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The Monash University Student Union (MONSU) won its second consecutive Australian Customer Service Award in the category of Medium Business, at a recent dinner at the Hilton on the Park.
MONSU services include student assistance, service desks, student activities and associations, and sports and recreation at the Caulfield and Peninsula campuses.
The organisation was the only winner to come from the education sector - other winners included Yarra Valley Water, Glen Eira City Council and Transfield Maintenance.
Also shortlisted for the GapBuster Champion Award, which recognises individual service excellence, were MONSU staff Ms Helen Torcello and Mrs Kerry Darlington and student representative Mr Phillip Dalidakis.
MONSU submission project leaders Mr Gary Ryan and Ms Vicky Dawe said scooping the award for the second year in a row was a great achievement.
"It represents a wonderful team effort to maintain consistently high levels of customer service," Ms Dawe said.
For MONSU, the awards were also an opportunity to review its processes and set new goals.
"We want to ensure our standard of service delivery across all campuses does not drop, and we also intend to undertake an internal service review," she said.
"We will run focus groups with departments and ask them to come up with a set of expectations, and we will evaluate whether we meet those expectations and see what we need to do to improve our customer service."
After taking the honour at state level, MONSU was also highly commended in the national awards.
The awards are presented by the Australian Customer Service Association, which has more than 1500 members from across a wide range of industries.
It is a non-profit organisation dedicated to developing excellence in the management and delivery of customer service in Australia.
Entrants are judged on criteria including service leadership, customer research, innovation and improvement, responsiveness and customer satisfaction.
MONSU acting general manager Mr Peter Hughes and project manager Ms Vicky Dawe show off the MONSU award for excellence in customer service.
Attorney-general visits law serviceVictorian Attorney-General Mr Robert Hulls last week visited the Springvale Monash Legal Service. SMLS coordinator and Monash law lecturer Mr Ross Hyams said the visit included discussions about issues affecting community legal services such as funding and the current review of sentencing laws. Also discussed was a state government proposal that could see lawyers from private firms working free of charge for six-to-12 month periods at the legal service. "This scheme would enable firms to fulfil their pro bono requirements while providing the legal service with much-needed assistance," Mr Hyams said. Mr Hulls met staff and several final-year law students, and expressed interest in Monash's professional practice and clinical legal education programs. He was also supportive of the program in which Monash law students appear, under supervision and with the agreement of the Magistrates' or Family Court, on behalf of clients who cannot afford their own lawyers.
Attorney-General Mr Robert Hulls (right) has a chat to Mr Ross Hyams. |
Faculty of Education students are staging an original music theatre production titled Much Ado About Teaching from 16 to 18 November.
Education senior lecturer and production director Dr Jane Southcott said the show was now an annual event, which always centred around a teaching theme.
This year's production, which has an Elizabethan tone, is set in the fictitious Elsinore High School.
Characters include Elizabeth the First, who is in charge of the School Council, physical education teacher Hamlet, and Shakespeare, who heads the English department.
Into this world wander two student teachers, Jeff and Geoff, who find school departments in conflict about the ownership of the new Dunsinane building and the office staff in revolt.
Dr Southcott said the production enabled students to gain experience in staging a theatre show from start to finish.
"We come up with the basic idea, always related to teaching, and then we develop a script, write the music, choreograph the dances, rehearse the show - and then perform it over three nights," she said.
Students from across the course are involved in the production as cast members, set builders and publicity officers.
The performances will be on 16, 17 and 18 November at 7.30 pm in the Drama Performance Space. Tickets are $8.50 (GST included) and are available at the door or by calling extn 52810.
Hong Kong politician visits MonashThe Department of Business Law and Taxation is this week hosting a visit by Hong Kong politician and public figure Christine Loh. As part of the visit, the department has arranged for Ms Loh to speak at a series of public seminars. These include:
Bookings: leoteller@ozemail.com.au or call 9531 4696.
Bookings: b.fernandez@asialink.unimelb.edu.au or call 9349 1899.
Bookings: Mary Saldana at bpwmelb@bigpond.com.au or call 9326 1009. Ms Loh was, until recently, a directly elected member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (Legco) and is the founder and leader of the Citizens Party. She was also one of only a few NGO representatives at the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne. In the future she will focus on her role as the leader of the new Hong Kong-based political and social action group, The Civic Exchange. For more details, go to www.monash.edu.au/staff/loh.html
At dinner at the recent World Economic Forum is Ms Christine Loh (right) with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Professor Allan Fels (left) and Department of Business and Taxation head Professor Richard Cullen. |
Monash University Malaysia's School of Business and Information Technology is co-organiser of the Linux World Conference and Expo in Kuala Lumpur from 7 to 9 November.
Monash is organising the event in partnership with IDG Asia, a business unit of IDG, which is the world's leading IT media, research and exposition company.
Linux's debut event in Malaysia is expected to be as successful as its Singapore expo held earlier in the year, where 500 delegates attended the conference and 13,000 people came to the exhibition.
Monash will be assisting in program selection and organisation, exhibitor recruitment, conference promotion, technical support, logistics and show management.
The three-day exhibition and conference will provide a platform for Linux users to interact with one another, explore solutions to their business problems and find out about Linux's latest developments.
Major industry players SGI, IBM and Intel are participating as exhibitors.
For more information, email hiew.pang.leang @busit.monash.edu.my
New Monash staff from all campuses and affiliated hospitals are invited to attend the next 'Introducing Monash' morning, to take place at 9 am on Friday 10 November at the Staff Development Unit, 700 Blackburn Rd, Clayton.
The half-day orientation program, offered at regular intervals throughout the year, is designed to officially welcome new staff and to assist their effective induction by providing an introduction to the university from a number of perspectives.
Presenters, including senior management, will speak on a wide range of topics, from the university's strategic plan, Leading the Way: Monash 2020 to the services and facilities available to staff and students.
To register, contact the Staff Development Unit on extn 56800, or application forms are available from the SDU website at www.monash.edu.au/personnel/sdu/short_courses/orientation.htm
Monash University's Enterprise Information Research Group is hosting the Open Road Conference: Multiculturalism and the Internet from 30 October to 1 November.
The conference will explore issues relating to policy and current initiatives towards making the internet accessible and relevant to Australia's multicultural communities and regional neighbours.
It will particularly appeal to organisations interested in developing and managing online content for linguistically and culturally diverse communities.
The conference, which has been endorsed by Victorian Premier and Minister for Multicultural Affairs Mr Steve Bracks, will be held at the Caulfield campus on 30 and 31 October and at the State Library of Victoria on 1 November.
For further information, see www.openroad.net.au/world
Campus Review editor and Monash graduate Dr Warren Osmond died recently at the age of 53.
Dr Osmond had been editor of Campus Review, a weekly newspaper covering tertiary education news and issues, since 1996.
He completed an arts degree at Monash in 1968 and later did his PhD at Sydney University. During his early years as a Monash student, he co-edited the university's student publication Lot's Wife.
He also published a book Frederick Eggleston: An Intellectual in Australian Politics in 1985 before joining the Sydney Morning Herald, as a writer specialising in international affairs.
In 1991, as SMH's foreign editor, he won a Walkley award, Australia's highest honour for journalism, for his part in the reporting of the Russian coup that led to the end of the Soviet Union.
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