Southern Cross Matters

In foregrounding last month’s edition of Southern Cross Matters, I noted the enormous sense of anticipation building around our campuses as we looked forward to the commencement of teaching in Term 1. 

As I write today, term is in full swing, and we have enjoyed a truly inspiring and exciting period of student orientation and welcomes. This is so important. How our students begin their journey at the University matters enormously. A strong, engaged start is strongly determinative of future success, and the teams of colleagues – professional and academic, who’ve worked so hard over the summer months to make sure that we have had such a great start to the year deserve thanks from all of us!

We cannot achieve excellence simply by wishing it to be so. But we can achieve it through the aggregation of many, many, small steps within our grasp. I wanted to share with everyone a powerful example of this that I learned of recently and that I think speaks eloquently to the kind of University we are working hard to become. 

This year, just like last year, the overall level of demand for University places from domestic students has been subdued. This isn’t just a local phenomenon – it is a national one. Yet in the face of this, we have set ourselves the objective of being to a greater extent than ever, a University of first choice – and in effect determined to buck the trend. At this stage, whether we have or have not accomplished this objective is not at all clear. But what is clear is that a great many people have worked across portfolio and faculty boundaries to see if we can indeed defy the macro dynamics that I’ve described above.

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The University has been thriving recently, with numerous campus activities and events making life at Southern Cross University a treasured experience. Orientation Week saw hundreds of new students enjoying food trucks, henna tattoos, campus tours, photo booths, donut walls, and even free gelato! The week-long event was the biggest one yet since the pandemic began and gained incredible feedback from students.

Ellen Fleeton, the Student Orientation Coordinator, said, "This was our first large-scale Orientation program since the pandemic, and the Orientation team was so excited to welcome our new cohort of students to the university community. Orientation is such an essential step in the student journey, where a sense of belonging to their campus is fostered, and students can really connect with other like-minded students on a similar journey."

In addition to social activities, the Orientation team organised a huge range of essential workshops focusing on university resources, student support services, and study tips.

The Lismore campus also hosted the first-ever 'Anemoia' musical festival, where hundreds gathered to SCU Aardvark and danced the night away to student-led live music. Given the successful turnout, rumour has it, it could now be a regular event to enhance the vibrant music culture in the Northern Rivers.  

You might have also noticed a few extra touches to our campuses, including new hangout spots in the Gold Coast marquee, a new outdoor bar vibe coming to Coffs Harbour, and a giant outdoor chessboard right outside the library for Lismore!

New year, new milestone for the Southern Cross Model as all remaining courses, including all Faculty of Health courses are finally delivered in the new 6-week Term structure.

Associate Dean (Education) Professor Fiona Naumann has overseen the re-design of nearly 200 units in the Faculty of Health. She said it had involved a massive amount of work from academics, course coordinators, curriculum and accreditation teams as well as staff coordinating the vast professional placement units that are delivered across the Faculty.

“It has been a real team effort, a mammoth piece of work to transform the way we design and deliver learning to students, empowering them to engage with their learning,” she said.

“Part of the attraction for me of joining Southern Cross was to lead this transformation to the Southern Cross Model, refreshing not only all curriculum design but improving student interactivity and connection with the learning and subsequently providing them with opportunities to apply the learning to real-world scenarios. 

“It has been one of the largest projects I’ve ever overseen, and perhaps one of the most rewarding as an educator,” said Professor Naumann. “By far and away the most challenging aspect was re-imagining what the teaching and learning could look like within the Southern Cross Model and comprehensively upskilling academic staff so that they could create some fantastic opportunities within the courses. The key to building academic teaching and learning capacity has been the genuine partnership with the Centre of Teaching and Learning. We were able to take a whole-of-course approach to course design, working in course teams to genuinely co-design the curriculum renewal.

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Professor Nigel Andrew is determined to remove the ‘creepy’ from creepy crawlies. 

Recently appointed as the Chair of Science, Nigel is an entomologist trying to change public attitudes towards bugs, which play an important role in the environment. 

“With insects, a lot of people have the ‘ew factor’ against them. They either really like them or really hate them. Most people don’t like insects because they don’t know much about them. For example, people generally hate cockroaches but we have some absolutely gorgeous native species of cockroaches,” he said. 

