Despite appearances astroturfing is not a US space program for making Mars more habitable. Instead it takes off from AstroTurf(TM), the artificial grass which came to fame in the 1960s at the Houston Astrodome, when natural grass refused to grow ...

Professor Bruce Milthorpe has commenced as dean of science at UTS. A former head of the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering at UNSW and deputy president (academic) of UNSW Asia, Milthorpe has been involved in biomaterials development and assessment for ...

Richard Torbay, speaker of the NSW Lower House, has been appointed chancellor-elect, taking effect at the end of current chancellor John Cassidy’s term on 11 December. Awarded an honorary doctorate in 2007, Torbay has had a long association with UNE. ...

Historian, social and political commentator, writer and broadcaster Professor Ross Fitzgerald has joined ACU National as a part-time professorial fellow within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Fitzgerald’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, span subjects as diverse as ageing, the ...

Curtin University of Technology Emeritus Professor John de Laeter has been induced into the Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame. De Laeter’s induction recognises his contribution to geochronological research (the science of dating and determining the time sequence of ...

UNE has appointed Martha Saw as the CEO of its fundraising arm, the UNE Foundation, and director of the newly created Office of Advancement. Saw has previously worked for McKillop Family Services, Questacon, and the Canberra Region Medical Foundation. Most ...

Dr Colin Mason has been appointed as director of the Institute of Teaching and Learning at Deakin University. Mason is currently dean, teaching and learning at Unitec New Zealand, where he also led the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation. ...

With future funding now flagged for student services and amenities, an ideological argument over unionism is giving way to jibes over who best runs student services. Youth minister Kate Ellis announced last week that universities would be allowed to set ...

The National Union of Students (NUS) has asked education minister Julia Gillard to investigate the charges Australian universities levy for undergraduate course materials, after Queensland University of Technology (QUT) was found to have breached the Higher Education Provider Guidelines. The ...

When Shadow Treasurer Julie Bishop found herself in the middle of a media storm recently over plagiarised wording in a chapter for a book, her loyal chief of staff Murray Hansen jumped to her defence. He was the plagiariser. Mea ...