AMI accreditation offshore

As covered in this news item, VU's Bachelor of Business in Marketing degree was recently awarded Australian Institute of Marketing accreditation.

We are only the second university in Australia to be awarded this recognition, and the first to be awarded for offshore campuses.

Dr Gavin Lees Dr Maxwell Winchester presented the accreditation certificates last month; they are pictured here with our colleagues from Sunway College Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur.

Dr Gavin Lees Dr Maxwell Winchester with: left, Mrs Hor Poh Choo and Ms Ong Mei Mei, Sunway Johor Bahru; and right, Ms Greeja De Silva and Mrs Irene Teoh, Sunway KL

19th Annual Hospitality Tourism and Events Expo

The Centre for Work Integrated Learning, along with the School of International Business, hosted the 19th Annual Hospitality Tourism and Events Expo at VU's City Conference Centre on Friday 7 September. More than 260 people attended, including 88 industry representatives from across the three sectors, along with VU students from Higher and Vocational Ed courses.

Diane Smith, VTIC CEO

Prof Alison Morrison (Head, School of International Business) introduced Expo Guest Speaker, Ms Dianne Smith, (CEO, Victoria Tourism Industry Council (VTIC), and International Business Adjunct Professor), who gave the closing address at the Expo. Dianne’s presentation was warmly received by students and guests, and included a range of inspirational insights from her personal and professional experience. The presentation also provided the ideal forum for the launch of the VU Todd Blake Student Award.

The Todd Blake Student Award is a legacy project in honour and memory of the former CEO of VTIC, Todd Blake, who was well known for his passion for and commitment to the tourism, events and hospitality industries, as well as his leadership and can-do approach to life.

Todd was also a VU Alum, and had launched the inaugural Victoria Tourism Week at 2010’s VU Expo. The Expo was a featured event in the official Victoria Tourism Week (VTW) Program. VTW is an initiative of VECCI through VTIC, the Victoria Tourism Industry Council, and Destination Melbourne (a VU partner).

Some great feedback on the day was received from industry partners. ‘Really impressed, the day ran well, we were made to feel welcome. Great to be involved – the students were delightful!’ said Maria, of Qantas Holidays & Viva Holidays.

Rosane, Team Leader, Coaching & Development Choice Hotels Australasia Pty Ltd, said: ‘Thank you for the opportunity to promote Choice Hotels today at the Expo, it was a great morning and we were able to speak with a lot of great students who showed a lot of interest and had some great questions.’
Kellie, Marketing Manager at Destination Melbourne said she was very impressed with the calibre of students at this year’s Expo.
Louise, an Event Specialist with the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia, added, ‘We have found the Expo to be an excellent avenue for signing up volunteers.’

SAP Innojam success!

A VU Master of Business ERP Systems student, Selvie Grech, wrote a blog about her experiences in the SAP Innojam event which was hosted our City Flinders campus in August this year. She posted the blog on the SAP Community Network, which gets more than 1.2 million unique individual visits each month. Selvie’s blog and associated picture was highlighted on the opening screen of the site. Rohini Sreedhar, a former VU student, also had her blog highlighted.

The site also distributes a newsletter to it millions of members every 2 weeks. Each newsletter usually has approximately 5 news items. Selvie’s blog was highlighted as one of these news items in the September newsletter.

The Australian InsideSAP industry magazine contacted Selvie to get permission to publish a copy of her blog in their 2013 Yearbook. The magazine has approximately 8,000 subscribers.

This is a great achievement for Selvie and Rohini and good exposure for VU. But it also demonstrates how some simple effective social media activities can reach an enormous audience.

Read more about the SAP Innojam at he SAP site.

Publications news

Maxwell Winchester (International Business) has co-authored a chapter with his wife, Tiffany, in the first year marketing textbook Marketing - Theory, Evidence, Practice

Olga Junek, Sarath Divisekera and Lindsay Turner (International Business) each have chapters in the Handbook of Research Methods in Tourism

Maxwell Winchester and Dr Gavin Lees (International Business) have had a co-authored paper accepted for publication in the Australasian Marketing Journal. The paper is titled Do radio stations in New Zealand target successfully? 

