ECIR bi-monthly meeting

What a wonderful meeting today with the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme. We covered some of the exciting projects undertaken over the past few months and shared the vision for our new research centre and The Treehouse.

CSU Summer 2023 Research Retreat

Over the past two days I have attended the Summer 2023 Research Retreat hosted by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) in Orange addressing the following:

1. First Nations Research - Sue Green and Mark Evans

• First Nations Research Retreat Outcomes
• Barriers to implementing the First Nations Retreat Outcomes
• Living Yindyamarra

2. Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Awards

3. Proposal for the Establishment of ARC/NHMRC Bid Accelerators - Mark Evans

4. Research Services Retreat Outcomes - Jason White

5. Implementation of the HDR Review - Sarah O’Shea

Accepting Kate Smithers' ECR award

Some key points about First Nations Research

• "It was agreed that Yindyamarra values could be used to drive First Nations research activity on Wiradjuri, Gundungarra and Ngunnawal/ Ngambri country as the values would not require translation due to clan ties, but the values would need to be translated meaningfully for research on Biripai country."
• "Charles Sturt’s First Nations engagement framework will follow the AIATSIS National Framework with country specific protocols to be developed by Biripai, Ngunnawal/ Ngambri, and Wiradjuri Gateway Groups. The objective of this framework is to provide a comprehensive guide for research practices that respect the values and cultural beliefs of First Nations communities."
• "First Nations IP will include authorship in publications, and remuneration for research participation. These expenses will need to be included in project costings. Data Sovereignty principles will be adopted following the Lowitja model. https://www.lowitja.org.au/icms_docs/328550_data-governance-and-sovereignty.pdf"

Four Principles that will underpin the Wiradyuri Research Gateway

1. Yindyamarra – Respect & Honour - kindness, politeness, gentleness, slowness, and patience
2. Winnanga-gi-gilanna – People & Country - caring for people & Country
3. Ngungillanna – People - sharing resources & knowledge with each other
4. Muldanngilana – Working Together - equality, equity, honesty, and integrity 

Congratulations to my colleagues who won Research Excellence Awards. I was invited to collect the award for Kate Smithers who was awarded the Early Career Researcher Award for the Faculty of Arts and Education.

 

Day 1: Presentations and meetings at Manchester Metropolitan University

I am a Visiting Professor with Manchester Metropolitan University from March 2022 to March 2024. Today was the first time I actually visited the university, with previous work being undertaken online across timezones between Australia and UK.

Today, I presented a 2.5 hour session titled "Maximising the impact of your communication research using a Research Wellness Checklist" that was  aimed at early and mid career researchers. It was great to have people with a range of research experience and knowledge to share their wisdom and insights.

Next I met Dr Julie Wright, Head of Department, Health Professions and discussed MMU's Good to Great Program. A number of years ago I had been invited to be an international mentor/collaborator for Prof Julie Marshall and the outcome from this collaboration was our special issue of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology that addressed the Sustainable Development Goals. We are presenting a seminar on this tomorrow. We discussed how the SDGs are important to all universities, including CSU and MMU.

Later this afternoon we met with Professor Saul Becker (new PVC of the Faculty of Health and Education at MMU) https://www.mmu.ac.uk/individual-profile/professor-saul-becker He is establishing a new Institute for Children’s Futures and has had a long-standing relationship with Australia – including discussing policy issues about children as carers with Julia Gillard when she was PM. At the end of the meeting he shared that a new banner was put up in the Faculty building with the following six words: Research | Education | Training | Policy | Practice | Impact I thought that we were well aligned throughout the conversation – but these six words nailed it! I look forward to further conversations with people at MMU.

Faculty of Health and Education's new banner

Walking in the rain with Prof Julie Marshall to MMU

Prof Julie Marshall, PVC Prof Saul Becker, Prof Sharynne McLeod

Prof Julie Marshall, HOD Dr Julie Wright, Prof Sharynne McLeod

Some of the MMU staff who attended today's research seminar

Meetings to plan impactful research processes that will inform policy

On Monday I had excellent meetings with DVC-RE Mark Evans, Pat McKenna, Nilima Mathai from the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor - Research and Engagement and Hazel Dalton from the Rural Health Institute (RHI) to plan impactful research processes that will inform policy. I also got to say hello to a number of people at the ACCC, including Prof Wayne Hudson who is the next speaker in the Provocations Public Lecture Series (https://research.csu.edu.au/engage-with-us/provocations).