People also tend to associate dung with ‘ew’ but for Nigel, dung beetles spark a particular interest. In fact, they may be vital to reducing carbon impacts on farms. 

“We’ve been assessing how far dung beetles have been burying dung on cattle farms because that can lock away some of the carbon and greenhouse gases,” said Nigel. 

“The dung beetles make farms more productive. Rather than a cow pat sitting on the surface of a farm for months on end and killing off the grass, the dung beetles break down the dung, put the nutrients back into the soil, and essentially work as a fertilising mechanism.” 

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Southern Cross alumni Dr Yantra de Vilder and Dr Leigh Carriage are earning international acclaim for a stunning film and musical tribute to the resilience of the Northern Rivers.

A composer, musician, sound artist and filmmaker, Dr de Vilder is the creator of short film After The Flood, which recently won the Best Composer and Best Experimental Film categories at the New York Independent Cinema Awards, and Best Music Score at the Berlin Shorts Awards. It is also in the running at other international festivals.

Visually spectacular, After The Flood also has a score highlighted by the ethereal and beautifully layered vocals of Dr Carriage, a renowned singer, composer and educator who this year celebrates 25 years as a music lecturer at the University.

After The Flood was filmed around Mullumbimby in 2022 and is centred around young actor Jade Lee. Ideas such as 'we rise up' convey how hope, resilience and optimism can flourish from tragedy. The project comes as the Northern Rivers marks a year since the devastation of the 2022 floods.

“To have composed After The Flood in the Northern Rivers, it really showed me the importance of spirit of place,” said Yantra. “I could feel it in the earth. The music came through like a lament, but also as a dynamic expression of hope.”

Leigh agrees, saying: “I think the success of the film gives an ongoing voice to all those affected by the floods.”

The pair met as music students at Southern Cross University in the early 1990s and found an immediate connection.

Watch After The Flood on Youtube.

Our Future Students team (Office of Engagement) has been out and about for the past few weeks visiting schools from Stanthorpe in the south-west of Queensland to North Lakes, north of Brisbane. A busy agenda for the 2023 edition of the University Showcase. 

Along with six other universities, Southern Cross has participated in several events across NSW and Queensland. The Future Students Officers along with Student Ambassadors have already visited 65 schools this year with another 11 schools next week located between Warwick and Ipswich. 

A highlight in this year’s edition has been the Showcase at the Gold Coast. “It was a fabulous opportunity for school students to connect with Queensland universities to discover all the options available to study after Year 12,” said Jodie-Anne Mak, Future Students Officer. 

You may know him as the Chair of Creative Arts at the University but Associate Professor Grayson Cooke is also a renowned media artist who started his creative journey as a trumpet player. Hailing from a musical family, Grayson says his first aesthetic language was music and it continues to influence everything he does. “What I do now is make music between image and sound, exploring natural phenomena and… interests that have become obsessions,” he said.

Grayson has exhibited his work around the world, including at the last COP27 meeting and he is the first guest of Season 3 of the SCU Buzz podcast where he chats to student host River about his work making films with satellite data, music and cloud fantasia, not to mention how human beings can be a geological force of nature and how art can make science more digestible and emotive for non-scientists.

One for both artists and scientists interested in the boundaries of their disciplines and what happens when they dissolve.  

Listen here.

Southern Cross PhD candidate Mona Andskog is fascinated by marine plants. Recently she was co-lead on a paper published in PNAS showing that the fucoidan compound found in brown algae (seaweed) is a powerhouse in removing carbon.

What is the title of your PhD and what’s it about?

‘Carbon cycling in seagrass beds – the effects of anthropogenic nutrient enrichment’. Seagrasses are amazing at storing carbon in their sediments for a long time, but they are also threatened by human activities such as nutrient pollution. Our understanding of the effects of nutrient pollution on seagrass beds is largely limited to the extremes – we know how excessive nutrients lead to the overgrowth of algae that smother seagrass. However, we have limited knowledge about the effects of moderate nutrient levels in seemingly healthy seagrass beds and their carbon balance. Carbon cycling is the result of many complex processes that either capture or release carbon; thus, I will use stable isotope techniques to track the movement of carbon through all of those processes. 

Tell me about your experience working with your supervisors Professor Bradley Eyre and Professor Joanne Oakes.

