The Office for Research and Graduate Studies exists to promote and support research and higher degree programs across the University. Staff members are located at the Bathurst and Wagga Wagga campuses.
The Office is responsible for disseminating information about research opportunities, developing a comprehensive research database, assisting individual researchers to obtain research funding and administering applications for funding and the resulting grants. The Office also works with individual staff and research teams to foster collaboration and team building.
The Office for Research and Graduate Studies has responsibility for the administrative oversight of the research higher degree program, its students and supervisors. The Graduate Studies Officer prepares admission recommendations for the Higher Degrees Committee, monitors student progress, arranges the examination of theses and processes recommendations for graduation. The Officer also helps to facilitate communication between students, supervisors and other units of the University. The Scholarships Officer is responsible for advising Australian Postgraduate Awards (APA), CSU Postgraduate Research Studentships and other external postgraduate scholarships.
Further information about the Office for Research and Graduate
Studies may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.csu.edu.au/research/orgs.htm.
Contact: Janet Dibb-Smith, Director (069) 33 2119
The University is host to one of the principal offices of the Australian Rural Health Research Institute. In addition there are five designated University Research Centres:
· Centre for Conservation Farming
· Centre for Cultural Risk Research
· Centre for Rural Social Research
· Centre for Grape and Wine Research
· Johnstone Centre of Parks, Recreation and Heritage
The Centre for Conservation Farming (CCF) comprises members of the academic staff of Charles Sturt University (CSU) together with representatives of the NSW Department of Agriculture, the NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation, CSIRO and industry.
The mission of CCF matches the direction of agricultural teaching and research at Charles Sturt University.
Objectives of the Centre include:
· providing training for students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the conservation farming ethic and the management practices involved;
· developing cooperation with public and private
organisations to promote and develop management practices consistent with conservation farming; and
· undertaking research, extension and consulting activities which contribute a better understanding of the processes involved in sustaining agricultural productivity, and which assist in the wider adoption of conservation farming practices.
Facilities used by the Centre include the University farm, glasshouses, growth rooms, an automated drainage lysimeter and laboratories. Projects of current interest include allelopathy of annual grasses, soil acidification, conservation tillage practices, herbicide residue carryover, total catchment management and sustainable agriculture. The Centre is also part of the Cooperative Research Centre in Weed Management Systems.
Further information about the Centre for Conservation Farming
may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.csu.edu.au/research/confarm/ccfhome.htm.
Contact: Professor Jim Pratley, Director (069) 33 2864
This new Centre will examine cultural risk and communication in contemporary consumer society. It will conduct research into cultural categories most likely to be at risk, such as the poor, the young, older people, and ethnic minority groups, and will examine the involvement of these 'at-risk' groups in public, professional and media discourse.
In particular, the Centre will focus on three areas of research:
· the mass media in its representation of risk;
· the professional cultures of those who deal organisationally with 'at-risk' behaviours (the medical profession, police, courts, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc);
and
· those risk cultures which become the 'consumers' of media and professional constructions of risk, such as women, children, older people, and ethnic minorities.
The Centre includes academic staff drawn from a variety of disciplines including cultural studies, communication, health administration, nursing, psychology and sociology. In addition, master and doctoral students studying these disciplines will be involved in research conducted by the Centre.
The Centre is well situated to attract grants for research into topics such as: risks of ageing, teenage risk (including suicide), food and alcohol disorders, HIV/AIDS communication, domestic violence, victims of crime, and environmental risk.
Further information about the Centre for Cultural Risk Research
may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.csu.edu.au/research/.
Contact: Professor John Tulloch, Director (063) 38 4563
The Ron Potter Centre for Grape and Wine Research, one of the six University Centres for Research, is the research component of the Ron Potter Centre (a teaching, production and research facility that supports the University's programs in wine science and viticulture). Located at the Riverina campus (Wagga Wagga), it seeks to develop research excellence and distinctiveness in wine science, viticulture, and related fields such as food science. It promotes both programs at the forefront of research and programs with more closely focused industry needs, with an emphasis on improvement of vineyard management, grape and wine flavour quality, and fungal disease control. It provides resources for research training at honours, masters and doctoral levels, with research staff drawn from many disciplines, including viticulture, wine chemistry and biochemistry, microbiology and plant pathology, technology transfer, irrigation, and food science.
Facilities at the Research Centre include two research laboratories and, uniquely, a modern commercial winery with 14 hectares of vineyard and a vine propagation nursery. The laboratories have facilities for research in chemistry and biochemistry, microbiology, plant pathology, tissue culture, and viticulture. Resources include extensive HPLC equipment and direct access to mass spectrometry equipment, including GC-MS and LC -MS instruments that it has sought through ARC funding. The winery and vineyard allows research to use commercial grape and wine production facilities, to develop well-controlled trials, and to demonstrate research outcomes.
Up to 400 tonnes of grapes each vintage are handled by the commercial winery. It produces a number of premium varietal table, sparkling and fortified wines that are distributed nationally and have been highly successful in national wine shows. The vineyard uses clonally selected vines, controlled drip irrigation, high trellising, mechanical pruning and mechanical harvesting to provide 150 tonnes of high quality fruit annually, at good economic yields. It conducts research trials to examine the effect of trellising and training systems, and different management systems. The nursery produces up to 200,000 grapevines for sale to growers.
