UOW graduate receives top undergraduate thesis award

Nov 16, 2006

A former UOW honours graduate and University Medal winner, Jane Olsen, was recently awarded the prestigious Undergraduate Thesis Award at the 2006 Australia and New Zealand Regional Science Association Inc (ANZRSAI) conference.

Jane has been working as a casual sessional tutor in economics this year.

She was unable to attend the conference so her award was presented yesterday (November 15) by the President and Secretary of ANZRSAI, Mr David Fuller and Associate Professor Ann Hodgkinson.

The judging panel unanimously agreed that the Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis in Regional Science should be presented to Jane for her Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) thesis, The Innovation Process in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprise: A Study of New South Wales Business.

In making the award, the panel noted that the thesis addressed a very important topic in current regional economic policy.

Mr Fuller said Jane had absorbed and presented a broad range of ideas from the international literature on innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises, and had designed a scientific telephone survey to test those ideas in NSW.

The results of the survey had been subject to sophisticated statistical analysis to draw careful inferences.

The Postgraduate Thesis Award was earlier presented to Rosa McManamey from the University of Tasmania. The Practitioner and Best Paper Awards were also presented during the conference.