CSU Townhall and morning tea

 Today at the CSU Townhall the senior executive provided positive news and clear direction for 2026.

 

Sharynne, A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Andrew (4th year dentistry student) and Vice Chancellor Renee Leon at the staff morning tea

CVC was profiled in the Vice Chancellor's 2025 message

CVC was profiled in the Vice Chancellor's 2025 message. Thanks for your support VC Professor Leon DVC-R Professor Neena Mitter and all of our CSU colleagues.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9RZDYef80k

 

Professors' Forum

At CSU we have regular Professors' Forum meetings. This afternoon's meeting was focused on discussion with the Vice Chancellor. Additionally, there was a discussion about a number of issues:

• "The evolving risk to academic integrity posed by generative artificial intelligence": https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-08/evolving-risk-to-academic-integrity-posed-by-generative-artificial-intelligence.pdf. It is a very useful forum for receiving information and providing feedback.
• CAUL has agreements with a number of quality publishers and made journal articles open access free of any transactional Article Processing Charges - https://caul.libguides.com/read-and-publish. For example, Taylor and Francis journals still have some free open access charges during October - but indicate their funds are likely to expire after that time.
  

 

Celebrating CSU's Foundation Day and 35th birthday

Today, I joined my colleagues to celebrate 35 years of Charles Sturt University on Foundation Day. The university prioritizes the Wiradjuri phrase "Yindyamarra Winhanganha - embracing the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in".

Sharon Sandry (Executive Assistant, DVC Academic), Dr Emmaline Lear (Research Office),
Vice Chancellor Renee Leon, Prof Sharynne McLeod

CSU Foundation day celebration

Announcement of the first Charles Sturt Distinguished Professors

The Vice Chancellor has announced the first Charles Sturt Distinguished Professors in her Vice-Chancellor's Message | 17 April 2024:

I am pleased to announce that Professor Sharynne McLeod, Professor Geoff Gurr, and Professor Chris Blanchard have been appointed as Charles Sturt Distinguished Professors. The development of the Distinguished Professor Scheme is an important objective within the Research Strategy to help us attract and retain the highest-calibre academic staff and produce world-class research. These long-standing, high achieving Charles Sturt academics are our first internal appointments. They join external appointments of Distinguished Professors Muhammad J A Shiddiky, Sarah O’Shea, Alan Cooper, Jing Sun, and Stan Grant who has recently returned to Charles Sturt. I have recorded a message to congratulate and thank our first internal appointments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eBy31PEJZk). I will be profiling the achievements of each of the Distinguished Professors in my Message over future issues.

I am honoured to be in such distinguished company and look forward to continuing my work at Charles Sturt in this role. 

Here is the Vice Chancellor's announcement:

Professor Sharynne McLeod is a remarkable person who embodies the transformative power of education and research. I am pleased to announce her appointment as a Charles Sturt Distinguished Professor. Professor McLeod’s interdisciplinary research foregrounds communication rights and social justice and enhances equitable participation for all children, particularly multilingual children with speech, language, and communication needs. She has presented her research to thousands of people worldwide, including the Australian Government Senate Inquiries, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. She was named Australia’s Research Field Leader for Audiology, Speech, and Language Pathology in The Australian newspaper’s supplement Research 2024 and best in the world in 2023. Professor McLeod joined Charles Sturt 25 years ago as a lecturer. In that time, she has led countless research programs, but for every piece of work, she asks, ‘Will this make a difference to the lives of children and families across the world? ' On receiving the University’s highest promotion, Professor McLeod said, ‘My students and colleagues have inspired, encouraged, challenged, and mentored my growth, and now it is a great honour to be recognised.’ “I am excited to begin my next phase at Charles Sturt, leading a new interdisciplinary centre focused on children’s research and communication. The centre will be located in The Treehouse, which will be a beacon of innovation and inclusivity, revolving around empowering children to communicate, collaborate, and create a world worth living in." Professor McLeod’s first encounter with (what is now) Charles Sturt University was as a child at West Bathurst Public School, when the school choir was invited to sing on campus. No one in her family had attended university, but the encounter inspired Sharynne to keep doing her best at school. This moment shaped the focus of her academic life, recognising potential in all children and supporting them to participate fully in society regardless of their postcodes, abilities, culture, languages spoken, family and economic circumstances. Congratulations, Professor McLeod, and thank you for your selfless commitment to the greater good.

