ARO Weekly Newsletter #44 - 4November 2016
Careers and Employment:
-Deloitte Women in IT breakfast (Monday 14th November 7.30 to 9am Tower 2 Brookfield Place, 123 St Georges Terrace, Perth).It’s an exciting time to be graduating with an IT degree and we’d love to invite you to attend a breakfast at Deloitte. This is your chance to network with some IT professionals who have worked on some of Australia’s largest IT projects.
-We have now added “Meet the Team” to the Careers and Employment webpage on the Murdoch University website
-Vacation Employment – Chemical Centre – open to all engineering students – incl. international students (Applications close on 17th November) - further details on CareerConnect
-Vacation Engineering students – open to engineering students (Applications close on 30th November) – further details on CareerConnect
CUTL:
(Learning Support)
-This week,Dr Steve Johnson and Dr Julia Hobson from CUTL will be presenting the final module for the yearof Flying Start, a series of intensive module workshops designed to help commencing Graduate Research Degree (GRD) candidates produce the research proposal, literature review and oral presentation required for their candidature, manage their project and effectively negotiate roles and responsibilities with supervisors. The program also helps international research degree candidates to work together and support each other. Altogether this year, 80GRD students have completed this program.
Engagement:
(Domestic)
-The team is busy planning 2017 events. We are busy to the end of school term hosting campus visits with students from South Freo SHS last week, and country students next week from WA Ag College and St LukesKarratha.
-The annual Storylines festival at All Saints College ran on Thursday and Friday last week. The festival attracts students from Schools all over the metro area. Murdoch is a sponsor of this event and ran a “Creative Space” with free activities including a photography exhibition, Virtual reality display and information on courses and career pathways. Murdoch Theatre students were Roving Shakespearean characters doing flash performances. Murdoch had the Provost and Academics attend with support from FSOs and Outreach.
(International)
Welcome to Professor Lyn Karstadt as Deputy Vice Chancellor – International
-The International Engagement team would like to extend a warm welcome to Professor Lyn Karstadt who arrived this week
The Meet Murdoch Experience!
-Agents from all around the world have been on an exciting journey this week experiencing everything Murdoch and Perth has to offer. Some of the activities included; were school tours, feeding kangaroos, South Perth foreshore sunset barbeques and escaping the Fremantle Prison and much more!
-Have a look at the attached schedule to see what other activities took place during the Meet Murdoch Experience
-Have a look at some of the photographs by clicking here
Enrolments & Fees:
Enrolments
-The Team is responding to queries from Re-Enrolment day and the opening of 2017 enrolments. Several enrolment rule issues are being resolved.
-We will be sending out an advice that Course Transfers and change of majors are open early next week (forms go live at 4pm today)
-We will also be inviting Pre-2014 students who are less than half way through their course to transfer to the post 2014 courses
-Student have been formally changed from the PEEL designated location to the MANDURAH designated location, and we will be advising affected students.
-Academic Council approved a change to the Coursework Regulations that will allow Academic Chairs to waive course requirements for breadth and research units if it is necessary for course progression. A formal explanation of what this means and how to do it is being prepared, so please don’t make any suggestions or commitments just yet!
-2017 Board of Examiner meeting dates, and therefore when results for the various teaching periods will be released, are close to being finalised.
Fees
-The next two weeks we will update the outstanding fees situation and apply new fee encumbrances to students, particularly those with two semesters of SSAF outstanding. This will block access to results.
-2017 Fee Set-up continues. We have a test environment for the new 201 and 204 student statuses, and are working through how to set this up. Changes to the online Commonwealth Assistance Form will be needed. There is also a significant change to Research Student support which will include updating their student status from 330 to 331.
Equity and Social Inclusion:
-Please note we only have one Disability Advisor on board. We are trying to manage the risks associated with not being able to provide as timely a response to students as we’d like. We would really appreciate your support in trying to do this. So, please let students know that there may be a wait to see a Disability Advisor and try to assist them in the shorter term if at all possible.
OSQA:
Surveys
-MyFeedback Unit and Teaching surveys are currently running for Semester Two. They will be open until past exam time so students have the best chance at filling them in.
-Respect Now Always Survey on Sexual Assault and Harassment in the Higher Education Sector is finishing up. Universities Australia and the Human Rights Commission have enough data for a solid national report which is good news.
-The Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) for recent graduates has opened this week and will be running all of November
Student Centre:
-A big thank you to all who helped make the Re-enrolment Day a success yesterday. Apart from a few technical glitches beyond our collective control, students were actively getting themselves enrolled with help from the Academic staff and Student Advisors. From our figures in the Student Centre, enquiries from current students increased threefold over the average number of enquiries (walk-ins and phone calls) from Mon-Wed.
Student Support:
Scholarships
-10 additional scholarships are now available for Geneva program (taking the total available to 11)
-Scholarships are now available for the ACICS Public Health Study Tour
Special programs
-Australia Awards student co-authored a paper entitled: Assembly and transfer of tripartite integrative and conjugative genetic elements.
-Also congratulations to Amanuel Bekuma, a PhD student with the Centre for Rhizobium Studies, Dr Jason Terpolilli, Dr Graham O'Hara and Dr Penghao Wangwho co-authored this paper. The full paper is available here.
Transition and Retention
-Student focus groups were held in order to obtain feedback about orientation at Murdoch. We’ve now completed the analysis, which will help us plan for S1 2017 orientation.
-We are currently finalising room bookings for orientation
-The proofing of publications for o-week 2017 are well underway
*******************************************************