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School of Animal BiologyGraduate Student Newsletter
Issue 2, June 2008Issue 2, June 2008
A big thank you to Nicola, Alex and Penny for all their work to making the Annual retreat another successful event. The venue was terrific and the weather cooperated beautifully for the orienteering challenge. Everyone derived benefit from the many presentations and workshops. The themed quiz night was great fun. If you missed out, make sure you go next year.
CongratulationsDr. Resa Ferasyi and Dr. Paul Close, and Cheryl Hethrington, M.Sc. have had their corrected theses accepted by the Board of Graduate Studies as passingJim Underwood, Peter Hutton, Renee Firman and Claus Christophersen have submitted the corrected versions of their thesis.Peter Hutton has accepted a lectureship in New Zealand and will be leaving in July. Scott Carver has accepted a post-doc position in Montana and will be leaving in July. Liz Fox and Marianne Peters theses have passed and they are now undertaking corrections. Peter Turner has submitted his thesis.Aimee Silla was awarded $5000 from the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment. Rachel Binks (and supervisors) and Mike Young who were awarded research grants from the ANZ Philanthropy Partners Holsworth Wildlife fund
Welcome to…Ana Hara who starting a MSc with Harriet MillsJoanne Elliot who is working with Dominique Blache towards a Ph.D.Esther Levy has started a Ph.D. supervised by Natasha LeBasAnnette Cook who doing a MSc. with Harriet Mills and Roberta BenciniSean Stankowski who is undertaking a Ph.D. supervised by Mike JohnsonFrances Leng who has started a Ph.D. supervised by Harriet Mills
Coordinators corner …Thank you all for coming to the meeting and to the retreat. We hope you found both activities useful. We know it is important that the School Executive hear your concerns and hopefully they will act on them. Several students have already purchased their copies of SAS. There is more about this meeting and the outcomes on the following page.
On another note, unfortunately none of our students were awarded any grants in the first round of the GRST scheme. Dominique and I were both surprised by this. However, don’t lose heart, there are two rounds every year from now on and the students who already applied can apply again. Use the time to polish your applications. Seek feedback from the GRS as to how you could improve the application and be more competitive in the next round.
We look forward to seeing you all at the School Dinner. Renee Firman has been doing a wonderful job getting this dinner organised while trying to finish up corrections on her thesis (she has just submitted the corrections).
Best Wishes, Helen and Dominique
What do you think?Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. Lin Yutang – Chinese Writer and Inventor (10/10/1895-26/3/1976)
A NoteBefore you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
Student Reps Say… about the retreat
Firstly, a big thankyou to those who attended the awesome postgrad retreat on 23-25th April; we hope you all had as much fun as we did! Also, an extra big thanks must go to the presenters, who put on some fantastic seminars to make the retreat a useful learning experience as well as a great social event.
We have retreat CDs available for you to borrow and burn yourselves a copy (sorry we didn’t have enough to burn everyone a copy). Featured are the fantastic seminars as well as some incriminating photos. All are welcome to them; whether you came to the retreat or couldn’t make it. Please see/email Nicola or Alex to borrow one.
One thing that was noticed was the severe lack of staff attendance. We will be letting next years organisers know about this issue so they can get onto ensuring a better turnout from staff (the threat of serious corporal punishment maybe??). We’d like to thank the staff who did attend various stages of the retreat; we appreciate you lead busy lives so we’re very grateful you took some time out of them!
Alex and Nicola
Student Reps Say… about the meeting
A meeting was held on the 16th of May. The majority of Graduate Research students in the school attended. The purpose of the meeting was for us to raise our concerns to the Head of School and School Manager. A number of issues, concerns and questions were brought up that concerned many of you. Concerns included:
Budget and accounting issuesPurchasing (why is it so hard?)Software licencesFieldwork issuesEquipment maintenanceKeeping track of borrowed itemsFaculty-level car bookingAEC issuesAlternative student email addresses
The minutes for this meeting will soon be on the School website. We will be following up on the issues brought up by this meeting, and encourage you to let us know of anything you think needs addressing (no matter how big or small!).
Cheers,Alex and Nicola
If you need to
Schedule a SeminarContact Michael [email protected]
To do the Safety InductionContact Tom Stewart [email protected]
Take the 4x4 Driving CourseContact Rick Roberts [email protected].
Purchase anythingContact Natalie [email protected]
To submit budget requestsRob [email protected]
For your DiaryGraduate Student Seminars are on Fridays at 1:00 in the Agriculture Lecture Theatre (unless otherwise noted)
School of Animal Biology Seminars are on Fridays at 4:00 p.m. in the Jennifer Arnold Lecture Theatre.
