25 august 2003 volume 22 number 12 experience · the university of western australia established...

UWAnewsThe University of Western Australia ESTABLISHED 1911 25 AUGUST 2003 Volume 22 Number 12

ExperienceE X P O

Abseil down WinthropHall, watch robots play asoccer game, feel what

10,000 volts does to yourhair, design a dry stone archbridge, check out anthraxunder a microscope, tastesome wine, find out how thestock exchange works,perform in a video, climb arock wall, eat some emusausages …

Go horizontal bungee jumping,graze at international food stalls,plunge into a personality reading,indulge in strength testing, watchfilms and performances. Feel whatit’s like to be standing in a windtunnel, learn to write your name ina foreign script and go home with ahelium balloon…

Yes, it’s all happening on OURcampus at EXPO, this SundayAugust 31 between 9am and 4pm.

Information sessions forprospective students (bothundergraduate and postgraduate)and faculty displays will be thestaple for those who seriouslywant to know about how tostudy at UWA. But the rest ofEXPO is designed to entertain,excite and entrance visitors asthey get a taste of whatuniversities are all about.

Be part of it. Bring yourfamilies, remind your friends,tell your neighbours and seewhat help you can offer yourfaculty, school or centre.

Many people from acrossthe entire campus have workedhard for a long time to makeEXPO a success. They deserve

EXPO 2003Sunday August 31

9am – 4pm

2 UWAnews

THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA • 25 AUGUST 2003

Professor Deryck SchreuderVice-Chancellor and [email protected]

VCariousthoughts …

EDITOR/WRITERLindy Brophy

Tel.: 9380 2436 Fax: 9380 1192 Email: [email protected]

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFColin Campbell-Fraser

Tel: 9380 2889 Fax: 9380 1020 Email: [email protected] and typeset by Publications Unit, UWA

Printed by UniPrint, UWA

UWAnews online: www.publishing.uwa.edu.au/uwanews/

UWAnews

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it seems thatquality is often seen to be in the PI — the

performance indicator.

The most common question asked by the highly professionalAustralian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) audit teamvisiting UWA recently was “how do you know that you haveachieved the outcomes you set out to achieve?”. To whichmany reasonably responded that outcomes can be measured inthe quality of our graduates, our research performance andcommunity service record. But that often only provoked afurther question: what hard evidence do we have to prove thatthis is all true?

Behind these encounters — in which a great deal of UWA datahas of course been presented in our AUQA Portfoliosubmission and in oral testimony — has been a major issue ofeducational philosophy. Indeed, a matter of institutionalculture.

While we do measure many things numerically, we also gaugeoutcomes qualitatively, - through peer review, comparativebenchmarking with other institutions, graduate success, andpublic esteem.

And beyond that, as an academically orientated, research-ledUniversity, we aim to create a culture of performance that isself-regulating – respecting the reality that we see our staff asself-directing professionals, with the performance ethics andgoals of the global ‘academy’ of scholars.

External questions should challenge internal self-perceptionsand self-assessments.

It is always good to consider those genuinely external andindependent comments and perceptions. They may highlight

areas where our policy is not clearly enough mirrored by ourpractice.

Overall I should say, the AUQA panel seemed to be mostimpressed with UWA, its processes and the people who makeup our learning community. In particular, the mission andculture was a consistent picture that emerged of UWA fromacross more than 200 people who met them over the - threedays of the visit.

Within the next couple of months we shall receive a draftreport from AUQA for factual checking – it is an independentagency and able to make independent comment. After that weshall quite soon receive the final report, which becomes a publicdocument once it has been conveyed to us. We shall expectconsiderable discussion across the University of the document,starting with Senate, our governing body. The best outcome willbe an external recognition of the University’s considerablereform and advancement strategies of the past few years,together with practical recommendations for our future questfor excellence in teaching and research.

Yet in anticipation of the report, I would here like to say howproud I was of the way in which our University presented itselfto AUQA and of how well that presentation – based in not onlyaspiration but achievement – was received.

Warm thanks to all who were part of the AUQA process –beginning with our Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Executive andextending to Deans, Faculties, Schools and Centres, teachers,and students, managers and community members of governingand advisory bodies.

The deepest values of UWA ultimately relate to our quest forknowledge and the ways we support that. Quality is, in end,about not only efficiency and accountability but about theongoing seeking of wisdom that the community founders had inmind when proposing UWA more than 90 years ago.