The University leads the world in studies into methoxypyrazines, flavour components characteristic of Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, and studies are now assessing the importance of viticulture to these flavour components. Furthermore, the Centre is a key participant in the Cooperative Research Centre for Viticulture together with CSIRO, Departments of Agriculture and other universities. The staff of the Centre are also involved with international teaching and consulting in China, Vietnam and Portugal.
Further information about the Centre for Grape and Wine Research
may be found on the World Wide Web at
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/rpcgwr/winery.htm.
Contact : Associate Professor Malcolm Allen,
Director (069) 33 2433
The Centre encourages and supports applied rural social research, the analysis of rural social policy and the improvement of human service delivery in non-metropolitan Australia. Specific areas of interest include the social conditions of rural Australians; service delivery - theory and models; social aspects of landcare and sustainability; and technology transfer in agriculture.
CSU has the largest team of rural sociologists and rural welfare practitioners of any university in Australia. CSU directs substantial research effort into the largely neglected fields of rural sociology, rural welfare and the sociology of agriculture. The emphasis on social aspects of rurality has encouraged a large number of social scientists to become involved in projects. Discipline areas include gender studies, sociology, psychology, industrial relations, consumer affairs, political science, social welfare and social work.
The Centre has an important applied function to link the findings of social researchers with the work of those responsible for policy implementation in rural regions. The Centre not only conducts research but also acts as a clearing house for information on rural social research and welfare practice.
The Centre's quarterly journal, Rural Society , is sent to over 500 subscribers in Australia and New Zealand and to research libraries in the US, UK and Pacific Basin region.
The Centre provides a focus for undergraduate and postgraduate study. The Master of Social Science coursework degree, the Master of Social Science research (Honours) and PhD degrees offered by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences allow students to specialise in aspects of rural social life and rural change at regional, national or international levels.
Further information about the Centre for Rural Social Research
may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.csu.edu.au/research/crsr/centre.htm.
Contact: Professor Bob Doyle, Director (069) 33 2778
The Johnstone Centre mission is to assist in conserving the world's biodiversity through:
· undertaking interdisciplinary research;
· providing advanced training and education;
· supporting academic scholarship;
· undertaking industry consultation; and
· facilitating communication between researchers and end users.
The centre's focus is on ecosystems in the Murray-Darling Basin, rural Australia and rural areas in the Asia Pacific region with an emphasis on the management of protected areas.
Research programs
The Johnstone Centre research is grouped in five research program areas:
· ecosystem conservation;
· ecologically sustainable development - the community dimension;
· ecotourism;
· ecosystem informatics; and
· cultural resources at the ecological and economic interface.
Members of the centre are located on the Albury-Wodonga and Bathurst campuses of the university and have expertise in a variety of disciplines including ecology, development studies, environmental economics, environmental sociology, human ecology, leisure studies, ecotourism studies and heritage studies.
Centre staff act as supervisors to doctoral, masters and honours students conducting research related to the Centre's mission. The Centre attracts funding from a wide variety of sources, including all tiers of government, private industry, and philanthropic organisations. In particular, the Australian Research Council has provided funds for facilities, including a transportable ecological field station currently located adjacent to the Murray River (to be used for research into the rivers, flood plains and processes in the Murray-Darling basin) and a four wheel drive field survey and monitoring laboratory which enables staff and students to conduct research in remote locations.
The centre has established an international conservation program
and is involved in a number of research projects dealing with
sustainable development through protected areas in Asia and the
Pacific. Projects being undertaken include a study of biosphere
reserves in China, conservation areas in Nepal, rainforests in
Papua New Guinea and ecotourism activities in India. All involve
research partner organisations in the host countries.
Contact: Professor Terry De Lacy, Director, (060) 41 8850
For more details on the Centre, including staff curriculum vitae
and publications, see the World Wide Web on
InterNet address: http://life.csu.edu.au/jccentre/
The Australian Rural Health Research Institute (ARHRI) was established in 1994 by the Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council (AHMAC) and is Australia's peak body for rural and remote area health research. The Institute has three principal offices, Wagga Wagga (within Charles Sturt University), Moe in Victoria (within Monash University) and Alice Springs and Darwin in the Northern Territory (within Menzies School of Health Research). Sites have also been established in Whyalla, in the University of South Australia and Perth in the University of Western Australia.
Like the other arms of the Institute, the CSU Office has the following core functions:
· To act as a clearinghouse for information on rural health research, initiatives and outcomes;
· To develop appropriate methodologies, strategies and priorities in rural health research;
· To carry out research and generally encourage research in relation to health in rural areas;
· To develop, promote and evaluate models for rural health programs; and
· To establish a national network of interested parties.
The CSU arm of the Institute has been actively encouraging collaborative research with other university institutions and government organisations. The Institute has already been sucessful in attracting competitive research funds in the following areas: communication and information technology, palliative care, the needs of terminally ill Aboriginal people and their carers, disability research, asthma management and support programs for young pregnant women. Other fields of research currently being developed include nutrition in rural and remote areas, recruitment of allied health professionals, professional role of psychologists in rural health services, drug abuse and addiction research in rural areas, mental health services and health needs of permanent residents of caravan parks.
Further information about the Institute is available through the
World Wide Web by accessing AHRHI on the CSU Home Page. Rural
health professionals will be able to access rural health research
information from the WWW, including the Rural Health Research
Register.
Contact: Peter Dunn, Associate Director
Telephone (069) 33 2844
Facsimile (069) 33 2986
Publish
Last revised: 3 January 1996