From the CSU Vice Chancellor's Message

Today's CSU Vice Chancellor's message included the following paragraph:

"We are also seeing excellent progress in our priority area to strengthen our existing research capability and improve research quality. As of 19 July, Charles Sturt has published 651 Journal Articles with 91% in Q1/Q2 journals. Not only are we on track to publish our goal of 1,200 articles with 93% in Q1/Q2 journals, currently we are exceeding our Field-Weighted Citation Impact (this measures the impact of our research) target for research."

Congratulations to our team of researchers from the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme and also our Speech-Language-Multilingualism team. Almost every article we publish is in a Q1/Q2 journal - so we have contributed to this achievement.

Vice Chancellor's visit with School of Education staff

Today CSU's Vice Chancellor Renée Leon met with School of Education staff on the Bathurst campus. She spoke about our key goals

• Student success
• Student experience/satisfaction
• Research income/quality
• Stakeholder satisfaction
• Staff engagment

We appreciated her time to discuss issues with us.

CSU FOAE Researcher of the Year; Research Excellence through Partnership; AND Research Thesis of the Year

I received this welcome email thils morning:

"The Charles Sturt Research Awards Panel has completed its deliberations and we are delighted to inform you that you have been awarded both the 

Faculty of Arts and Education Researcher of the Year and the 

Research Excellence through Partnership prizes. 

Many congratulations for your fantastic contribution to the University! We would like to invite you to the Research Awards Dinner on 23rd February 2023 to receive the awards from the Vice Chancellor.

Professor Mark Evans (Chair) on behalf of the Awards Committee

Shortly afterwards our PhD student received this email: 

Dear Dr Van Tran, The Charles Sturt Research Awards Panel has completed its deliberations and we are delighted to inform you that you have been awarded both the

Faculty of Arts and Education Higher Degree by Research Thesis of the Year prize and the

joint winner of the overall Charles Sturt Research Thesis of the Year prize

This is an award for outstanding research undertaken by an HDR student.

Many congratulations for your fantastic contribution to the University! We would like to invite you to the Research Awards Dinner on 23rd February 2023 to receive the awards from the Vice Chancellor.

Professor Mark Evans (Chair) on behalf of the Awards Committee

Dr Van Tran receiving her PhD at graduation in August 2022

Subject:	Vice-Chancellor's 2022 Research Excellence Awards
Date:	07-DEC-22
Subject:	Vice-Chancellor's 2022 Research Excellence Awards
Message:	The Charles Sturt Research Awards Panel has completed its deliberations and have recommended the following award winners to the Vice Chancellor: Teaching Scholar of the Year - Dr Nicole Sugden, School of Psychology, Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences An award for a teaching focused academic (including casual staff) engaged in high quality "scholarship informed" teaching practice. Researcher/Research Team of the Year An award for outstanding research with outcomes extending beyond the University and commendation awards for a researcher/research team from each Faculty. Faculty of Arts and Education: Professor Sharynne McLeod Faculty of Business: Dr Ashad Kabir Faculty of Science and Health: Professor Chris Blanchard Overall winner: Professor Chris Blanchard Excellence as an Early Career Researcher An award for outstanding research undertaken by an early career researcher and commendation awards for a researcher from each Faculty. Faculty of Arts and Education: Dr Jane Garner Faculty of Business: Dr Tyson Whitten Faculty of Science and Health: Dr Nidhish Francis Overall joint winners: Dr Nidhish Francis and Dr Jane Garner Higher Degree by Research Thesis of the Year An award for outstanding research undertaken by an HDR student and commendation awards for an HDR student from each Faculty. Faculty of Arts and Education: Dr Van Tran Faculty of Business: Dr Scott McManus Faculty of Science and Health: Dr Helenna Mihailou Overall winner: Dr Van Tran Excellence in HDR Supervision - Professor Chris Blanchard An award for outstanding supervision of Higher Degree Research students. Research Excellence through Partnership An award recognising the importance of university researchers initiating, developing, and managing high quality research partnerships with community, industry or international partners. Winner: Waiting for Speech Pathology Team - Professor Sharynne McLeod, Dr Nicole McGill, Dr Kathryn Crowe, Dr Suzanne Hopf, Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang, and Dr Nicola Ivory Award winners will receive their awards from the Vice Chancellor at the Research Awards Dinner on 23rd February 2023. Details will follow. The Awards Dinner was postponed to the new year due to the impact of the NSW floods. Please join me in congratulating the award winners. Mark Evans, DVCR

