates a non-government organisation lobby which helped individual groups to achieve a common voice. At ACFID Carly liaised with a number of people who were employed in international non-government organisations involved with the coordination of medical aid, securing food and water and in the reconstruction efforts after large natural disasters or political problems.

Realising that her true passion involved work overseas, Carly applied for a role in the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program. She was successful and was posted to Bangladesh with CARE Bangladesh to assess the impact of projects and report on these for the purposes of internal learning and promotion to donors.

After her stint in Bangladesh concluded, Carly was transferred to the politically troubled region of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines to work as a field monitor for the UN World Food Programme. In a harrowing environment of weapons and kidnapping, Carly worked under the occasional sounds of mortar shelling and gunfire to monitor the distribution of food supplies to remote and desperate communities of displaced people to ensure that those most in need received a regular supply of rice.

Unperturbed by her life in Mindanao, Carly moved on to Lebanon where she was employed with a handful of international aid workers and hundreds of Palestinian refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in a large, multi-pronged project to restore essential services after military conflict displaced a group of almost 30,000 refugees. The sheer magnitude of the reconstruction effort was overwhelming. In the course of clearing rubble, aid workers trying to re-establish accommodation, clean drinking water, sanitation and electricity also had to contend with omnipresent land mines hidden around the site. Carly’s role was to prepare reports to donors, train local staff and prepare proposals for future donations.

From Lebanon, Carly was deployed to Pakistan through the esteemed Australian NGO, RedR (Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief) to work for UNICEF. Their focus was to deliver aid across the flood ravaged country. Approximately twenty million people were affected after the gargantuan Indus River broke its banks during the northern monsoon season. From her office in Islamabad, Carly regularly updated donors on the progress of the relief effort, developed fact sheets and streamlined information processes. During her stay in Pakistan, Carly was sent on a field trip to the Sindh region where she visited a centre for malnourished children. She found the experience very confronting. “While I was there I met a lady caring for her seven month old infant who weighed only five pounds. The workers at the centre measure the upper arms of the children to determine their levels of malnutrition. I met one five month old child that had an upper arm circumference of only seven centimetres, when the bottom of the healthy range is 12 centimetres,” recounted Carly.

Carly is currently working for Oxfam Great Britain as a roving Information Manager, a role new to the organisation. From her base in Australia, she has already been sent to Mexico and Guatemala to train field officers. Where she goes next is up to Oxfam and the world’s hotspots.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

ESPRESSO ESSENTIAL CAMPAIGN – SHORT VIDEO WINNER ANNOUNCED

A number of Film and Television students recently entered short films in a competition to market one of Australia’s fastest growing franchises, “Espresso Essential – Coffee for Life”. From the four that entered, the final winner was determined by the amount of Youtube votes their film received.

The short film Coffee Breakdown, created by Andrea Cordova, Vanessa Kellett, Jamie Parfitt and Michael Porter, was the final winner of the competition. The production team included Milan Gandhi, Caitlin Willcox and a raft of other students.

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BOND STUDENTS TAKE OUT BEST STUDENT PRODUCTION PRIZE IN THE OPTUS 180 COMPETITION

A group of Bond current film and television students and alumni have taken out the 2011 Optus 180 prize for best student production.

Each year the large telecommunications company, runs a short film competition in conjunction with MTV and Event Cinemas. Entries to the competition have to be one hour long with a 180 second pilot. A series of finalists are then selected by some of Australia’s leading Film and Television Industry figures. In the most recent competition, the judges included David Wenham, Joel Edgerton and Kat Stewart.

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ACADEMIC NEWS

DR PENNY DE BYL WINS CURRICULUM COMPETITION

Dr Penny De Byl recently won almost $75,000 in android mobile phones and Unity Software for the Faculty through the Unity Technologies Great Education Giveaway. Participants were asked to submit example curriculum and record two short video lectures demonstrating Unity on an Android device. Dr De Byl received the award for her clean and concise content which focussed on android specific development. Judges from the competition included prominent industry figures and electronic education specialists from Europe and USA.

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ANATOMICAL TEXTBOOK TURNS INTERACTIVE – BOND UNIVERSITY ACADEMICS DEVELOP 3D HEART MODEL FOR IPADS

On Tuesday 8 March, Dr James Birt and Assistant Professor Allan Stirling held an official launch of their new 3D iPad app that describes the function and dynamics of the human heart. Aimed at taking the content of an anatomical textbook one step further, the 3D human heart which, when launched, can be used by students to examine a heart from every angle, is poised to revolutionise the way anatomy is taught. Instead of looking at two dimensional, lateral views of a human heart, students can now control their view and study the anatomical structures of the heart at greater depth.

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