VU Adjunct Professor Geoffrey Lipman’s article, titled Travel And Tourism’s Green Growth Transformation, will be published in the Spring edition of Victoria Tourism Industry Council (VTIC)’s Tourism Excellence magazine

Potential Unlimited 5 Launch

A band performs at the launch

Earlier this month, Potential Unlimited 5 launched another 11 acts through their unique VU student record label. Students of the Music Publishing and Recording unit were required to identify, contact and license a particular song from an emerging band or artist. They were then required to construct marketing tools and identify areas of marketing which would be most beneficial to their chosen act. They also uploaded these marketing materials to the Potential Unlimited website - www.amusicdegreethatrocks.vu.edu.au. The groups were then given 80 copies of the CD to go out into the market and use to promote their chosen act.

A soloist takes the stage

On Thursday 4th of October, the Potential Unlimited 5 launch was held at Kindred studios in Whitehall Street, Yarraville. The launch event was an undertaking by students from the Live Performance Management unit, and forms part of their assessment.

Due to be finished in December, Kindred studios will house the VU Music & creative industries units in a state of the art facility. The Publishing and Recording and Live Performance students who put together the Potential Unlimited 5 CD and launch event were impressed with what VU is building at Kindred studios, and were happy to have Potential Unlimited 5 launched there to help bring attention to this exciting new facility.

When completed, Kindred will offer a brilliant creative environment for students to work on sound production, performance, composition, studio work, live sound production, sound production software, public address system to name just a few.

Potential Unlimited has proven to be a very popular assignment for the unit Music Publishing and recording unit, with one group concluding their assignment presentation this year by saying, 'We really liked the music industry, and after this experience, we like it even more!'.

Part of the audience enjoying the launch & venue

Student Danica Bulovic said of the evening, 'I think we had at least approximately 90 people there at one point, which was a really excellent turnout. The vibe of the night was really laid back, in my opinion, just like going to see local bands at your local pub. We had free beer on tap and 4 really cool bands play - Velour Fog, James Gowans and band, The Evidence and Luna Ghost - with the set up of the venue allowing everyone in the room to have a really excellent view of the stage.'

Potential Unlimited 4 was shortlisted in the 2011 Independent Music Awards, a US based, global competition for all forms of music. With a judging panel is drawn from US based music industry executives as well as some prominent artists, last years panel included Keith Richards. Potential Unlimited 4 went on to win in the Campus Records category, becoming the only non-US campus to ever win in this category - a feat we will hopefully replicate this year with Potential Unlimited 5.

The Australian Competitive Research Symposium

On Friday 28 September, VU held a heat for the inaugural Australian Competitive Research Symposium.

The VU heat involved 9 of our VU researchers delivering short, 5 minute presentations of a research project with the aid of 3 slides, in a similar but expanded fashion to the 3 minute thesis competition run nationally for PhD students.

There were 3 discipline groupings in which participants competed and the winners of each received $2,000 towards their research. The winners were:

Discipline Grouping 1: Science

Dr Patrick-Jean Guay, ISI

Discipline Grouping 2: Health

Dr Fiona Ling, ISEAL

Discipline Grouping 3: Arts, Education and Business

Megan Bowman, Victoria Law School

The 3 winners will go on to compete alongside other internal heat winners from Edith Cowan University, the University of Ballarat and Australian Catholic University in the national competition in November.

Prizes of $5,000, $2,000 and $1,000 will be awarded to the first, second and third places of each discipline grouping in the national final and the overall winner will receive an additional $15,000!

We would like to thank those of you who came along and supported our researchers at the VU event, and congratulate our winners and wish them luck in the national finals. We’d also like to thank our judges, Professor Warren Payne, Professor Helen Borland, and Professor Tom Healy.

For further details, please contact Dr Melanie McGuire in VU's Office for Research.

2012 Kirby Moot wrap-up

On the 10th, 11th & 12th of October, Victoria Law School (VLS) held the 2nd Annual Hon. Michael Kirby Contract Law Competition.

L-R: Robin Brett QC, Prof. Andrew Clarke, Judge Misso
(Semi-final, 12th October 2012, Adelaide University 1 v Bond University)

There were a total of 80 participants, from 22 teams and 12 different Universities around Australia. These included Victoria University, Bond University, University of Queensland, University of Western Sydney, The University of Newcastle, The University of Adelaide, The University of Melbourne, Monash University, RMIT, Deakin University, Queensland University of Technology and Latrobe University.

Hon. Prof Frank Vincent AO QC, Hon. Prof Michael
Kirby AC CMG, Michael D.Wyles SC

Victoria Law School entered three teams; they all competed extremely well and were part of the final eight. The final, between Adelaide Team 1 and VLS Team 2, was close, with VLS being the victors on the day.  Congratulations to VLS Team 2 on a superb win.