Quality byNumbers

UWAnews 3


Historian Jenni Worrallexamines photographicnegatives during her research

Baby farming inthe colonies

Family is important to historystudent Jenni Worrall.

Research for her Master’s thesis hastaken her deep into very personal familyhistories both in the UK and here, inWestern Australia. And one of thereasons her work took her from RoyalHolloway University in London, halfway

Continued on page 4

across the world to UWA, was that amember of her own family, her mother— Professor Anne Worrall — would behere.

Professor Worrall (see UWANewsJune 30) is an expert on women andcrime and a visiting research fellow atUWA’s Crime Research Centre.

Daughter Jenni spent six months inWestern Australia after finishing schoola n d wanted to come back.

“I was thinkingabout how I couldcombine my Master’s

with coming out here,then I found out that

Mum would be here at thesame time, and that sealed my

decision.”Her mother also had an influence

on the direction of Jenni’s research,which is looking at so-called ‘babyfarming’ — or illegal adoption services— in the UK and WA around the turnof last century.

“The original idea of looking atcriminal women came from one ofMum’s colleagues. My undergraduatedissertation was on baby farming in

Britain and now I’ve been able to look athow it happened here. Thephenomenon has been studied as a legalissue but not, that I know of, in ahistorical context and not as acomparative study, between Britain andAustralia,” she said.

Baby farming was common in the UKin the late 19th and early 20th centuries.“It was before adoption became a legalconcept, and it was an accepted way forpoor working-class women, mostlymarried women who already hadchildren of their own, to make a littlemoney,” Jenni explained.

“They would take babies (usuallyillegitimate children) from women whocouldn’t keep them, and look afterthem, for a small sum of money.

“But as there were no legalguidelines, the system was abused, and alot of babies died. Were they murderedso the women could take more babies,and more payments, or were theysimply neglected? Whatever the answer,baby farming changed from a labour oflove to purely a business transaction.

Alice Mitchell, gaoled in 1907 for manslaughter after baby farming

4 UWAnews


“I was interested to see if thepractice translated to Australian society,as so many practices did from Britain.

“Here, in such a new country with asmall population, the babies wereprecious and it seemed that everythingpossible was done to keep them alive,to keep the population growing. It wascommon for mothers to use wet nursesto help keep their children alive, if theywere having trouble feeding them.

“And it seems that that’s where thebaby farming started. I found onewoman, Alice Mitchell, convicted ofmanslaughter in 1907, over the death ofa baby in her care.

“She was found with two babies, oneof whom died soon after. While she wasonly ever charged and found guilty ofone death, she is believed to have killed40 babies, although their bodies werenever found.”

Alice Mitchell spent five years inFremantle Gaol and Jenni says there areno records of what happened to herwhen she was released. But she did finda letter from a woman who believedthat she was the second baby, foundwith Alice Mitchell when she wasarrested — the only baby to havesurvived her ‘care’.

“I’ve been looking at how AliceMitchell was treated in court, by thepress, and by the public, and what it saysabout the social values of the time. Shewas held up by the press as the ultimateexample of a bad woman.”

Jenni said the theme of herdissertation was how the community inthe newly-established colony lookedafter its children to become a strongnation. “It also raises the question ofwhat happened to Aboriginal children inthis community.”

Jenni is Royal Holloway’s first studentto work on her Master’s thesisoverseas. Her main supervisor has beenProfessor Patricia Crawford. “She hasbeen an invaluable support for me, agreat help with contacts. And so haveDr Pamela Sharpe and Dr Jane Long.”Professor Crawford and Dr Sharpe areboth honorary fellows of RoyalHolloway University.

The rhythms of African music resonated through a highly successfulsymposium at UWA on ethnic music expert John Blacking.

Music Culture Society – a symposium celebrating the work and legacy ofProfessor Blacking – was part of a wider series of conferences, The Europeans, co-ordinated by the Institute of Advanced Studies.

Scholars from 14 different countries converged on the School of Music,attracted by the valuable Blacking Collection, left to UWA’s Callaway Centre byProfessor Blacking’s widow, Dr Zureena Desai. The collection comprises hisoriginal research data on African music: the diaries, field notes, audio recordings,photographs and films.

One of the most important ethnomusicologists of the 20th century, JohnBlacking was committed to the idea that music making is a fundamental anduniversal attribute of the human species. His publications include A CommonsenseView of All Music, based on six lectures he gave in 1983 to music students atUWA.

