Visiting Flinders today, Senator Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, was briefed on the University’s initiatives in promoting entry and providing support for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and on the expanding Work Integrated Learning (WIL) programs for students.

During his first visit to the Bedford Park campus, Senator Evans met Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Andrew Parkin and senior staff, and also talked with staff of the LOGOS Centre about its activities, which are focused on teaching and research on Greek language and culture. Federal MP for Hindmarsh Mr Steve Georganas also attended the briefing.

In an informal session, the Minister met three students from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are now involved in the University’s mentoring programs for students in the local region.

He also talked to a group of seven students who have been involved in Work Integrated Learning programs run by Flinders. Three of the students were recently returned from the Washington Intern Program run by American Studies, while the other students had recently completed work placements in business, education and tourism. WIL staff gave a demonstration of the newly developed online program aimed at preparing students for their WIL placements.

Senator Evans is pictured with students Joanne Young (Education) and Shaun Donnelly (Tourism).

A computer game designed by staff from Flinders University to help student nurses avoid potentially life-threatening drug mix-ups has made it to the finals of the 2012 HESTA Australian Nursing Awards.

“Medicina” – an online game created by Flinders School of Nursing and Midwifery staff members Dr Amanda Muller, Gregory Mathews and Didy Button to boost student nurses’ knowledge of medication names – is one of five projects in the running for the national Innovation in Nursing prize.

The trio will be up against five other nominees for the Innovation in Nursing prize, including fellow Flinders Nursing and Midwifery lecturer Wendy Abigail, who has been nominated for her various work to promote contraception for middle-aged women, and Flinders nursing graduate David Copley.

Mr Copley is the first Aboriginal person to complete a Graduate Diploma in Mental Health Nursing in South Australia – is also a finalist in the Nurse of the Year category for his work to help reduce smoking rates in Indigenous communities.

A cancer survivor, Aboriginal Elder and Quitline liaison officer, Mr Copley has helped double the number of Aboriginal clients calling the Quitline in just 12 months through his training and support to Aboriginal health providers and their clients, including providing cultural training to Quitline staff to help them better understand Aboriginal communities and the causes of their smoking.

The online game Medicina, which simulates the distractions and urgency of a real hospital environment, targets listening and reading skills to improve the accuracy of drug orders taken over the phone, help students to identify the right drug on the medicine shelf and to use good communication skills in handover.

Dr Muller, an associate lecturer from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, said Medicina was developed to reduce instances of medication confusion that could potentially leave lives at risk.

“There are many reasons why medications get confused, sometimes it’s because the nurse has misheard a drug name or they can’t read someone else’s handwriting, and other times it’s because they have trouble with pronunciation,” Dr Muller said.

“Some medications are uncommon and while students are likely to see the word written during their degrees, they rarely get to hear the word spoken aloud so this may cause confusion when they are in a clinical setting,” she said.

“But Medicina uses a number of different animated features to replicate a real clinical setting, including time limitations, to best prepare students for the real deal.”

Originally released in 2011 to support nursing students with English as a second language, Dr Muller said native English speakers often also needed help to familiarise themselves with drug names.

“Our research has shown that Medicina not only boosts a nurse’s knowledge of uncommon words but also teaches them new listening skills and improves their overall ability to retain specific information in hard listening environments,” she said.

“These, of course, are skills that anyone can benefit from, no matter how good their communication skills might be.”

Ms Button, a lecturer in Nursing, said the team eventually hoped to turn Medicina into a phone application and include additional stages with varying levels of difficulty so students, new nurses and established nursing professionals could hone their skills.

“The idea is to promote patient safety and increase the fluency of drug pronunciation in a way that’s engaging, entertaining and informative,” Ms Button, who provided clinical and audio support to the project, said.

“It’s designed to be easy to use and easy to use casually, so people can play it when they have spare time,” added Mr Mathews, media designer from the school and the game’s co-designer.”

