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Lights, noise, banners, men on stilts, a team of acrobatic drummers, a roof swinger, one young ballerina and hundreds of athletes. The Australian University Games opened with a spectacular bash at the Glasshouse on Sunday night.
The Victorian Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, officially declared the Games open, flanked by the vice-chancellors from the two sponsoring universities, Monash's Professor David Robinson and Melbourne University's Professor Alan Gilbert.
More than 400 Monash students are competing at the week-long Games, which have attracted more than 5300 competitors from more than 50 member campuses across the country. Athletes competing in 20 sports have gathered at Melbourne's top sporting venues, including the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, Albert Park and Monash and Melbourne universities.
Among this year's elite athletes is swimmer and second-year commerce/law student at Monash Rahmin Dekretser, who was a finalist in last year's World Champion Selection Trials, a winner of seven gold medals in the 1996 State Championships and a medalist in the 1997 National Age Championships.
Competitors from four New Zealand universities are also attending the Games, as are two members of the Singapore hockey team - Lai Siang Yeong and Edwin Tan. Both students at RMIT, Yeong and Tan declined to play at the Commonwealth Games because of study commitments.
As part of the Games celebrations, Monash and Melbourne universities co-hosted a sporting legends luncheon on Tuesday 29 September, at which Professor Robinson gave the welcoming address.
Monash staff and students will soon have access to a retail bottle shop in the Union building on Clayton campus.
The bottle shop is one of a number of new initiatives set in place or planned by Unicomm Pty Ltd, a university company set up earlier this year to lead the multimillion University Union business, formerly known as the Monash University Union.
The University Council established the company earlier this year to oversee the commercial operations of the Union as well as to head up the university-wide student employment service, MONSEACS, based in the Union building.
It is anticipated that the bottle shop will be operating before Christmas.
In another major development, Unicomm's chief executive officer, Mr Joe Curtis, former director of the Monash University Union, is this week visiting the Monash University Sunway Campus Malaysia to investigate opportunities to extend Unicomm's operations to that campus. He will be accompanied by Ms Irmgard Good, acting manager of MONSEACS, and Mr Bob Burnet, one of the directors of the Unicomm Board.
Mr Curtis said Unicomm was a multimillion commercial company employing at least 270 staff and providing a service to thousands of staff and students at the Clayton campus alone.
Mr Curtis said that becoming a university company had enabled the Union to enhance services to staff, students and the public and to significantly diversify its commercial operations and retail services.
Under the new structure, a minimum of $200,000 of Unicomm's profits will be directed to the Monash Student Association.
Other recent services or initiatives set in place in recent months include new shops, a weekly Cinema, extended trading hours at Wellington's Bistro to include breakfast, and a flower vending machine.
Unicomm, in association with MONSEACS, hosts a range of major employment and careers fairs, the most recent of which involved all major Asian Pacific corporations.
Monash's Faculty of Information Technology will launch an Australian and possibly a world-first degree in network computing from next year.
The
degree has been sponsored by global computing giant Sun Microsystem.
A yet-to-be appointed Chair of Network Computing, also sponsored by Sun Microsystems, will lead the new course, to be offered at the Peninsula campus.
IT Faculty dean Professor John Rosenberg said the course would have an initial intake of 60 students, but he expected that number to grow significantly, particularly to meet interest in Asia.
The degree has been developed to help prepare graduates for new careers in growth IT industry areas such as networked computing. It will focus on the four core areas of Java and object-oriented programming, Internet web design and other skills, data communications and networks, and distributed systems.
Professor Rosenberg announced the new course last week during the first live broadcast of Sun Microsystems' new international TV show, Sunergy. The show was transmitted from Fox Studios by Sydney's Sky Channel 9 to sites around Australia and New Zealand, including Monash's Clayton campus. In October the show will be broadcast to more than 150 sites in North America.
Professor Rosenberg said both the IT industry and universities could greatly benefit from cooperation and collaboration.
"I firmly believe that universities shouldn't work in isolation," he said. "And it was clear from feedback from our industry advisory board and other industry sources that a degree in network computing was needed. So I talked to Sun, as the major player in the network field, and after some discussion, they agreed to be the major sponsor.
"There's much more to Sun's contribution than money. It's a two-way relationship between the faculty and the company, with the potential for staff exchanges in which their people work with us and some of our people work in Sun's research and development labs.