School of Animal Biology Morning Tea is Wednesdays at 11:00 in the FNAS Common Room.
2008 Graduate Student Representatives
Nicola Watson 6488 3425 [email protected]
Alex Wells6488 [email protected]
Important Graduate Student Links
Graduate Research School http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/home
Scholarships Office http://www.scholarships.uwa.edu.au/
International Students http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/home/international
2008 Graduate Research Coordinators
Dominique [email protected] 3587
Helen [email protected] 3590
Upcoming SeminarsThere are lost of spaces available for Graduate Student seminars. Remember each student is required to give a presentation each year.
From the meeting
One of the issues/questions raised at our meeting was whether the School would pay for First Aid Training or 4WD training because these were OHS issues and required for student projects. I followed this up with Alan Luks, our Acting School Manager. While many Ph.D. students do go out in the field and require the 4WD training and Senior First Aid training, not all students do and therefore, these courses should be budgeted for from project funds (which are provided by the School). I was informed that the School would not pay for Senior First Aid or 4WD courses for Ph.D. students. Alan followed up to find out if the University would pay for staff and students to undertake first aid training and received a response in the negative. However, the University has negotiated discounts with training providers. For large group bookings St Johns are prepared to come to campus to offer courses and discounts (about 15%) Let the Graduate Reps know if you would like to do a Senior First Aid course and we will organise a course if there are sufficient numbers to make us eligible for the discount.
WA Police Academy Bushcraft & Survival Guide 25th Edition / June 2007:http://www.police.wa.gov.au/YOURSAFETY/AidstoSurvival/tabid/1337/Default.aspx
RFDS Safe Outback Travel:http://www.flyingdoctors.org/Safe-Outback-travel.html
UWA Field Work Procedures in Rural and Remote Areas:http://www.safety.uwa.edu.au/policies/field_work
The contact person at St Johns is:Tony SmithTeam Leader - Corporate ClientsFirst Aid Service & TrainingSt John Ambulance Australia (WA)Ph :- 9334 [email protected]
Bookmark this websitehttp://www.animals.uwa.edu.au/for/postgraduate_students
Are you receiving announcements? If you are not receiving announcements about School of Animal Biology business including updates of School and Graduate Student Seminars, please contact Kerry Knott [email protected]
Get to know … Nicola Watson!Nicola was born in Formby, a small village on the north west coast of England, near Liverpool. When she was 7 years old her family moved to Singapore and this change in scenery made a lasting impression on her. According to Nicola, travel is one of the most exciting things you can do. Nicola completed her degree in Ecology, at Lancaster University, UK, where she had a lot of fun. This was where her research interest in evolutionary biology developed. Nicola undertook honours research investigating sexual selection in the European dung fly. She spent the summer sitting amongst the cows in a field while catching flies. Her PhD here at UWA involves studying sex roles and horn evolution in dung beetles. The favourite part of her PhD is the socialisation, meeting new people and making new friends. The least favourite part of her work, unsurprisingly, is the daily dealings with cow waste material.
Outside of work, Nicola likes to go to the beach, catch up with friends and explore her new city of residence. Her interests include music, food and nature. She loves living in Perth but is looking forward to heading home (hopefully) for a white Christmas. Her next travel destinations are South America and Madagascar.
Who is Jane Prince?Jane was born in London, a while after the blitz, but close enough to it to remember ration books and cod liver oil supplements. In an attempt to avoid the National Health system, her father, a general practitioner, moved the family to Perth when Jane was nine, a move she has continued to thank him for almost daily. It took about three weeks in her new country for her to lose her accent and adopt Australian ways and she has never since considered herself anything except 100% Australian. Since then Jane has always lived in Perth, doing her undergraduate, M.Sc and Ph.D degrees here at UWA. She married an Australian and has produced four Australian children who have so far provided her with five Australian grandchildren, aged from one week to ten years, with another one due in September.
Jane never planned to become a biologist. Jane was always top of maths and chemistry at high school but liked biology because it was a bit different. That interest continued through to university where she took zoology more or less as a side-line to a biochemistry major. Then, at the end of second year, she had a life-changing experience when she went into the field with one of the post-graduate students in Zoology at that time. After a few days of field work, camped at the base of one of the granite outcrops in the wheat-belt, they were caught in a summer thunderstorm. “I woke to see my belongings floating out of the tent and when we managed to get our sodden gear packed back in the vehicle we found the roads back into town cut by flood waters. We eventually made it back safely, but for me it was too late. I was hooked and all thought of becoming a lab-bound biochemist completely disappeared. I was going to be a field biologist.”