Meeting with Education Minister Jason Clare MP and Vice Chancellor Professor Renée Leon

I sincerely appreciated the opportunity to have lunch with Education Minister Jason Clare MP and Charles Sturt Vice Chancellor Professor Renée Leon to talk about about equity and access solutions for early childhood education, teacher education, children's communication and speech pathology that we've addressed in our Australian Research Council research.

International Women’s Day

The Vice Chancellor invited me as one of four "Charles Sturt University female leaders" to be profiled on her personal LinkedIn account to honour International Women’s Day on March 8. 

She asked: "What is your advice to young women on how to break the bias?" 

Here is my response: “Collaborate to undertake important, high quality research that changes people’s lives.”

Congratulations to the CSU Speech Pathology Team for winning the Vice Chancellor's CSU Successful Graduates Award

Congratulations to the CSU Speech Pathology Team for winning the Vice Chancellor's CSU Successful Graduates Award 

Charles Sturt University RED Award Successful Graduates: Recognises and celebrates individuals and teams that engage, inspire, motivate, and have made an outstanding and significant contribution to delivering excellence in service to students, alumni, staff, or the wider community. 

Speech Pathology Team, Faculty of Science and Health (Names: Sarah Verdon, Lisa Brown, Marijke Denton, Catherine Easton, Laura Hoffman, Suzanne Hopf, Alex Spiller, Linda Wilson) 

What the nomination was for: The Speech Pathology team are nominated for their development and implementation of the Master of Speech Pathology (MaSP) course. The MaSP is recognised as a world-leading blended online professional training course for speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The MaSP was the first Australian blended online speech pathology (SP) course to be awarded the maximum five-year course accreditation with Speech Pathology Australia, the national governing body for speech pathologists in Australia. Throughout this course the speech pathology team applies the Charles Sturt online learning model (2018) and an evidence-based constructivist approach to learning and teaching to deliver an innovative, high-quality student-centred university experience. Student and community feedback on the MaSP consistently identifies a rewarding and flexible student experience that prepares sought after work-ready graduates. 

Why is it Excellence Award worthy: A 2018 Speech Pathology team research project revealed over 92% of MaSP students chose the Charles Sturt course over other courses because it was offered online, with more than one third of participants stating they would not have attended university at all without this course. MaSP students see benefit in the constructivist pedagogy for their future practice, as indicated by the following student comment: "I've really learned to embrace the style of learning … because I can transfer it to so many other areas that I may not be directly taught about." (Student feedback forum, 20/05/2021). 

The national peak body of the profession, Speech Pathology Australia, acknowledged the strength of the Charles Sturt MaSP course stating: “the flexible and unique online learning offers prospective students an opportunity to commence a new profession. Students strongly advocated for the unique offering of the Masters ‘online’ program” (Speech Pathology Australia, accreditation feedback, 2020).

CSU Town Hall to meet our new Vice Chancellor Renée Leon

Today over 800 CSU staff attended the online Town Hall to meet our new Vice Chancellor Renée Leon.

https://www.csu.edu.au/division/vcoffice/office-of-the-vice-chancellor/welcome

Vice Chancellor Renée Leon

 

 

The CSU strategy focuses on students, research, people and social responsibility and details are found here: https://staff.csu.edu.au/universitystrategy-2030

Faculty Forum

Today we have a new Vice Chancellor at Charles Sturt Unversity Professor Renée Leon PSM. Her welcome message is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe1ENWQpyLM&feature=youtu.be  

We continue to have regular Faculty Forum meetings. Today we covered many issues including our budget and research transformation.