Although he was a native of Ireland and spent much of his life in Africa,Professor Blacking’s collection came to UWA through his friendship with the lateProfessor Frank Callaway.

Keynote speakers at the symposium, which many enthusiastic delegates votedthe best conference they had ever attended, included Professor Meki Nzewi fromthe University of Pretoria, who developed the African modern classical drummingstyle and led a workshop on African drumming during the conference.

Also attending was Dr John Bailey, from Goldsmiths College, University ofLondon, whose research into ethnic music took him to Afghanistan for morethan two years. He is a strong advocate of learning to perform as a researchmethod in ethnomusicology. He is regarded by people from Afghanistanas an excellent player of the dutar and rubab (Afghan lutes).

Another speaker, Dr Fiona Magowan, from the University ofAdelaide, lectures on ritual, art, music and dance and AustralianAboriginal cosmology and performance.

Dr Victoria Rogers, Project Manager for the Callaway Centresaid the symposium signalled a shift in focus for the Centre toinclude research as well as its original role as a resource centre.

TheBlackingbeatgoes on

Preparing for a drumming workshop with Professor Meki Nzewi

Continued from page 1

TheBlackingbeatgoes on

Baby farming inthe colonies

UWAnews 5


The tourist town of Denmark has been under thescrutiny of final year environmental engineering

and applied ocean science students this year.They have been working on a long-term sustainability design

for the south coastal town and its surrounds that should seethe area thrive to 2050 and beyond.

Student project managers, Rebecca Gianotti and SallyThompson, agree that a concrete definition of sustainability ishard to come by.

“But our design works within the outlines of the StateSustainability Strategy, and uses a series of processes, ratherthan specific outcomes, to create a way for Denmark tobecome sustainable while still adapting to new ideas,” Rebeccasaid.

These processes include: a strong sense of place, usingeducation for sustainability, integrated catchment management;whole-farm planning; clustering of industries and businesses;regional branding for the area; and administration ofsustainability via community and policy avenues.

Rebecca said the local historical society had done a lot ofwork on the area’s history and the students suggested that it beincorporated in local education (to build pride in the area) andbe made more accessible to visitors.

Sally said the suggestion for regional branding focussed onthe Wilson Inlet, the region’s icon. “Our plan is that criteria ofsustainability are attached to the use of the brand, so there isadded value in the brand,” she said.

“A design for sustainability for a town as active andcommunity-driven as Denmark needs to incorporate theactivities the community is built on, and ensure that any plansare in line with the community’s vision,” Rebecca said.

So the design has included extensive consultation andfeedback with members of the Denmark community. Part ofthis consultation was to establish what the vision of the townmay be for the future. “The community’s vision may changewith time, but has been identified at the present as including avillage-like atmosphere in the town, with environmentally-friendly activities and a strong economy based on low-impacttourism,” she said.

With regular input from the community, monitoring andfeedback of the success of these activities and processes, andincorporation of new, innovative technologies and ideas, thisdesign can ensure that Denmark remains sustainable into thefuture.

The students’ design will be presented by the class on FridaySeptember 19 at 3.30pm, in the Social Sciences Lecture Theatreat UWA. The presentation will be followed by a poster sessionin the School for Water Research, with refreshments and theopportunity to talk to the students about their design.

The following week, the students will present the design at acommunity expo in Denmark, with opportunities to discusstheir ideas and get direct feedback from the community.

Students ensurethe delights ofDenmark will

endure

“… a village-like atmosphere in the town, with

environmentally-friendly activities and a strong

economy based on low-impact tourism,”

6 UWAnews


A new program to develop a culture ofcollaboration at the University is spreading its

wings at UWA.The Fledgling Centre Program is designed to encourage

collaborative, interdisciplinary research, which will increase theUniversity’s ability to access funding for centres of excellenceand cooperative research centres.

In terms of individual grant funding per academic staffmember, UWA ranks in the top two Australia universities. Butthis excellent track record has not translated into equivalentsuccess with national centre rounds.

A paper prepared by Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research andInnovation), Professor Colin MacLeod, points out that none ofthe Cooperative Research Centres established through the2002 round were based in WA, and only $8.6 million of the$454.9 million (1.9 per cent) in funds distributed in this roundflowed to WA.

Similarly, none of the Australian Research Council Centresof Excellence established through the 2002 round were hostedin WA, or even partnered with a WA university.

A key to successful applications appears to be existingresearch partnerships that already have established trackrecords of productive collaboration.

