It’s not child’s play anymore—the interactive entertainment industry grossed more than $50 billion worldwide in 2005 and in Australia topped $1 billion for the first time.

“Bond’s new Bachelor of Computer Games, which starts next semester, is so much more than a straight multimedia degree,” says Associate Prof. Jeff Brand, who devised the degree with Assistant Prof. Scott Knight. Jeff is director of Bond’s Centre for New Media Research and Education.

“Students will use state-of-the-art Dell multimedia towers with dual LCD screens and a suite of sound, image, video and programming software,” Jeff said.

“Our students in this program will have exclusive access to the Level-Up lab which houses networked game PCs, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, DS, PSP and legacy software, also a library of more than 500 software titles.”

Criminology Masters graduate in 2000 Karen Ward has started the Love Shack for abandoned orphan children in Nairobi, Kenya.

Karen is from the United Kingdom, where she worked as a forensic nurse. Then she completed a Masters of Criminology here.

Karen explains: “Love Shack aims to create a holistic, loving, self-sustaining and secure environment for sick, homeless and abandoned children and vulnerable adults to live as a family.

”In 2001 I travelled through Kenya on my return to the UK from Bond. As I travelled through Nairrobi I was shocked to see children as young as three begging on the streets, pre-teen prostitutes and young boys escaping their broken lives by glue-sniffing.

“It was heartbreaking. In 2003 a web search led me to a children’s charity in Kenya. I had a wonderful year as teacher and housemother to 42 destitute and orphaned teenage girls. I now rent a small house in a slum and named it the Love Shack.

“I’m trying to build a boarding school to provide holistic care to these vulnerable children.”

Bachelor of Social Science student Lauren Hagedorn (pictured) played Puck, the mischievous sprite, in Shakespeare’s

The production was directed by Michael Zissis and featured Louise McCarthy of HSS staff as Hippolyta and Jess Leach as Starveling.

Congratulations to our PhD student in Journalism, Naomi Busst, who has won the Journalism Education Association award for early career researchers.

Naomi has been provided with a $2000 grant to attend the annual JEA conference which this year will be held in Auckland, to present a paper on photojournalism.

She has been undertaking a study under the following topic; “What do news photographers and newspaper photographic decision-makers define as photojournalism?”, and she will present her findings on this at the conference in December.

Kim Green, a Psychology honours student of Assistant Professor Wendy Wan, has devised an adventure therapy for vulnerable teenagers, the at-risk ones who love to live dangerously.

She is a child safety worker, also an athlete and dancer, so it was an easy task for her to develop her honours project around teaching circus skills to these teenagers. Her research examined the use of adventure therapy, in particular aerial trapeze, as a form of treatment for troubled adolescents.

“I wanted to find out whether doing risky activities within a safe environment, such as jumping off a platform on a trapeze, would increase the youths’ confidence and self-worth to the extent that they would be less likely to engage in foolish and dangerous activities,” Kim said.

She chose 54 at-risk young people from Coombabah High and Keebra Park High School, those that had been suspended or expelled from school.

They took part in two hours of trapeze (with safety net) and two hours of juggling, trampoline and rollobolo, where a plank is balanced on a rolling cylinder.

“When they found they could do these things, they were on a massive high.”

Kim’s thesis will be published in the Journal of Experiential Learning.

One of the most amazing and unexpected archaeological finds ever made in Australia has turned up among the wind-blown sand dunes of Willandra Lakes in western New South Wales.

More than 450 footprints of men, women and children depict life in the area 20,000 years ago.

It’s the biggest find of its type in the world, bigger than all the other known human footprints sites combined, according to Bond archaeologist and Professor of Australian Studies Dr Steve Webb. And the archaeology, interpretation and preservation of this spectacular find is a collaboration between the archaeologists and the local indigenous people, Steve told audiences to the ABC-TV program Catalyst this month.

At Lake Mungo, Steve and an indigenous ranger were about to finish for the day in 2004 when the ranger, Mary Pappin Jnr, spotted a print on the ground.

This was the first of what turned out to be the largest collection of fossil human footprints anywhere in the world.

A US reviewer has enthusiastically praised the dissertation of Communication Department Assistant Professor Marilyn Mitchell, likening its groundbreaking potential to the work of French semiologist Jacques Bertin.

Prof. Phillip Rubens, appointed by the University of Technology Sydney to review Marilyn’s dissertation, wrote:

“This work breaks academic ground in much the same way as Jacques Bertin’s Semiology of Graphics…(and provides) an original perspective on how cultures dynamically create and assimilate technological and scientific advances into their everyday needs.” Another reviewer, Dr Mieka Leppens, wrote: “This work offers a foundation for a new ... approach to teaching visual communication.”

Marilyn’s 750-page dissertation, which took 11 years to complete, is titled The Visual Representation of Time.

The book

The book, which took the two authors nearly 10 years of investigation to research and write, looks at the savage murder of 12-year-old Leanne Holland at the suburb of Goodna in Brisbane in September 1991, one of the most brutal child killings in Australia’s criminal history.

Wilson and Crowley believe that a major miscarriage of justice occurred when the boyfriend of Leanne’s older sister, Graham Stafford, was arrested for the crime.

The case has already made Australian legal history with two appeals, two High Court challenges and an appeal to the Queensland Governor. Assistant Professor Robyn Lincoln is coordinating the research efforts of a number of Law and Criminology students at Bond who are preparing evidence for a further appeal to the Governor, Quentin Bryce.

Bond Law Postgraduate Teaching Fellow and barrister Joe Crowley is preparing the actual appeal that is sure to be watched closely by the media.