The top entry in the 2012 HESTA Australian Nursing Awards will receive a $10,000 grant to develop their service or program, with winners announced at a ceremony in Melbourne on May 10.

Kristine Gebbie, an internationally renowned public health educator and practitioner who “retired” from the US to Adelaide, is now a Professorial Fellow in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Flinders.

In choosing a place to “retire”, she and her husband worked from a list of criteria which included no snow in winter, low humidity, and relatively stable government. They had visited Australia previously, but not Adelaide.

Her husband chanced across an article about Adelaide and during an exploratory visit here made the decision to emigrate and bought an apartment in Hindmarsh Square “off the plan”.

The School of Nursing and Midwifery supported their visa application under the Distinguished Talent category; her connection with School Dean, Paul Arbon goes back a number of years through mutual professional interests.

Such a move is understandable given her credo is “Who said we can’t do that, how do I get on that committee?”

Professor Gebbie served as Public Health Director for two US states, Oregon and Washington State, and was the first White House AIDS Policy Coordinator – a White House media release describes her as the “AIDS Czar”.

Immediately prior to coming to Adelaide, she was Dean of Nursing at City University of New York, after serving 14 years as Professor of Nursing and Director, Center for Health Policy at Columbia School of Nursing.

Some years ago, she asked the questions “What do people need to know to practice properly and how do you train people for disasters?”

Her interest in this field stems from her time in Oregon and the Mt St Helen’s eruption and deliberately caused emergencies such as a food-borne salmonellosis outbreak and cyanide tampering of over-the-counter medication attributed to members of the Rajneesh cult. Three days before the events of 9/11, she had just finished running a disaster training course for nurses, who were then able to apply their newly acquired knowledge in the worst of circumstances.

Since coming to Adelaide, Professor Gebbie has also been working  with the Torrens Resilience Institute in which Flinders is a partner, and which aims to improve the capacity of organisations and societies to respond to disruptive challenges having the potential to overwhelm local disaster management capabilities and plans.

Her view overall is that resilience training in Australia is very advanced.

“In Australia,” she says, “South Australian emergency services are really ready for fires, and whilst Queensland is great on floods, it may not be so ready for earthquakes.”

UCLA will shortly recognise Professor Gebbie with one of its Nurse 21 Awards for inspiring individuals helping to transform the nursing profession and raising awareness of the valuable role nurses play in 21st century healthcare.

Rising abortion rates for women in their 30s and 40s in Adelaide’s southern suburbs has sparked a new awareness campaign led by Flinders University.

The Southern Partnership in Sexual and Reproductive Health, which launched on December 6, will provide information to all women - with a focus on those aged over 30 - about fertility awareness and management.

Under the partnership, a working group of University researchers and staff from Flinders Medical Centre, Noarlunga Health Services, Southern Women’s Health and Shine SA has been formed to help improve sexual and reproductive health services in the southern region.

The campaign - funded through Flinders University’s Knowledge Exchange Grants - includes a series of video clips showing different scenarios that can lead to an unwanted pregnancy, with the main focus on fertility awareness and where to go for help.

Titled ‘Contraception - is it working for you?’, the 29-second advertisements are based on research on the sexual and reproductive health of women over the age of 30 and are expected to be available at various health clinics and other venues across the south, as well as relevant websites Australia-wide.

Flinders University project coordinator Wendy Abigail, a Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, said a key aim of the partnership is to increase community awareness about women’s fertility management.

“Abortion rates for women between the ages of 30 and 50 increased significantly between 1996 and 2006 in the southern area of Adelaide, despite very little change in overall termination numbers across the state during this time,” Ms Abigail said.

“While terminations for women between 15 to 19 years have declined, the 30 to 50-year-old age group has increased markedly, and this could be attributed to changing fertility patterns across the age groups,” she said.

Ms Abigail said the campaign also called for more government support and improved sexual health services for all women, particularly the over 30s.

