News 27/5 – Otago’s Tuatara Love and Teacher Non-Love

May 27th 2010 at 8:14am, By Dave Guerin

Tuatara Love Film 2 University of Otago science masters students have won two awards at the NZ Reel Earth Environmental Film Awards for a tuatara romance film, In Cold Blood. The film has its own blog if you want to find out more. And finally, you can watch the 25 minute video here if you know the password (“tuatara”). I plan to do so at some stage today when I should be reading a boring report instead.
Wound Care Drug A new tissue repair drug developed, in part, by a University of Auckland researcher is getting nearer the market, possibly in 2013 or 1014.
Otago Flooding Flooding outside Otago Polytechnic’s student centre led to it being evacuated yesterday (the drains were blocked)
MIT’s First Doctorates MIT had its first doctoral graduates capped yesterday – formerly they were graduates of the Aussie Southern Cross University.
Zonta Award Dr Julie Lim of the University of Auckland won the Zonta Science Award on Tuesday. The Award is presented biennially to an emerging scientist who is a role model and advocate for women in science.
Otago Teacher Restructuring The University of Otago is restructuring the College of Education this time, with 15-20 FTE positions possibly going to address a $1.3m cross-subsidy from the rest of the University and reduce the number of non-researching staff. The ODT has a story with reaction here. This type of restructuring was a natural result of college of education mergers with universities, regardless of the PR spin put out when these mergers happened. Teacher unions and educators wanted the perceived credibility, and more importantly money, that is supposed to go with university degrees, but it was always going to lead to practical educators losing their jobs in favour of researchers, because universities thrive on research, not teaching, performance. What matters more to me is the effect on children and I’m sure the university educators will come up with research results as to why their graduates are better teachers…