News 30/7 – Grumpy Students and Staff to End the Week (Plus Horses)

July 30th 2010 at 8:43am, By Dave Guerin

Otago Entry Reqs Otago school principals and guidance councillors seem happy with the higher entry standards for the University of Otago next year, even though they refused to be named for the story.
Mongol Derby A Massey academic is chief vet for the Mongol Derby, a 1,000km horse relay race in, well, Mongolia. He colleagues have been helping her prepare.
ITP Staff Issues TEU members at MIT are going to undertake industrial action in protest at proposals to remove a quarterly maximum of 300 timetabled teaching hours and a limit on annual teaching days. MIT also wants to be able to require employees to work on more than 2 evenings per week and have more liberal discretionary leave. Sounds like a sensible endpoint to me. NMIT students are concerned about the potential loss of 20 staff FTEs as their institution seeks to live within its means.
Grumpy Massey Students Some Massey students are grumpy at missing out on summer school when they only have 1 or 2 papers left to finish and then get a job. To be fair, Massey is running an appeal programme for such special cases.
Otago Poly Buildings There’s a good story in the ODT about plans to redevelop Otago Poly spaces, including their decision not to shift a sport programme to the new stadium (too expensive).
Auckland The Auckland City Council has created the Learning Quarter (full details from March 2010 here), centring on the AUT and Uni of Auckland campuses, and have just put in a new public art trail.
Erasmus Link The University of Canterbury is becoming a partner in the EU’s Erasmus Mundus programme, which supported doctoral/post-doctoral exchanges.
Bridge Death The trial into the bridge swinging incident that resulted in the death of a Massey student is over, with the operator being sentenced.