Bond’s new Associate Professor in Public Relations, Maria Hopwood, comes from a very sporty family—her 17-year-old son Ricky plays with the highly rated Durham Cricket Club in England and is one of the youngest members of its cricket academy. So it’s not surprising that Maria is undertaking a PhD here with the focus on researching sports public relations.

Maria arrived in time to start a very busy spring semester for public relations teaching. She is intrigued by Bond’s high number of overseas students, with quite a few students from the United States in some classes. “Public relations is a very female-dominated profession these days,” she said. “Women do well at this job and are attracted to the work more so than men.

“Most universities have this imbalance in PR classes. In one undergraduate subject, Public Relations Practice and Event Management, some of my tutorials have no males.

“My family is looking forward to joining me here soon.

“My husband Cliff is a primary school teacher and I see there is a shortage of male teachers in Queensland."

Publish or perish. Or sometimes both. That has been the experience of Communications lecturer Mike Grenby, who teaches Travel Writing, Freelancing and Photojournalism.

He has been giving a slightly different twist to the academic mantra, "publish or perish", by practising what he preaches/teaches, and getting the travel stories from his recent trip published in both Australian and Canadian newspapers.

"Especially in a subject like journalism, it helps to show students that their instructor is actively involved in the real world," said Mike. "Teaching the students by example is one way to get the message across."

From the Great Wall of China to the Gay Pride Parade in New York, Mike wrote about and photographed his various adventures. But it wasn't always smooth going.

"One approach to freelancing involves selling the same article to several different publications, as long as they don't compete with each other and don't demand exclusive rights," said Mike.

"Unfortunately, I forgot to change the name of the first newspaper in my proposal when I used the same material in my pitch to another paper. Needless to say, I never heard back from the second paper."

Staff turned out in force to see HSS Web Administrator Janaya Harrison marry Grant Thrower in the chapel at Robina Woods Golf Club this month.

The bride wore a pink fishtail gown and had a beautiful flower arrangement in her hair. There was quite a bit of excitement at the start, which was delayed an hour because the bridal party's limousine driver had a heart attack and had to be rushed to hospital.

Staff who attended the wedding and Golf Club reception included Veronica Boulton, Kevin Jih, Anne Rodgers, Rhonda McKenna and former staff member Leah Gill and her husband Kevin. Lynne Kirkland, now with the Business faculty, was also there.

Janaya and Grant are honeymooning at Tangalooma resort and Janaya will be back at work early in October.

Congratulations to Mariko Saito (Teaching Fellow – Languages) for being awarded the trimesterly Bond University Teaching Excellence Award by the Bond Student Council.

Last semester saw a substantial increase in the number of nominations that were received, with nominees from the four Faculties honoured.

“The overall award went to Mariko, who impressed students with her dedication and passion,” Bond Student Council’s Sam Cochrane said.

Remember Nidhi Dutt who graduated just over a year ago in Journalism and International Relations?

Nidhi has just moved from Tribune newspaper in London to Reuters Television. She is training to report/produce for Times Now (network owned by The Times of India and Reuters) and Reuters Reports.

Below is a link to Nidhi's first Times Now news report (telecast from Mumbai yesterday), a story about two Bollywood stars. You can watch her item on line.

Prof. Paul Wilson and Criminology Assistant Professor Robyn Lincoln addressed 30 judges at a Darwin conference last month put on by the National Judicial College of Australia. The topic: “Can you tell if people are lying?”

“This was a tough audience,” Robyn said. “They were a sceptical lot. About one third were women.

“My impression was that the women judges were better at picking the liars, but there was no formal assessment.”

In recognition of his research productivity, Professor of Psychology Greg Boyle has been invited on to the editorial board of the international journal Personality and Individual Differences (PAID).

This is the official journal of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID), founded in 1983. The aim of the Society is to foster research on individual differences in temperament, intelligence, attitudes and abilities.

ISSID holds conferences every two years. The last one was at the University of Adelaide and the 2007 conference will be held in Guissen, Germany.

Genevieve Edmond (O’Reilly) had a seven-pound baby girl on Wednesday, September 13. Both are well – she needed no drugs, and had only two hours of labour! The baby's name is Grace Genevieve O'Reilly.

Her Bond supervisor, Psychology Professor Richard Hicks, reports that she has nearly finished a PhD which is examining employee engagement in the travel industry.

She is looking at how employee morale and work satisfaction relates to such outcomes as profitability for the company.

It’s been a busy semester for Professional Relations Manager Nicole Sprintall, who has managed to come out smiling despite a hectic semester of coordinating more than 30 industry placements for full degree students enrolled in the Faculty.

Internships last semester ranged from local, to state, national and international placements, with companies such as the Stamford Hotel Group, Coca-Cola Amatil, Warner Village Theme Parks, MTV Networks Australia, Tabcorp and Channel 10’s Big Brother to name a few.

“I’m really excited about the growth of our Internship program and the potential career opportunities they provide for our students,” Nicole said.

The program has also been successful in gaining some industry leaders on a continual basis with many companies at state and national level requesting us to provide as many students as we can find for them.

“We really value the relationships we have with our partnering organisations, and I’m looking forward to seeing the program flourish even further in the next 12 months,” she said.

Students wishing to do an internship are required to have a grade point average of 2.5 and submit a formal application in week 3 of the semester before to be eligible.

For further information on the Faculty Internship program, please visit the website at www.bond.edu.au/hss/internships, or contact Nicole Sprintall on 07 5595 2518 or email nsprinta@ staff.bond.edu.au.

BUASA AGM SET FOR FRIDAY OCTOBER 13

There will be an annual general meeting of the Bond University Academic Staff association (BUASA) at 12 noon in Case Study Room 2 on Friday October 13.

The agenda includes the election of officers for the next 12 months.