Hazel Dalton and Sharynne

Prof Wayne Hudson, Sharynne and Nilima Mathai at ACCC in Canbera

Faculty of Arts and Education - Final Faculty Board Meeting for 2021

I am an Elected Member of the Professoriate on the Faculty of Arts and Education - Faculty Board. Today was the last meeting of the year (we meet every 2 months). The agenda was only 158 pages today (short!) for our 3-hour meeting. It has been an honour to serve on the board this year. My term ends June 2022.

CSU Professorial Promotions Committee

I have just finished reviewing a large number of applications for the CSU Professorial Promotions Committee that is meeting next week. Almost every application had over 60 pages of evidence. It has been a huge, but very fascinating task. There are many extremely impressive people at CSU!

Travelling the world from my home

Zoom meetings (and emails) enable me to travel across the whole world from my home. This week I have spoken with people in the following countries:

• Fiji - Suzanne Hopf (email)
  
• Germany - Sarah Masso (email)
• Hong Kong SAR China - Carol To
• Iceland - Kate Crowe
• The Netherlands - Anniek van Doornik
  
• Vietnam - Ben Pham, Hang Nguyen, Van Pham
• United Kingdom - Yvonne Wren
• United States - Lynn Williams; Marie Ireland

It is wonderful to collaborate with so many different people and fascinating to learn from each person about the impact and restrictions of COVID-19 on their daily lives.

Carol To (Hong Kong, SAR China) and Sharynne McLeod

COVID-19 test to be taken before going to work in The Netherlands

Meetings with my team

Each week I have 1-2 hour meetings with my SLM team members. This week I've had inspiring meetings with:

• Holly McAllister and Suzanne Hopf about Holly's honours data
• Dr Michelle Brown about her postdoc progress
• Dr Sarah Verdon and Maree from Speech Pathology Australia about presenting an invited online workshop
• Nicole McGill about her PhD and publications
• Dr Kate Crowe about her publications
• Dr Van Tran about her PhD
• Dr Audrey Wang about our VietSpeech data analysis
• Kate Margetson about our VietSpeech study 2
• Dr Sarah Verdon about our VietSpeech journal articles
• Dr Tamara Cumming and Dr Nicola Ivory about our Early Childhood Research Group - followed by a meeting with our Dean Prof John McDonald and SubDean Research Philip Hider.
• Emails with lots of other team members

Additionally this week I have supported researchers across the university and world with their grant and promotion planning as part of my senior research fellowship.

Holly McAlister

Dr Michelle Brown

Dr Suzanne Hopf

Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and CSU

Today I attended the Faculty of Arts and Education Research and Graduate Studies Committe and Prof. Jason White from the Research Office celebrated our Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings regarding our alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CSU achieved a total score of 87/100. We were ranked 61 of 766 institutions and participated in 12/17 SDGs. Our top ranked SDG was SDG10 Reduced Inequalities where we were 4th in the world. 

• SDG4 - Education - 36th in the world
• SDG 5- Gender - 6th in the world
• SDG10 - Inequality - 4th in the world
• SDG11 - Sustainability - 92nd in the world
• SDG13 - Climate - 37th in the world
• SDG16 - Peace and Justice - 61st in the world
• SDG17 - 101-200 in the world
  

 

Prof Jason White, Research Office

Planning for the 2021 composium on multilingualism and children's speech

Tonight two IALP committees (Multilingualism and Multiculturalism; and Child Speech) had a meeting to plan a combined composium to be held in South Africa in August 2021. It is going to be an exciting event.

Yvonne Wren (UK), Sharon Moonsamy and Michelle Pascoe (South Africa)
and Sharynne McLeod (Australia)

VietSpeech team meeting in Sydney

Today, the VietSpeech team met in Sydney for a whole day of discussion of our progress to date and planning for 2020. We have almost finished the second year of our Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. We have completed study 1, made good progress on Study 2 and 3 and will undertake Study 4 next year. We have presented papers at a number of conferences, and have published a number of papers as well. It was such a pleasure to meet with our wonderful, enthusiastic, and hard-working team:
• Professor Sharynne McLeod (Chief Investigator)
• Dr Sarah Verdon (Chief Investigator)
• Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang (Project officer)
• Dr Van H. Tran (PhD student, 2018-2020)
• Kate Margetson (Project officer)
• Lily To (Research Assistant)
• Kylie Huynh (Research Assistant)
• Jake Sheader (Research Assistant)

Kate, Kylie, Lily, Sarah (video), Van, Audrey

Dr Van Tran, Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Kylie Huynh, Lily To, Dr Audrey Wang

 McLeod, S. & Verdon, S. (2018-2020). Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech and language competence. Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP180102848).