“For women over 30 in SA there’s really little information targeted at them and government policies don’t cater for this age group,” she said.

“There’s a big presumption that once women hit 30 they should know everything about fertility and how to manage it but the last time they probably got this information was when they were in high school.”

The Southern Partnership in Sexual and Reproductive Health, including the video clips, was launched on Tuesday, December 6, at Flinders University’s Health Sciences Lecture Theatre Complex (pictured).

The excellence of Flinders University’s teaching has earned the nation’s highest accolade with nine individuals and teams being awarded Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), announced today.

It is the equal highest number of citations awarded to a single institution in the 2011 round of Citations and includes one of a total of 22 special awards to ‘Early Career Achievers’, offered for the first time.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Andrew Parkin congratulated the award recipients and said their achievements reflected the University’s commitment to high quality teaching and scholarship.

“Quality in teaching is a long-standing, distinguishing characteristic of Flinders,” Professor Parkin said.

“It is a characteristic of which the University is proud but one it does not take for granted. Its achievement calls for a campus-wide focus on the dissemination and embedding of good teaching practices and the ability and willingness to respond to student feedback,” he said.

“Our teachers have again demonstrated the capacity and desire to motivate and inspire their students and to create new tools and techniques to enhance the student learning experience.

“On behalf of the University, I extend my congratulations to each of the recipients of the ATLC Citations – one of the nation’s highest teaching honours, as determined by their peers and the tertiary education sector.”

The winners of the Citations, worth $10,000 each, are:

Patricia Barkway (School of Nursing and Midwifery)
For sustained commitment to teaching mental health and health psychology to nursing students that inspires them to embed this learning in their clinical practice

The Clinical Communication Project team (Mrs Didy Button, Mrs Moira Kelton, Mr Gregory Mathews, Dr Karen Wotton) (School of Nursing and Midwifery)
For significant contribution by team members in developing an online, self-directed Clinical Communication Program assisting nursing students’ development and application of professional language

Associate Professor Diana Glenn (School of Humanities)
For sustained commitment to excellence in research-based teaching that inspires and motivates students in the field of Italian language and culture

Lyn Gum (Flinders University Rural Clinical School)
For development and delivery of innovative strategies in interprofessional education and simulation learning within curriculum and the rural community

Tania Leiman (Flinders Law School)
For sustained excellence in teaching that supports, empowers and inspires first year law students to engage with law

Simulation Teaching Team (Professor Harry Owen, Ms Maria Cmielewski, Ms Karina Morrison, Ms Christine Nobes, Ms Meredith Reeve, Ms Leanne Rogers, Dr Cyle Sprick, Ms Debbie Stone) (School of Medicine)
For team pioneered, high-fidelity patient simulation in basic medical education to teach emergency care of the very sick in both metropolitan and regional settings

Professor Karen Reynolds, Associate Professor Kenneth Pope, Sherry Randhawa and David Hobbs (School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics)
For teaching, supporting and inspiring students to learn, innovate and succeed as professional biomedical engineers

Associate Professor Robyn Young (School of Psychology)
For enhancing domestic and international students’ therapeutic skills in clinical and family settings through the development of a sustainable intervention program for children with disabilities

Early career
Gender Consortium (Dr Anuradha Mundkur, Ms Cara Ellickson and Mr Corey Durward) (School of International Studies)
For creating innovative learning spaces which promote the critical application of knowledge to ‘real world’ gender equity issues and inspire students to become change agents

The Citations will be presented at the 2011 Australian Awards for University Teaching ceremony at the Sydney Opera House on 16 August.

Flinders University’s ratings in the 2010 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) report confirm its strength in medical research, an area traditionally very strong in Australia, with rankings above or well above world standard.

Other fields at Flinders with rankings considerably above both world and national averages include criminology, the performing arts and creative writing.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor David Day said medical research, law and performing arts have been continuous and long-term research strengths for the University, receiving targeted research investment.

