News

The academic community has recognised the scholarly activities of four Avondale College staff members as this research update shows.

DEGREES
The Faculty of Business and Information Technology's Bill Truscott has completed a Master of Commerce degree from Macquarie University. The new degree complements the lecturer's Master of Arts (leadership and management) from Avondale.

PAPERS
Carolyn Rickett, who lectures in the Faculty of Arts, spoke at the Interrogating Trauma: Arts and Media Responses to Collective Suffering International Conference in Perth in December this past year. She adapted the title of her paper, "Singing of bodies changed into shapes of a different kind," from Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses.

"I am not so much interested in 'fictionalised' accounts of pain but the 'factual' trauma experienced by literary writers in their material or lived circumstance," writes Carolyn in her abstract. The paper explores the therapeutic dimension of autobiographical acts where an author responds to real-life illness and "psychic rupture" through storytelling. "My immediate concern is not how autobiography functions and defines itself as a genre but what the performance of life-writing might enable an author to enact in terms of 'controlling,' 'recuperating' and 'making meaning' for both themselves and potentially their readers."

Carolyn is completing doctoral research in trauma, writing and healing at the University of Sydney. She is coordinator for the New Leaves creative writing project, an Australasian Research Institute funded initiative for people, or carers, who have experienced or are experiencing the trauma of a life-threatening illness.

Lyn Daff, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, will present a paper at the European Accounting Association Conference in Tampere, Finland, May 12-15. "Technical skills and generic skills: are we missing a vital ingredient in educating the next generation of accountants?" examines the relationship between emotional intelligence and generic skills in an accounting context. The paper presents a conceptual model of commonalities and differences that will "aid educators in implementing a wholistic approach to accounting education that will help ensure students are better equipped to face the many demands they will meet in their professional and personal lives."

The dean of the faculty, Dr Keith Howson, will also speak overseas in May but at the invitation of the British Accounting Association. Keith will present "Sage on the stage: teaching accounting to Generation Y" at the association's Accounting Education Special Interests Group Conference at the University of Essex, May 20-22. The paper encourages accounting educators to: teach collaboratively, becoming more like facilitators and mentors; give feedback about assessments more rapidly; and use more interactive technology such as blogs and pod and vodcasts.

PUBLICATIONS
Dr Daniel Reynaud, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, is in print again. He wrote a chapter for the book, Creative nation: Australian cinema and cultural studies reader (SSS Publications, 2009). The title of the chapter is, "Film and national mythology: the Anzac legend in Australian films."