Two new research development officers (RDOs) have beenappointed to facilitate the development of the Fledgling CentreProgram, and to identify funding for collaborative research thatwill pave the way for successful national research centre bidslate in 2005. The RDOs will also identify new funding sourcesand establish linkages with external partners for ongoing andfuture individual research initiatives at the University.

Research Services is kicking off this campaign with eighttwo-hour research forums, one within each of the UWAStrategic Priority areas. These fora, during August andSeptember, are designed to identify potential themes – basedupon individual research interests and framed by the nationalresearch funding environment — for research collaborationsthat could serve to establish centre capability.

Each forum will be facilitated by Professor Colin MacLeod,PVC (R&I), along with Dr Campbell Thomson, Director,Research Services, Kym Peck, and Michelle Emmett.

Ms Peck comes to UWA from PricewaterhouseCoopers,where she was involved in organising tax concessions andresearch grants for companies doing research. Ms Emmett wasworking in Indonesia for the US agency for InternationalDevelopment, as a project and grant manager in the area ofGovernance.

“We will be looking at things from an interdisciplinaryperspective, taking a holistic approach to research,” Ms Emmett

New Research Development Officers Michelle Emmett (left) andKym Peck will be based at the Institute for Advanced Studies

Fledglingresearchtakes off

said. “The Fledgling Centres Program will kick off a new way oflooking at research.”

“We hope to help build collaborations, both betweendisciplines within the University, as well as outside theUniversity,” Ms Peck said. “Then hopefully we can increase ourinvolvement in national research centres.”

After the initial brainstorming forums of up to 70 people persession, the research development officers will arrange a seriesof two-day programs at the Institute for Advanced Studies(IAS), to bring together the potential collaborators.

Michelle Emmett and Kym Peck will be based at the IAS, sothat they are geographically convenient to the greatestnumber of research staff. Professor MacLeod said theInstitute had also proven its ability to mount well-receivedprograms that had brought together academics from diversedisciplines to share perspectives and exchange ideas. It hadestablished a successful tradition from which to launch theFledgling Centre Program.

The goal of the IAS program will be to refine alternativepossibilities into a well-delineated Fledgling Centre proposal, inthe research areas previously identified at the Forum series.

The proposals will ideally identify the research milestonesthe collaborators will need to meet, over two years, to becomehighly competitive for national centre funding.

While some funding will be available centrally, Kim Peck andMichelle Emmett will also be identifying new sources of fundingfor the Fledgling Centres, as well as for other researchinitiatives across the university.

UWAnews 7


As a newcomer to an English-speaking country just five

years ago, Dr Farzad Sharifianknows first-hand the languageproblems that can arise, even foran English teacher.

“Although I had learnt English as achild and had taught English for manyyears in Iran, there were still someproblems with interpretation: peoplemisunderstood what I was trying to sayand I found it hard to understand themsometimes,” said Dr Sharifian, anAustralian Research Councilpostdoctoral fellow in the School ofHumanities. “It is a cultural problemrather than a straight linguistic one.”

So it was with great sympathy that DrSharifian approached his second PhD, oncultural conceptualisation in AboriginalEnglish. He spent three years with twogroups of primary school children inPerth, one Aboriginal, the other non-Aboriginal.

He found that the reason so manyAboriginal students failed at school wastheir difficulty in grasping the Englishlanguage as used in the classroom, andalso the difficulty experienced byteachers in understanding the Aboriginalstudents’ English.

T he wise heads of thefoundation professors of

medicine and dentistry at UWAwill be keeping watch on thestudents as they go to and fromtheir library.

The Faculty of Medicine andDentistry has plans for a project tohonour the 12 professors by mountingsculptures of their heads on pillars alonga colonnade between the new OralHealth Centre of WA (OCHWA), theMedical and Dental Library and SirCharles Gairdner Hospital.

Local sculptors Charles and JoanWalsh-Smith have been commissionedto create the sculptures.

Dean of Medicine and Dentistry,Professor Lou Landau, said there hadlong been a desire to recognise thefounding professors and thecontribution of the wider WesternAustralian community towards theestablishment of the medical school.

“The building of OHCWA and thenew library gives us an opportunity inan architecturally significant space, topay tribute to our past and celebratethe continuation and future in medicine,dentistry and the health sciences,”Professor Landau said.

