UOW to host 10,000 for summer graduation season
13 Dec 2007 | Renee Criddle
The University of Wollongong will play host to about 10,000 people next week (17 to 21 December) when it conducts its summer graduation ceremonies. Eleven ceremonies will be held over the five days. The expected attendance of 10,000 comprises graduands along with their families and friends. A sample of some graduating stories are:
* Bala Parasuraman will graduate with a PhD in Management at the morning ceremony on Monday 17 December. Bala is an industrial relations academic at the University of Malaysia (Sabah) and while he was granted a scholarship to study at UOW, he and his family were forced to make a number of sacrifices so his dream of studying in Australia could be realised. Bala will be joined by his wife, two children, brother, cousin and uncle.
* A group of five Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology students will graduate at the afternoon ceremony on Monday 17 December. They were all supervised by Dr Katina Michael who is an expert in national security and ‘Überveillance’ or ‘exaggerated surveillance’. All the students have landed top corporate jobs with companies including Accenture, Macquarie Bank, IBM, Ernst and Young and Theiss and each completed interesting thesis projects on topics such as e-passport security, chip implants and in-car GPS navigation systems.
* Richard Irvine will graduate with a Master of Science (Logistics) from the Graduate School of Business on Monday 17 December at the afternoon ceremony. His four siblings, as well as his parents (his mother Helen Irvine works in UOW’s School of Accounting and Finance) and sister-in-law have all studied and graduated from UOW, racking up a total of 12 degrees between them.
* Former UOW drama lecturer and founder of Theatre South, Des Davies, will receive a PhD from the Faculty of Arts at the morning ceremony on Tuesday 18 December. The 77-year-old completed his thesis on the rise and fall of regional theatre in NSW after running Theatre South for 20 years until its closure in 2002. Des fostered the careers of a number of actors and is a well-known and respected community member.
*Patrick Hodder will graduate on Tuesday 18 December at the morning ceremony with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Community, Culture and Environment. The Bega Education Centre student completed his thesis on the politics of climate change. He will also be receiving the University Medal in the Faculty of Arts and the University’s most prestigious award - the Chancellor Robert Hope Memorial Prize.
* Scott McGovern will graduate with a PhD in Engineering on the afternoon of Tuesday 18 December. During his studies, Scott completed some pioneering work applying intelligent polymers to a real engineering problem relating to how to assess the strength of aluminium joined with engineering adhesives. This is particularly important in marine applications – boat builders would really like to use adhesives (instead of slower welding) but they are concerned that the adhesive joint won’t survive. Scott developed intelligent polymer sensors that were inserts into the adhesive and monitored the ‘health’ of the adhesive. He was awarded the ‘Best Paper’ prize at an international conference in the USA for his contribution to this new engineering area called ‘structural health monitoring’.
* International student from Peru, Jorge Becerra, will graduate with a Master of Engineering Practice at the afternoon ceremony on Tuesday 18 December. During his time at UOW he has participated in a range of support programs for international students including the Momentum mentoring program and the ‘Bringing the International Experience to Illawarra High Schools’ project which was an initiative of his wife, Ekaterina Pechenkina, who is also a UOW student.
* Rhyannon Ratz will graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at the afternoon ceremony on Tuesday 18 December. Earlier this year, Rhyannon won first prize as best student and the prize for writing the best journal at a course run by the International Institute of Women in Engineering in Paris. This year’s course topic was “Women in Global Engineering: Creating an Energy Efficient Future”. About 47 engineering male and females students from 17 countries attended the course.
* The first ever PhD graduate of the School of Information Systems & Technology (SISAT) in The Faculty of Informatics, Dr Holly Tootel, will graduate at the afternoon ceremony on Tuesday 18 December. Dr Tootel’s thesis examined ‘The Social Impact of Using Automatic Identification Technologies and Location-Based Services in National Security’.
* A record number of undergraduate students from the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics will graduate on Tuesday 18 December at the evening ceremony. From this group of 17, about 12 students will be graduating with First Class Honours – a remarkable achievement considering the declining number of students taking mathematics courses at university level around Australia.
* The first cohort of Bachelor of Nanotechnology students will graduate on Friday 21 December at the morning ceremony. The degree targets the emerging field of nano-materials, molecular machines and nano-science and each of these four students researched a range of interesting topics during their study.
* Indigenous graduates: Nine students from UOW’s Woolyungah Indigenous Centre will graduate at different ceremonies next week. Details on the individual students can be provided upon request.
Venue: All the ceremonies will be held at the University Hall, UniCentre
Best photo/filming opportunity times: The morning ceremonies all begin at 9.45am, the afternoon ceremonies begin at 2.30pm and the evening ceremonies begin at 7pm. Photos/filming/interviews can be obtained during the half-hour before each of the ceremonies.
Guest speakers will include the Group Chief Executive of National Australia Bank, John Stewart; Chief Financial Officer of Yahoo!7, Gregory Brown and broadcaster/science journalist, Karina Kelly. More details can be found at:
http://www.uow.edu.au/student/graduation/UOW039840.html
Ceremonies:
Monday – Commerce, Graduate School of Business, Informatics, Law
Tuesday – Arts, Informatics, Engineering, Informatics
Wednesday – Health and Behavioural Sciences
Thursday – Education
Friday – Creative Arts, Science
For further information: Contact Renée Criddle on 0438 544 655, Bernie Goldie on 0412 454 124 or Nick Hartgerink (Monday and Thursday only) on 0418 424 085.
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