"We will have advanced access to new Sun software products. Our students will also be able to sit for Sun qualifications such as their Certified Java Programmer and Certified Java Developer qualifications."
Professor Rosenberg said he hoped to feature a Monash development, JavaBlue, on a forthcoming Sunergy broadcast.
JavaBlue is a program development environment specifically designed for teaching Java to first-year students.
"We have been working on this for about a year now, in response to interest from universities in Australia and overseas for a Java teaching tool," Professor Rosenberg said.
"Sun US has been funding part of the development of JavaBlue, which is a simple but powerful environment for developing Java applications".
Two Monash graduates have been awarded prestigious Cambridge Australia Scholarships to study for their PhD awards at Cambridge University.
Ms Selena Ng and Ms Fiona Scholes are among the latest 12 Australian graduates of outstanding academic merit to have received the awards, each worth about $50,000 a year.
Ms Ng, who holds an honorary scholarship, has just completed her Mathematics Tripos (Part 3) at Cambridge, and will continue on to her PhD. Ms Scholes will study chemistry for her PhD.
During the past 14 years, the Cambridge Trust has supported 190 Australian students in their postgraduate studies at Cambridge, including 15 from Monash.
An information session on the Cambridge University PhD scholarships will be held from 12.30 pm to 2 pm on Wednesday 14 October in the function room of the former Vice-Chancellor's Residence, building 65, on Clayton campus.
Cambridge Australia Trust representatives will be in attendance. The event is free and refreshments will be provided.
Monash Magazine, the university's flagship magazine produced by University Marketing & Development, has won a national award.
The Association of Development and Alumni Professionals in Education (ADAPE) award, in the Tertiary Alumni/Community Magazine category, was announced on Monday at ADAPE's national conference.
An alumni census, also developed by University Marketing & Development, received a special commendation in the awards.
Copies of Monash Magazine are available by contacting Ms Cathy Kirkham, manager, Marketing Services & Public Relations, on extn 52037.
More than 150 prospective postgraduate students attended a Monash Postgraduate
and Professional Information Evening held last week at the Monash Conference
Centre.
The evening was designed to provide prospective postgraduate students with information and advice about postgraduate and professional courses in the areas of business and commerce, information technology and science.
Chairperson of the working committee Mr John Nairn said the numbers reflected the growing need to meet postgraduate students' information requirements.
"The evening provided prospective students with a unique opportunity to speak with staff and current students in an informal setting," he said.
The event was the result of the combined effort of three faculties and University Marketing & Development.
Manager of Marketing Services & Public Relations Ms Cathy Kirkham said expanding the faculty of Business & Economics' initiative to include the Information Technology and Science faculties had attending prospective postgraduate students a greater variety of course options and had resulted in a more informative event.
Monash's Faculty of Business and Economics and the William Angliss Institute recently signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on matters of mutual benefit.
The faculty aims to enhance its course and subject offerings with the institute's expertise in the food, tourism and hospitality industries.
The links are expected to provide greater opportunities for cross credit and articulation pathways for students between both institutions.
Dr Kevin O'Connor of Monash's Department of Geography and Environmental Science has been granted status as a life member of the Australia and New Zealand Regional Science Association (ANZRSA).
The prestigious award recognises Dr O'Connor's outstanding service to ANZRSA and regional science including nine years as one of the association's council members and as a past president and secretary.
In a letter of citation for the award, ANZRSA's president Mr Tony Sorensen and secretary Mr Tom Murphy, said Dr O'Connor had made a significant contribution to regional policy in his roles as a researcher, speaker, media commentator and academic.
The Poe Show, the latest production by Monash Student Association's Student Theatre, opens at the Student Theatre Space, Union building, Clayton campus, next week.
The production, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's works The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death, has been adapted for the stage and directed by the Student Theatre Department's resident co-artistic directors John Britton and Hilary Elliott.
Shows will be held at 8 pm on 7, 10, 13 and 16 October. For bookings, contact Student Theatre on extn 5 3108.
The production is being accompanied by a series of workshops run by Student Theatre with local secondary schools. The workshops, which explore the process of transferring Poe's stories to the stage, are part of Student Theatre's commitment to becoming more involved with the community.
In another recent initiative, Student Theatre recently ran short weekly arts/drama sessions for children at Monash's Child Care Centre, Clayton.
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