Jane considers the time she spent doing a Ph.D as the most exciting and liberating time period of her career. Jane describes herself as a community ecologist who usually works on invertebrates, some of which live in the sea. Currently she is finishing off some long-term research into the processes determining structure in marine intertidal invertebrate communities and beginning some work on the effect of fire history on the structure of terrestrial invertebrate communities. Jane continues to love field work. Among her favourite field experiences are measuring sea urchins on Half Moon Reef, at the southern tip of the southern-most island in the Southern Group of the Abrolhos, counting crab burrows on Cable Beach, and watching the behaviour of Rock Wallabies in Yardie Creek Gorge.
Jane favours outdoor activities for holidays as well. Some of the holiday highlights include, paddling in Desert Queen Baths in the Rudall River National Park, arriving by sea-plane at the pearl farms along the Kimberley coast and finding her first gold nugget somewhere north of Meekatharra. The BaldchinGroper and Coral Trout she caught last week is a highlight also! Her other hobbies are mostly travel related: boating, camping, bird watching, shell collecting and a bit of prospecting. Jane loves her pets (currently two dogs and two cats) and can’t imagine being without a pet of some kind. She is crazy about football and is a foundation member of the Dockers. She played hockey for almost 30 years starting from age 13, swam competitively through high school and surfed for a few years as well. Jane used to be an avid reader, but now finds she doesn’t have much time to read for pleasure. She loves music and the self-applied term “tragic old rocker” is not far from the mark when it comes to her tastes.
An International PerspectiveThere was a meeting with a group of Graduate students who have come to Perth and UWA from other parts of the world. Currently, 20% of Graduate research students in our school have come from other countries such as New Zealand (yes, this counts), Bangladesh, UK, India, and Denmark specifically to study at UWA. We’ve had other students from the Eastern Europe, the USA and South America. This is what some of the international students have to say about their experience:
Why did they come to UWA?Most of the students came primarily to UWA to work with their supervisor and on a project that they are particularly interested in. Many of them had a very clear idea about who they wanted to work with and what they wanted to work on. The research profile and standard of the university were also very attractive. Ultimately, it was the scholarship they received made it possible for them to come here.
What was the greatest challenge you faced when you first started here? The greatest challenge the students had was finding accommodation. There is some international student housing offered by the university but this is limited to married couples with families. Another problem finding housing is that the international students have no housing history in Australia or references to assure agents and owners of their credibility and reliability. Many of the students with families find that they have difficulties obtaining Visas to bring family members to Australia.
There are cultural differences that often make it difficult to make friends and settle in to the university environment. International students have found it hard to integrate into the social structure of the school, especially if they join a small research group. Demonstrating or doing research may also be quite challenging because the system they came from may have been quite different. They have found that sometimes lecturers and supervisors assume they have knowledge or understanding about “how it works”.
As with anyone who comes to a new place, finding their way around can be a challenge, but for international students this is often more challenging because of the extra layer of unfamiliarity with an Australian university. Just knowing how to purchase something is a struggle.
Is there a language barrier?The students who are admitted to UWA all had to pass an English language competency test and some had already studied in English speaking countries, so felt like there was not really a problem with the language. Australians in general are apparently pretty helpful and tolerant of accent differences.
How could the School help International Students better?The students felt that being assigned a mentor, a peer- graduate student, to help them find their way around and transition to the university would be wonderful. Having more interaction among the students and staff would be great. It was also suggested that having some kind of communication from the School about what to expect from the University, School, and Perth, before moving to Australia and starting at UWA would be helpful to them in shaping more realistic expectations of the people and place. Once they arrive, it would be good to participate in a School-based orientation.
Two international students, Clemens and Sushil, at the Graduate student retreat.
Access to ArcGISArcGIS is a product of ESRI(originally Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.) which is is privately held and debt free, and there are no plans for the company to go public or change ownership. A Current ArcGIS Site Licence is valid until January 2009 (license period runs from Jan - Dec.). As of January 2008 the cost is $200 per seat (this is a share of the UWA license). Dongles are $80 (USB). These are generally available, but delivery could be 4 weeks if out of stock. These costs would need to be met from the student’s PG. Information about obtaining ArcGIS will be available from FNAS IT support person Alan Mullet. He can let you know which components of ArcGIS we have and probably where in the university they are already installed.