Both are leading experts in their field of coastal biogeochemistry and stable isotopes, and their research fits perfectly to my interests. The Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry (Brad’s research group) consists of many great fellow PhD students and researchers, and we explore a broad range of research topics within the group. When I started, I didn’t think it would be important to have a female researcher as a primary supervisor, but it’s actually been really valuable for me to have Jo as a role model as a woman in academia, in addition to her scientific supervision. She also gets nerdy about seagrass like me, so what more can I ask for in a mentor! 

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Social Work Professor Mark Hughes has been appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious Australasian Journal on Ageing (AJA). This is the first time one of our academics has been appointed to this role.

John Palencia, a third-year nursing student at Southern Cross, has been selected for the highly competitive 2023 Regional Youth Taskforce for the North Coast Region.                

As I have encountered colleagues at each of our campuses in recent weeks, I have been delighted with the sense of excitement and anticipation that is building within the University about the year ahead. In only three weeks from now, we will be welcoming large numbers of students back to our campuses and for the first time, delivering the entire breadth of our curriculum within the Southern Cross Model. There has been an enormous amount of effort over the summer by a great many people in order to bring us to a point of very high readiness for this moment. I am optimistic that our students will enjoy substantial and lasting benefit as a result of this investment.

Over recent months, over and above the preparatory efforts I’ve noted above, a substantial number of colleagues have been involved in the critical task of engaging with prospective students and their families and helping them to understand our ethos, our values and our ambition and how our approach to learning and support connects tangibly to the realisation of their future dreams. I am so thankful to all of the teams who have worked so hard and so creatively to inspire those who will form the incoming 2023 cohort of students to join us. This has been an outstanding team effort which I know will reach a particularly high pitch over the next several crucial weeks.

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It’s a new year but Southern Cross is already kicking goals with all courses to be rolled out under the Southern Cross Model when the 2023 teaching calendar commences next month. 

This marks a major milestone for the University, with law and health joining the rest of the University’s course offerings under the new Model. The Model includes an academic calendar that is split into six terms of six weeks and content that is interactive and encourages active learning. 

Early data on student results under the new Model has been promising. When compared to pre-COVID figures of 2019, results up to Term 3, 2022 under the Southern Cross Model showed a 16 per cent increase in student success rates in completing units, from 69 per cent to 85 per cent. Mean Grade Point Averages increased from 3.6 to 4.4 and absent fail rates fell by 25 per cent to 4.6 per cent.

This is the first year that law and health undergraduate units will be taught under the Southern Cross Model. Faculty of Business, Law and Arts Associate Professor Mandy Shircore said while some law subjects can be quite content heavy, developing units for the new model has allowed for a focus on the important content and the learning experience for students.

“It has given us an opportunity to ensure that what we’re providing to students is the most relevant, up to date and topical of legal issues,” Mandy said.

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Just before the well-deserved holiday break, Clare Thorpe, our Director of the Library Services, flew all the way to Thailand to attend the International Federation of Library Associations’ (IFLA) Regional Workshop for Asia-Oceania.

Bringing together representatives of IFLA Members across the region, the workshop topics included defining and building a sustainable library field in the region, developing advocacy skills to use when meeting with government agencies and funders and evaluating and demonstrating the impact of libraries. 

The session also provided time for networking and building connections between library leaders across the region.

Delegates attended from 28 countries across Central, East, South and South-East Asia and Oceania. Australia was represented by three delegates.

As part of the event, Clare was invited to address staff at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (UN ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok where she shared how Australian libraries are progressing work towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The workshop was an invaluable opportunity to learn about the diverse range of sustainable development initiatives being led by libraries and library associations throughout the Asia-Oceania region. It was a privilege to meet with library leaders from Uzbekistan to Vanuatu who I will continue to work with virtually during 2023,” said Clare.

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A new program to help children and young people deal with natural disasters has been recognised in a national award scheme. 

Authored by Founder of the Centre for Children and Young People (CCYP) at the University, Professor Anne Graham AO, 'Stormbirds’ creates a safe space for children and young people to practise new ways of thinking and responding to change and loss following natural disaster events. The program forms part of the Seasons for Growth suite delivered by family support agency MacKillop Family Services. 

Later last year the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience recognised 'Stormbirds' with a Highly Commended Award in the Mental Health and Wellbeing Award category of the 2022 National Resilient Australia Awards. 