“We are delighted this has been recognised through the ERA initiative,” Professor Day said.

“More than half of the disciplines assessed at Flinders were ranked at world standard or above, confirming our status as a research intensive university,” he said.

“We will be working hard to improve those areas further.”

PICTURED: Professor John Miners, Head of Clinical Pharmacology at Flinders University

As ten early career researchers are recognised for outstanding individual achievement, Flinders University has announced three new initiatives to support academics seeking to boost their research activities and to attract international research collaborations.

The Flinders University Conference Travel, Re-entry and Visiting International Research Fellowships are designed to kick-start new research projects and collaborations with substantial funding for academics who are carers, researchers returning from parental leave, and for University Schools wanting to invite research scholars from overseas.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor David Day said the new initiatives join a number of other recent measures, including the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Early Career Researchers, which are building a supportive research environment.

“The Fellowships herald a new way of thinking about research at Flinders to encourage promising researchers and academics to stay on or even come back into the fold,” Professor Day said.

“They form part of the University’s broader goal – to support a research environment that is about more than just funding for specific research projects,” he said.

“That means, for example, taking into account that some researchers have carer responsibilities, or providing relief from teaching duties, or giving Schools the scope to invite international researchers to exchange ideas and build long-term relationships.”

The recipients of the 2010 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Early Career Researchers – Dr Stephen Clarke, Dr Roman Dronov, Associate Professor Amanda Ellis, Dr Michael Gradisar, Dr Charlie Huveneers, Associate Professor Eva Kemps, Dr Luciana Möller, Dr Rachel Popelka-Filcoff (pictured), Dr Damien Riggs and Dr Ruth Sladek – will each win a $2500 prize to develop research networks.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Barber said the Awards, launched last year, acknowledge outstanding contribution to the University.

“This year’s winners were selected from a very competitive field across all four faculties,” Professor Barber said.

“Each of the recipients is making a mark in their field of endeavour, attracting important research funding and developing a growing reputation in the research world,” he said.

“We hope they serve as an inspiration to their colleagues which, with the new Fellowships, will encourage all academics, at any stage of their careers, to consider new research activities and to be part of a growing, vibrant research culture at Flinders University.”

Application forms with full details of the Fellowships will be advertised to all researchers through the Research Services Office.

Flinders University is experiencing strong demand for its courses in 2011, resulting in increased offers this year, and there are still places available.

Along with high demand for the University’s suite of health-related courses such as medicine, health sciences, medical science, nursing, midwifery and paramedic degrees, there has been significant interest in the teacher education degrees, new courses in Law (Hons), Education and the revamped group of Science degrees.

A total of 3846 offers (up from 3395 offers in 2010) were made in the first round of offers this week.

Further offers to prospective students will be made in coming weeks, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor(Academic) Professor Andrew Parkin urged anyone considering tertiary study in 2011 to submit a late application.

“A wide range of our undergraduate courses remain open for qualified applicants” he said.

These include the Bachelor of Arts and degrees in international studies, information technology, behavioural science (psychology), science and engineering.

Interested students should contact the Admissions/Prospective Students Office by phoning 08 8201 3074 or 1300 657 671 (local call cost), or email admissions@flinders.edu.au.

Professor Parkin said the University was pleased with the strong demand for its courses in 2011 and its ability to offer a substantially increased number of places to qualified applicants.

“Our offers in January 2011 are up 13 per cent compared with the corresponding 2010 period,” Professor Parkin said.

“This has been founded on an 11 per cent increase in applications to Flinders courses, including a gratifying 14 per cent increase from school leavers.

“On the basis of this student interest Flinders looks forward with confidence to the more deregulated higher education landscape beyond 2011 arising from Federal Government policies.

“Flinders is well placed to continue to grow as a strong contributor to the economic, social and intellectual development of South Australia, including metropolitan Adelaide, the Hills and Fleurieu regions, the Riverland and the Greater Green Triangle in particular.