Meetings

Being involved in a university includes attendance at and contributions to many meetings. Today I attended the Faculty of Arts and Education Board Meeting - that had a 293 page agenda, and lasted for almost 3 hours. Although this time there was limited discussion of research, higher degree students, and other issues that are directly related to my day-to-day work, it was useful to both learn about and be part of the meeting addressing the wide-ranging issues facing the Faculty and University.

NSW Health TRGS Grant update

Yesterday our NSW Health Translational Research Grant Scheme team met in Bathurst, Dubbo and Shepparton. It has been a very productive year of data collection, with 172 initial assessments being conducted (57 in Bathurst, 64 in Dubbo, and 51 in Shepparton), the intervention phases almost completed, and follow up assessments underway. We have had poster presentations accepted for the Speech Pathology Australia national conference next year, and are looking forward to analysing the data to find out the results of our randomised controlled trial in 2019.

Angela, Katrina, Emily and Sharynne in Bathurst

Charles Sturt University's Academic Senate

I am an elected member of Charles Sturt University's Academic Senate, representing the Professors' Forum. We meet face-to-face five times each year. Yesterday was our last meeting for the year in Wagga Wagga where we said farewell to Professor Jo-Anne Reid as the Presiding Officer of Academic Senate.

Members of Academic Senate

RCSLT Child Speech Disorder Research Network

I was invited to join the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) Child Speech Disorder Research Network meeting at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.  It was a dynamic meeting of researchers from across the UK who are passionate about working in the field of children's speech.

• Here is their website: https://www.nbt.nhs.uk/bristol-speech-language-therapy-research-unit/bsltru-research/child-speech-disorder-research-network
• Their transcription guidelines (that we included in our Children's Speech book) are here.
• Their analysis guidelines will be completed soon.

Twitter post from CSDR Network

Child Speech Disorder Research Network

PhD student meeting in Sydney

On June 1 my PhD students met at The Tea House in the Queen Victoria Building for our PhD meeting. We continued talking at Darling Harbour in the afternoon. It was an inspiring day where each student presented her PhD, followed by wonderful discussion where many additional ideas were generated. What a privilege it is to work with such an inspiring group of women. (Thanks Helen for organising such a great venue).

Suzanne Hopf, Ben Pham, Anniek van Doornik-van der Zee,
Anna Cronin, Helen Blake, Sharynne (Nicole was unable to attend)

Meetings in March

2017 contains lots of meetings. Recently, I have attended meetings in my role as a representative on:

• Charles Sturt University (CSU) Academic Senate
• CSU Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board
• CSU Faculty of Arts and Education Research and Graduate Studies Management Committee
• CSU School of Teacher Education Research Committee
• CSU School of Teacher Education School Board
• Speech Pathology Australia Expert Advisory Group for NSW Department of Education Speech Pathology in Schools
• Child Language Teaching and Therapy Editorial Board
• International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Executive

Board meeting of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics

Sunday 21st August was my fourth meeting as an elected member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP). These annual meetings have been held in Turin - Italy (2013), Dublin - Ireland (2014), London - UK (2015), and now in Dublin again prior to the IALP conference. Helen Grech (Malta) concludes her role as President, and Lily Cheng (USA) commences her role as the new president for the next three years.
In 2015 the Child Speech committee was formed and I was appointed the Chair. We had our first meeting this week, and Dr Yvonne Wren is now Chair and I am Deputy Chair of the committee.

IALP Board meeting

IALP Child Speech Committee: Helen Grech (Malta), Sharynne, Martin Ball (Sweden), Yvonne Wren (UK). Other committee members are: Barbara Hodson (US), Thora Masdottir (Iceland), Carol To (Hong Kong), Sarah Verdon (Australia)

Board Meeting of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, London, UK

The Board of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) met for a 2-day meeting in London to discuss the issues of IALP and continue to plan for the IALP conference in Dublin in 2016. It was a collaborative meeting with colleagues from around the globe.We met at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists' head office at London Bridge, and were able to meet the CEO, chair and other key people within RCSLT over dinner.

IALP Board meeting in London (with Yvette Hyter via Skype)

Dinner with IALP and RCSLT

Sharynne at the RCSLT headquarters at London Bridge

Child Language Teaching and Therapy editorial board meeting

This evening between 11:30pm and 12:30am I attended (via teleconference) the Child Language Teaching and Therapy editorial board meeting that was held in London. It is interesting to learn about the international reach of the journal, the number of views and downloads, and the impact of podcasts and vodcasts on the number of downloads of a particular journal article.