The CCYP has worked collaboratively with Mackillop Family Services for many years to develop programs that support children, young people and adults to understand and cope with change, loss and grief. 

“A key part of the 'Stormbirds' session is ‘Growing Stronger Together’, which supports children and young people to identify ways that a natural disaster can strengthen communities. It’s important that they can name the special people, places and things that helped them through a difficult time. Knowing there are people who continue to support them beyond the immediate crisis is critical for developing resilience and feeling positive about the future,” said Professor Graham.

Congratulations to Anne and the CCYP for this national recognition of their significant work.

Southern Cross undergraduates Pearl Andrews and Yasmeen Daniels have been awarded a New Colombo Plan (NCP) scholarship for 2023. This prestigious grant, initiative of the Australian Government, will allow Yasmeen and Pearl to study and undertake internships in the Indo Pacific region for up to one year. 

“I am excited to see where this incredible international opportunity will lead Pearl and Yasmeen. These young female leaders from the Northern Rivers have clear goals to learn from this global experience and the communities they meet and are decided to make a positive impact on the environmental challenges we are facing,” said Christine Martin, Director of Global Engagement. 

Pearl, a Bachelor of Indigenous Knowledge student majoring in Law and Justice, is considering internship options within the University of the South Pacific, located in Fiji. She chose Fiji as her primary location to advance her goals of understanding how Indigenous (and Pacific Islander) methodologies of combating climate change can inform Western law frameworks that address environmental challenges.

“It’s a huge honour and privilege to have been awarded this scholarship. I’m hoping to use it as a stepping stone into the rest of my academic and professional career. I’ll be heading off to Fiji in August to study semester two at the University of the South Pacific. There I’ll be focusing on Pacific Islanders’ world views and looking at how local communities are effectively combating climate change through embedding localised knowledge into policy and self-governance.”

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More than two centuries ago, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef filled explorers with trepidation, lest their wooden ships be damaged or sunk on the limestone formations just below the surface.

In 1770 Captain James Cook rowed ashore at an island located in the Reef’s far north, climbing a 359-metre mountain to survey the surrounding waters in the hope of navigating safe passage through the maze.

Today we celebrate the Great Barrier Reef as one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Yet the mysterious reefs we once feared now face threats such as mass coral bleaching, crown of thorns starfish and terrestrial run-off. Modern day pioneers are helping conserve these wondrous ecosystems. People like the University’s Distinguished Professor Peter Harrison whose ground-breaking Coral IVF technique reseeds coral directly on reefs rather than in the laboratory.

The island Cook climbed, which he named Lizard Island for its abundant yellow-spotted monitor population, is proving the ideal base for Professor Harrison’s coral larval restoration efforts.

Surrounded by coral reefs, the six islands of the Lizard Island group lie midway between the coast and the outer ribbon Reef, about 93km north-east of Cooktown. Most of the islands enclose a deep lagoon, aptly called the Blue Lagoon, that provides sheltered anchorage for the floating nursery pools where coral embryos grow into larvae.

Always the innovator, Professor Harrison introduced new equipment and processes to the Coral IVF technique during his most recent trip in December.

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The SCU Buzz podcast was launched in 2021 and has published nearly fifty episodes, attracting thousands of listeners through Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

Students and academics as well as professional staff have featured on the podcast, giving their perspective on student life at Southern Cross, their research passions and even some top tips on how to be successful at university.

Colleagues you may have heard on the podcast include Dr Liza Oates (Season 2) with her take on food as medicine, Dr Jean Renouf making sense of climate change (Season 1), Dr Eric Brymer and his research into extreme sports (Season 2), Dr Kathomi Gatwiri on saying no with compassion (season 1), not to mention our favourite bird expert Professor Les Christidis (Season 1) who took a quiz about birds and our bee expert Dr Cooper Schouten (Season 2) who confirms there is no such thing as too many bee puns. 

Our fearless student hosts have tackled topics that give an idea of the width and depth of activity at the University, from amplifying youth activism to handling that first day of teaching prac to cybercrime careers and how much reading you actually have to do in an Honours year. 

Season 3 is launching soon at Term 1 Orientation, but you can catch up on your listening at the SCU Buzz podcast on Soundcloud, or search for SCU Buzz on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.