From the Head

Welcome to the Spring Edition of our NBE School Newsletter eNBErs. Spring Term with all of its bustle of student assignments and project submissions, wending our way towards examinations, the moratorium on contact with year 12 students is a timely reminder of how quickly the end of year is approaching.

For me, there is the build up towards performance management interviews, deadlines for submission of changes to awards and prizes, documenting new programs for approval, finalizing short-term marketing schedule and of course checking that with 75% of the year over that our school budget is on track to deliver the moderate surplus that we have planned for. I am delighted to say that all of these outcomes appear to be moving the NBE School to another successful year of growth and maturity.

However, it is difficult for me to think of the Spring season, as many of you know that I have only just returned from 3 months of European Summer and my long planned for Long Service Leave. I will not take up your time describing my many adventures and activities over the longest break and longest summer of my life. But suffice to say that it was a wonderful experience throughout and a superb way to refresh myself from the day to day humdrum of an academic life. What I can say is that any of you holding on to LSL should seriously consider taking the choice to use it like I have just done.

But of course I would love to give you a glimpse of some of the highlights from my European Summer adventure, maybe even mentioning some of the sustainable and environmentally friendly practices I noticed on my travels as a real tourist for the first time in many years. The photo’s linked to this text should help to illustrate my wonderful experiences.

My first week was in England in June where unusually glorious weather prevailed. However, when I moved on to continental Europe, unfortunately for those left behind the UK weather degenerated into yet another miserable cold, wet and grey July and August. In environmental terms, this saved many millions of tonnes of CO2 as 25% of the English Holiday makers who usually travel abroad decided to stay home in the UK (on the advice of their Bureau of Meteorology who got the predictions wrong) and then found the weather too awful to even travel on holiday within the UK.

Meanwhile, I spent a sensational month in July following (and joining!) most of the legs of the Tour de France, as was the main aim of my visit to France. TDF is a sporting event and a circus in many ways, but it was a superb reminder of the influence of cycling, not only on the French, Italian, Spanish etc psyche and national identity, but also on the promotion of cycling as a safe, healthy, environmentally friendly and non polluting means of transport. Cities come to a standstill during the TDF, but people still travel to watch it – by walking, by train, by bike and even by electronic segue and other similar vehicles. On my own bicycle I cured my fear of hill climbing completely by managing to surmount 3 of the highest and most famous tour Cols. I also cycled around cities towns and villages in France, Andorra, Spain, Switzerland and Italy – with many like-minded cycling TDF followers. Bicycle friendly urban design was evident across Europe, traffic was “calmed” into subordinate roles on roads, few helmets were evident or needed and cycling ruled, especially whilst the Tour was in town.

The second leg and month of my trip involved driving and ferry cruising across Italy, the Greek Islands and Turkey to visit old family friends. I managed to successfully navigate all of the potential pitfalls of such a journey and was able again to soak in the many examples of environmental initiatives that were evident in a Europe, where people and governments are very much aware of the potential dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, polluted land, sea and air, possible climate change and need for water, resources and particularly energy security.

This could be easily recognised with the preponderance of wind farms on many hills and coastal areas, almost exclusively electrified high speed rail networks, fields blooming with plants destined for bio-fuel production, waste management facilities recycling everything from batteries to buildings. And on a local scale recycling is no longer novel with for example plastic bags phased out or banned in most countries. Along with simple and efficient alternatives to transport issues including trams, trolley busses, trains and separation of roadways for different types of travel e.g. pedestrian/cycling-only precincts in most towns and villages, it gave me a feeling that Europe is managing its habitats and environment for its populations in a emergingly sustainable way.

Other than my leave period, where thoughts of my working role in NBE only surfaced around recycling or cycle-lanes, I did carry out some duties whilst I was away. I started my trip in the City of Melaka in Malaysia where during a visit to University Teknologi Melaka the Dean and staff of Engineering hosted me exceptionally well. The commitment of the Malaysian Government to improve the quality of its tertiary education system was highlighted by the new buildings and growing infrastructure and opportunities for staff to seek PhD, where the significant opportunities for funded government scholarships was discussed.

I also toured the World Heritage Site of central Melaka where interpretation of cultural and eco-tourism and are also helping to transform both the infrastructure and the economy. Melaka’s successful bid for WH status in 2008 was a joint bit with Penang and on my return from Europe I joined the start of the Planning Study tour with Dr Matthew Rofe and Associate Professor Jon Kellett and their students. The already strong ties with University Sans Malaysia in Penang appear to be growing stronger, with the USM students providing an invaluable and different cultural and educational background for the NBE students to work with (and vice versa). As I understand the outcomes of the course as seen in the presentations provided by the joint student groups were stunning.

For more pictures please visit the Image Gallery

Whilst away we had new staff join the school, both academic and professional and I have been delighted to meet with them to see how they have been fitting in so well. I must thank all of the staff across the School who have helped to keep us performing so well as a School, during my absence. But most particularly I must thank Associate Professor Ian Clark and SEO Kerry Henderson together with the School Executives for providing the very important leadership for our School. Our School is travelling very well at the moment in terms of quality, improvements in research and in its financial underpinning. You as staff must take the credit for that. However, the future will continue to be challenging, with a changing external and government environment, STEP2010 initiatives to develop and implement and ERA research auditing planned for 2010. I look forward to sharing those challenges with you into the future. Thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to reinvigorate myself to be able to do that.

Regards,

Pat