“Flinders also has a growing profile in the Northern Territory as well as continuing strong student recruitment nationally.”

He said several new courses are among those experiencing strong demand.

“We are welcoming the first intake to new undergraduate courses in Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Education/Disability Studies, Laws and Legal Practice (Hons) and Science (Animal Behaviour),” Professor Parkin said.

“ATAR school-leaver entry scores for a number of courses such as Law, Law (Hons), Physiotherapy, Midwifery, Psychology, Nutrition & Dietetics, Paramedics, Speech Pathology, Science (Hons) – an enhanced program for High Achievers –and Engineering/Master Engineering are up over the 90 mark.”

Flinders has a variety of pathways for students wanting to begin their University studies: “ For those students who did not receive their first preference or received no offer there are options, such as commencing in one degree and later transferring to their degree of choice,” Professor Parkin said.

For further information refer to Study in 2011.

Flinders University Professor Keryn Williams’ 25-year mission to decrease the burden of blindness has earned her a major National Heath and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Fellowship.

The five-year Research Fellowship was announced by Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler.

It will enable Professor Williams to explore the application of gene therapy and other methods to improve outcomes in the treatment of a range of eye diseases.

Professor Williams, who is Associate Leader of the Eye and Vision Collaborative Group at Flinders, said blindness exerts significant physical, emotional and financial constraints and hardship upon individuals.

“The World Health Organisation notes that, in terms of economic loss to the community, blindness is the most expensive of all causes of chronic disability,” Professor Williams said.

“Existing treatments of some conditions do not prevent blindness in all cases,” she said.

“Corneal graft failure is associated with rejection, inflammation and neovascularisation. And inflammatory eye disease and aberrant neovascularisation of the retina are also significant causes of visual impairment.”

Professor Williams will also: investigate the basis of susceptibility to retinopathy of prematurity, a common cause of blindness in low birth-weight infants; expand the evidence-base for outcomes of human corneal transplantation; and investigate the efficacy of interventions for keratoconus, or conical cornea.

Flinders Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor David Day said the NHMRC Fellowship was a tribute to Professor Williams’ dedication to her field.

“As founder and Scientific Director of the Australian Corneal Graft Registry and founding member of the NHMRC Centre for Clinical Research Excellence in Evidence-Based Ophthalmology, Professor Williams has led a group researching causes of blindness that are common in our community,” Professor Day said.

“On behalf of Flinders and every patient whose sight has improved thanks to her pioneering efforts, I would like to extend my heartiest congratulations to Professor Williams,” he said.

Flinders University’s newest building and its builders, Mossop Constructions, have received a national award from the Master Builders’ Association.

The Health Sciences Lecture Theatre Complex was recognised in the MBA’s 2010 National Excellence in Building and Construction Awards, receiving the National Public Buildings Award in the $5 million to $10 million category. Major funding for the project came from a Federal Government grant, with additional funds contributed by the University.

Featuring a visually distinctive external screen of metal louvers, the three-storey building contains a 250-seat lecture theatre complex and eight tutorial spaces for the teaching of the University’s medical and health sciences courses.

“The building has proved itself to be a major asset to the University, enabling a very necessary expansion and upgrading of our teaching facilities to support our growing numbers of medical students and the increasing breadth of our health science programs,” said Vice-Chancellor Professor Michael Barber.

Mossop Constructions, working to a design by architects Grieve Gillett, constructed the building on a rocky, steeply sloping site adjacent to the Health Sciences Building over 13 months. The building applies green principles through shading of all glazing, the use of openable windows, economy cycle air conditioning and rainwater capture and reuse.

The MBA judges commended not only the quality of the build, but the importance of the role played by the contractor in managing a challenging site and in coordinating consultants and subcontractors to avoid extra costs and delays.

The building was officially opened by Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon in April this year.

Photograph: Grant Hancock