The event was a great success, giving all participants a rich clinical and learning experience. The VLS would like to thank each and every team member and their dedicated coaches. The standard of advocacy was superb; the competitors are terrific ambassadors for the next generation of legal and professional talent.

A huge debt of gratitude goes to each of our Arbitrators. Their ethic of public service is deep and profound, and on behalf of all students we thank you for your time, dedication and wisdom. Particular thanks goes to our stellar cast of arbitrators for the final, the “dream team” of Justice Kirby, Justice Vincent and Senior Counsel Wyles.
We are lucky in law to have enduring friends and partners in our sponsors Lexis Nexis, Oxford University Press and Leo Cussen. Thank you for your generous contribution to this event.

John Eldridge & Rebecca McEwen, Adelaide Uni 1
(Grand-Final, 12th October 2012, County Court)

Thirty VLS student volunteers generously gave their time and effort to this event. This is fast developing into a jamboree - an all-in effort - and one of great camaraderie.

Special congratulations for a magnificent organising job to Vivi Tan and student Melissa Radosavac, and Allyce Cowan from our administration office. 

We’re delighted this competition is named in Michael Kirby’s honour. Michael is our patron and special friend; he is an Adjunct Professor of Victoria Law School and a Doctor of the University.

We look forward to VLS MKM 3 in 2013. We look forward to welcoming regional and international teams in due course.

A big thank you to everyone involved, and congratulations to all of our competitors. They did VLS proud.

Results

2012 Kirby Moot winners: Victoria Law School Team 2 - Robert Forrester and Mitchell Latham. The winners were awarded $1000 prize money, together with an Oxford University Press Australian Law Dictionary, and a book pack containing law guidebooks and legal skills books.

Victoria Law School Team 2 (Highest scored team in the prelim
round & and Winner of the moot) L-R :Hubert Algie, Vivi
Tan (Moot Co-ordinator), Robert Forrester, Mitchell Latham,
Stephen Tamburro

Runners Up: University of Adelaide Team 1 were awarded $800
Best Speaker in the Preliminary Rounds: Mitchell Latham (Victoria Law School Team 2) and Rebecca McEwen (University of Adelaide Team 1) each received $250
Best Speaker in the Final Rounds: Amy Reid (Bond University) received $250
Highest Scoring Team in the Preliminary Rounds: Victoria Law School Team 2 received $400
Best Team Memorandum for Claimant: Queensland University of Technology Team 1 received $200
Best Team Memorandum for Respondent: Queensland University of Technology Team 2 received $200

Observers at the 2012 Kirby moot Grand Final

Meet our People: Paul Whitelaw

Paul, a VU veteran, shares his 'original staff photo'

Paul Whitelaw is a Senior Lecturer, School of International Business at Victoria University and the Centre for Tourism and Services Research, where he lectures in quantitative and computer based hospitality management systems on under graduate and post graduate programs. Prior to this appointment, Paul was Foundation Executive Director of VU's Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research.  Before joining academe in 1991, Paul enjoyed nearly 15 years experience in various line and executive positions in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry.  As well, he spent his childhood actively exposed to his family’s hotel, restaurant and motel business interests.

Currently, Paul is on sabbatical, and is working on three major funded projects:

• investigating best practice processes and systems in developing “academic integrity” in first year students,
• leading a project team that is working with major tourism industry stakeholders and conservation agencies to investigate the feasibility of various funding mechanisms for tourism businesses, especially indigenous tourism businesses, in protected areas, and 
• investigating the attitudes and values of s86 committees of management volunteers on crown land.

In 2001 Paul received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence at Victoria University.  In 2002 he co-chair the University’s Attrition and Transition Taskforce.  In 2005 he received a $25,000 grant from the Victorian State Government to develop a suite of on-line learning resources for recently arrived Asian graduate business students and in 2006 he chaired the review of the University’s Graduate Capabilities Policy.  More recently, in 2009 he received an $80,000 grant from the Australian Government to develop a suite of academic resources to help international students, especially those from China, deal with the challenges of studying in university in Australia.  He was a member of the project team that recently finished a major review of hospitality and tourism education in Australia for the OLT.  Paul is also a senior member of an international syndicate that is undertaking a project for the UNWTO to assist emerging tourism destinations in the developing world to decarbonise their tourism industry.

His PhD studied the factors that drive career progression and success in the hospitality industry.