In 1956 Eric Saint was appointedProfessor of Medicine. ProfessorGordon King came from Hong Kong asProfessor of Obstetrics andGynaecology. From Sydney cameProfessor Rolf ten Seldam (Pathology)and Professor Neville Stanley(microbiology). From Cardiff, ProfessorCecil Lewis was recruited for Surgery,from Aberdeen, Professor David Sinclairfor Anatomy, and from Singapore,Professor Joseph Lugg for Biochemistry.

Professor Bill Macdonald wasProfessor of Paediatrics, Professor WilfSimmonds Professor of Physiology,Professor Mary Lockett inPharmacology and Professor Cecil Kiddin Psychiatry. The Dental School hadbeen established in East Perth 10 yearsearlier with Professor Horace Raddenas Founding Chair.

“Aboriginal English differs fromStandard Australian English in itspronunciation, grammar, discourseforms and underlying cultural meanings,”he said. “A simple, and possibly the bestknown example, is their use of the wordfamily. While a teacher is referring tothe nuclear family, the studentunderstands the word family to includeall aunts, uncles, cousins and grand-parents.”

Dr Sharifian completed his first PhDin English language teaching in Iranbefore he emigrated in 1998. He cameto Perth and became an honoraryresearch fellow at Edith CowanUniversity, where he then completed hissecond PhD.

After winning ECU’s Research Medaland the Dean’s Prize for outstandingresearch, Dr Sharifian was awarded hisARC fellowship to continue hisresearch at UWA. Last week, the WAInstitute for Educational Researchpresented him with their 2003 EarlyCareer Award.

He is continuing his research intointercultural communications, lookingfurther at Aboriginal English and also atpeople whose first language is Farsi orPersian, Dr Sharifian’s native tongue.

Dr Sharifian talks toAboriginal primary school

students about theirdifficulties

being heardThe gap between

and beingunderstood

Foundingprofessors keep

their heads

8 UWAnews


Reverse the processfor the best results

Dr Steve Smith, a world leader in plantmetabolism

“We have interests in common and I plan to spend myseven months here brainstorming with them and theircolleagues, learning from each other, reading and writing. Myfirst couple of weeks have already been very productive,” DrSmith said.

Dr Smith was one of the group which isolated the first plantgene. They published that breakthrough in 1980 and since thenDr Smith has achieved several other ‘firsts’ in geneidentification and analysis.

He is a recognised world leader in the field of plantmetabolism and the application of functional genomics tools toits study.

Over the past eight years, has worked exclusively with theplant, Arabidopsis thaliana. It is a common weed in the northernhemisphere and extremely easy to propagate.

“It’s one thing having the genes identified, but the challengeis trying to work out how genes work. I’m now going back andlooking at old problems with information that was unimaginable20 years ago. A complete genome sequence seemed unrealisticbut we have it, about 28,000 genes in Arabidopsis, andinformation on the expression of these genes in differentcircumstances. It’s a massive task to make sense of it all.”

To do so, Dr Smith uses reverse genetics, a method that hasbecome possible in the past three years. “We probably havemutants available for about half of the 28,000 genes now.

“There has been such a huge explosion in DNAinformation and sequences and the only way it can beaccessed and understood is with the use ofbioinformatics through computer programs.

“It has totally changed the way we do things. Youcan now generate huge amounts of data with asingle experiment and people all over the worldare doing experiments every day, so you have tobe really on top of things to keep up,” he said.Using UWA expertise, Dr Smith plans to develop

his complex computer analysis skills whilehe is here.

He will teach senior undergraduates andwork with PhD and honours students. Hewill also take part in a research project in

collaboration with the Plant Molecular BiologyGroup in the School of Biomedical andChemical Sciences. The main focus of thisresearch will be the involvement ofmitochondria in fatty acid oxidation in plants,using Arabidopsis to delineate pathways.

Dr Smith will also present seminars in boththe Biochemistry and Plant Biology seminarseries.

While your car is running well, you take itsmechanics for granted.

It’s only when it breaks down that you get to understandwhat the carburettor does (or doesn’t do!).

Visiting cell biologist Dr Steve Smith uses this analogy toexplain his interest in reverse genetics. He works out gene’sfunctions by isolating mutant genes.

“It’s easiest to see how something works when it goeswrong, or breaks down, like your car!” he said.

Dr Smith is a Leverhulme research fellow, who is spendinghis sabbatical, from the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biologyat the University of Edinburgh, in UWA’s School of Biomedicaland Chemical Sciences.

He will be working mainly with head of the discipline ofbiochemistry and molecular biology, Professor David Day, andcolleagues Associate Professor Jim Whelan and QEII Fellow DrHarvey Millar.

UWAnews 9


On one hand, it sounds toogood to be true. On the

other, it seems so obvious, youwonder why it wasn’t done before.

A consortium of 26 of Australia’spublic universities is harnessing buyingpower, and saving time and money thatadds up to hundreds of millions ofdollars a year.

The Australian UniversitiesProcurement Consortium (AUPC) isalso working on standardising anelectronic system of ordering supplies(e-procurement). Ron Philippkowski,UWA’s Manager of StrategicProcurement, led the push, with StevePelham from Edith Cowan University, toform the consortium after HigherEducation Systems brought the Directorof the London Universities ProcurementConsortium to Australia two years ago.

“We’ve been talking about it sincethen,” said Mr Philippkowski. “And wehave recently set up a managementcommittee, with representatives of nineuniversities to get the system underway.

“Each participating university isputting in $10,000 to get AUPC going.And one of the first priorities we have isto pay that $10,000 back,” he said.

“With our enormous buying power,we’ll be able to get the best deals, notonly with discounts, but withmaintenance and service. As wenegotiate with suppliers, the AUPC willretain a small portion of the savingsachieved in the form of a rebate fromsuppliers to cover operating expenses.For example, if we arrange a 20 per cent

Savingtime andmoneyacross thecountry

ECU’s Steve Pelham and UWA’s Ron Philippkowski are getting the best deals for universities

saving on printers, the AUPC may retainup to two percent with the universitiesreceiving the remaining 18 per cent.This is preferable to charging asubscription fee as is the case with manyother such purchasing consortiums.”

“Once we get going and the seedcapital is paid back, we will start makingbonus payments to the universities,based on their use of the agreementswe have in place.”

Mr Philippkowski said the AUPCwould not be disadvantaging thesuppliers. “We want to work withsuppliers to reduce their costs, so theyshare in the savings too. If you workwith the suppliers, you get the after-sales service that is often so important,”he said.

He explained that the termprocurement went beyond simplypurchasing goods. It also covered leasingand renting, and could be applied toalmost every aspect of Universityspending, from cars, travel andconsultants, to stationery, laboratoryequipment and furniture.

Part of the e-procurement idea isthat Mr Philippkowski and hiscounterparts at participatingUniversities will negotiate deals, thenthe agreed items will go onto anelectronic catalogue for all the AUPCmembers. As the best supplier hasalready been found, universities will notneed to ‘shop around’ for better prices,saving time for both university staff andtheir suppliers.

University staff will simply be able toorder the approved item on-line, itspurchase will be recorded, paymentmade and the item delivered.

“Some universities are already usingan e-procurement system, but it is away down the track for UWA and manyother universities” Mr Philippkowskisaid.

“We will be putting supplyagreements into place first, thenconcentrating on acceptance, to makesure those agreements are being used,before we start standardising e-procurement among all the members,”he said.

10 UWAnews


A strategic win for businessTwo teams of business students

have beaten off competitionfrom the State’s other publicuniversities to win the WA final ofAustralasia’s premier tertiarymanagement competition.

The regional final of the BostonConsulting Group Business StrategyCompetition was won by UWA teamsin both the undergraduate andpostgraduate sections. They wil lcompete in the Australasian finals inSydney in October.

Each team had a limited time toprepare a solution to a business casestudy, and were assessed on teamwork,problem solving and presentation skills.

UWA’s undergraduate team hadwon the WA final before, but this wasthe first win for the postgraduate team,all Master of Business Administrationstudents from UWA’s Graduate Schoolof Management.

Team member Peter Ochman saidhe felt it was a fantastic achievementfor the six members. “There are 300MBA students and 26 of them appliedto be in the team. Eventually six of uswere chosen, so it was an achievementjust to be in the team, let alone towin!” he said.

After the years of work and effort put into them,most PhD theses end up gathering dust on library

shelves.The University Library, together with The Australian Theses

Repository, has now given them a new lease on life.The UWA Digital Theses Repository was launched this

month by Professor Robyn Owen, Pro Vice-Chancellor(Research and Innovation), with 20 PhD and Masters thesesalready on-line.

New regulations, put in place at the beginning of this year,require all students submitting theses to send an electroniccopy to the Library, as well as a hard copy.

“So, within three years, it will become automatic for alltheses to go on the Web,” said University Librarian, JohnArfield.

“They will also have links to them on the Australian ThesesRepository site,” he said.

“We are connected to the national repository and, every night,a Web crawler harvests the metadata, or key words assigned toeach thesis, and adds them to a continually updated index.”

Mr Arfield said the Australian Theses Repository had been inoperation for a few years but UWA had not joined the servicebecause it required students to do the work involved inconverting their theses to the required format and producingthe metadata.

“We think that’s too much to ask of students who have justput an enormous amount of work into their theses. So, as long asthey send us an electronic version of some sort, we will format itfor them and identify the key words for the links,” he said.

“I’m quite confident that the great majority of graduatestudents will be delighted that their theses are going on the Web.Those who are part-way through their research now, and arenot subject to the new regulations, are very welcome to submitelectronic versions of their theses to the Library, if they wish.”

Mr Arfield said the UWA Digital Theses Repository hadbuilt-in security measures so restricted theses (including thoseconnected to pending patent applications) would not be madeavailable to general scrutiny.

Otherwise, all future UWA theses will eventually be availableon the Web via the UWA Library catalogue.

The winning postgraduate team from UWA’s Graduate School of Management (fromleft): Steve Miller, Peter Ochman, Mark Ivory, Norm Roberts, Rebecca Gordon, and

Charlie Kempson.Others in the team were Rebecca

Gordon, Mark Ivory, Charlie Kempson,Steve Miller and Norm Roberts.

The Business Strategy Competition isrun by students from the University ofNew South Wales’ Commerce and

Opening UWA research to the world

Economics Society. It is sponsored bythe Boston Consulting Group whichprovides case studies and trainingmaterials, and consultants to mentor theteam competing in the grand final.

UWAnews 11


Legumes have a major roleto play in the health and

nutrition of the Australianpeople, as well as the nation’seconomic well-being.

So it is not surprising that, after twoyears of commercial operation, theCentre for Legumes in MediterraneanAgriculture (CLIMA) has more externalfunding than when it was a Co-operative Research Centre.

For two years, it has been aresearch alliance between UWA,CSIRO, the WA Department ofAgriculture and Murdoch University.

During that period, domestic pulseconsumption has expanded, driven byincreasing health consciousness, inresponse to the dietary woes thatcost Australia $2 billion per year inmedical and associated expenses.

CLIMA scientists are participatingin research to produce legumes forisoflavines capable of prohibitingcancer cell growth.

While expanding marketscomplement the value of legumes tocropping systems, where they fixatmospheric nitrogen and liftsubsequent wheat yields, newresearch shows that legumes can alsobenefit the environment and cerealperformance by increasing soilphosphorus availability. This couldhelp moderate the $200 million WAfarmers spend each year onphosphorus fertilisers.

CLIMA has released a biennialreport, which cites the UWA-basedcentre hosting 23 postgraduatescientists conducting 50 researchprojects into legume performance.

“Legumes have only been subjectto breeding improvement for half thetime cereals have, so we still have along way to go,” said CLIMA directorProfessor Kadambot Siddique.

“CLIMA is adding muscle to WA’sgrain and pasture legume species tobetter combat diseases and conditionswhich challenge their performance.Ongoing industry support is central tothis outcome,” he said.

Pulse researchstill beating

strongly

For 10,000 years grain productionhas relied on annual grasses suchas wheat and barley.

Flying in the face of orthodoxy, ateam of WA researchers aredomesticating a perennial Australiangrass which they believe will becommercially viable and environmentallysustainable across some three millionhectares of Australia, for both graingrowing and livestock grazing.

Their audacity has won researchersfrom UWA and CSIRO the GrainsResearch and DevelopmentCorporation Eureka Prize for researchto improve the environmentalsustainability of grain growing.

The group, which includes CLIMAsenior research scientist Dr ChristineDavies and former UWA researchfellow Dr Ted Lefroy, says: “Perennialgrasses can harness rainfall throughoutthe year, making them well suited toareas with poor soils and unreliableseasonal rain. Additionally, nativegrasses may be better able to managedryland salinity.”

Dr Davies and CSIRO’s Dr Lefroyand David Waugh have alreadyidentified appropriate native grasses andstarted selection trials.

“We’re not proposing to replacewheat and barley. Rather, we want acrop that would be suited to some

CLIMA’s Dr Christine Davies with the seedsand the grass that won the group theEureka Prize. David Waugh (left) andDr Ted Lefroy are in the background

Weepinggrass couldput a smileon farmers’faces

10 per cent of land currently undergrain that is returning low yields—marginal land that’s prone to erosion orleaks a lot of water,” said Dr Lefroy.

“We looked for high seed yield, largeseed size and erect habit on short stalks,and found it in a variety of weepinggrass called Microlaena stipoides.”

Professor Mike Archer, Director ofthe Australian Museum, said: “You couldargue that these researchers are flying inthe face of evolution: annual grasseshave a strong evolutionary incentive toproduce big seeds; perennials don’t –they put more effort into roots andfoliage. But perennials could be theanswer in Australia.”

The group’s work could take adecade, but if successful would helpchange the face of agriculture and theAustralian landscape.

The $10,000 Eureka Prize is awardedto an individual, team or organisationfor innovative grains research that has,or could result in, increasedsustainability of the use of naturalresources such as soil, species orecosystems.

There are changes to the traffic signs on the internalring road next to Riley Oval.

While construction of the new University Club is underway, stop signs and speed humps have been installed north

and south of the exit onto Hackett Drive near the construction site.Please observe them and take care when driving in the area, looking out for

trucks and other construction vehicles coming and going and also pedestrians, whoare more likely to be walking on the road near the site.

When there is lots of movement on and off the site, a contractor will control thetraffic, so watch out for people and signs.

Watchout!

12 UWAnews


lastwordTH

EBruce MeakinsExecutive Director, UWA Sports and Recreation

The University if Western Australia is steeped insporting history. We have clubs that go back over 75years, and the contribution of sport to the academicexperience is as important to our present and futurestudents as it has been to our past students.

Building on these sporting traditions, the UWA Sport andRecreation Association helps ensure that the University’ssporting clubs continue to represent UWA strongly, and thatwe continue to recognise our sporting achievers and teamsthrough the Blues program and other sports awards.

We also recognise that to create the best future, we willhave to engage past students, current students and staff. TheSport and Recreation Association helps to create local, nationaland international sporting opportunities in many ways.

We have developed a sports scholarship program to enablestudents to participate at the highest level possible while stillmaintaining academic performance. It’s a program whichincludes not only financial support, but help with achievingexcellence in both academic and sporting performances.

On the international and national scene, four students will becompeting at the World University Games this month in Deagu,South Korea; the Australian University Games (now a majorevent in the Australian sporting calendar) will be hosted inWestern Australia in 2004; and together with other WAuniversities, UWA is establishing the Indian Ocean Rim Games

Building the traditions– an international event that will invite universities from theIndian Ocean Rim nations and Asia to compete in Perth in 2005.

Over recent years, we have also had success with thecontinued development of our first grade sports clubs. Forexample:• the long-term development of facilities for the UWA Hockey

Club has helped in the club’s 2003 success in both men’s andwomen’s first grade and second grade competitions in thesame year’– a feat never before achieved;

• both the UWA Cricket Club and UWA Rugby Club havedeveloped substantial foundations to assist with provision ofsporting scholarships for their clubs;

• with the recent development of the clay courts at UWASports Park, the UWA Tennis Club (the oldest club oncampus) was able to get back into the men’s first grade forthe first time in 20 years, winning in the past two years; and

• the UWA Boat Club ran a fundraising campaign to contributeto the refurbishment of the boat shed.We currently have two major facility development projects

coming together with the support of UWA faculties andschools, corporate partners, state and local governments andour alumni. They are:• the provision of tennis clubrooms and an additional six clay

courts at the UWA Tennis Club complex at UWA SportsPark, planned to be complete for the 2004 AustralianUniversity Games (in September next year); and,

• Stage 2 of the UWA Watersports Complex – thedevelopment of land-based facilities adjacent to therefurbished UWA Boat Shed – planned for commencementnext year (this facility will provide home for many of ourUWA sporting clubs).A significant contribution to these success stories has come

from our alumni. The creation of the UWA Sports Alumniprogram is uniquely Australian and includes a series of UWAsporting events to provide alumni opportunities to get together,to network, and to enjoy sport at UWA. Its significantfundraising component helps with sports scholarships andfacility development. We are extremely grateful for thegenerosity of our graduates.

The UWA Boat Shed twilights piloted last year willrecommence in September this year, and will provide a regularopportunity for Sports Alumni and Association members tocome together on Thursday evenings.

There is no doubt that the sporting traditions of UWA helpbuild the character and experience of the students, staff andgraduates. I urge you to be part of our exciting sporting futureby joining the Sport and Recreation Association and/or theUWA Sports Alumni.

Creating the future

25 august 2003 volume 22 number 12 experience · the university of western australia established...

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