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The University of New South Wales has received the Collaboration and Structural Reform (CASR) funding scheme grant and will use the funding for course and teaching resources and educational promotion by June 2008.
UNSW is part of a three-way Mining Education Australia (MEA) joint venture along with the University of Queensland and Western Australia’s Curtin University.
In addition to new course teaching resources, the grant will allow the three universities to establish a common curriculum for third and fourth year mining education undergraduate students, as well as enable a greater pooling of skills and resources. The project aims to secure the viability of the universities’ mining education programs.
Student interaction is to be enhanced with the grant funding the development and implementation of interactive teaching and delivery approaches which will include students working and interacting as part of teams across the country.
The establishment of an associate program with other city and regional universities will allow engineering students to undertake two years of study in a more generic engineering program, before transferring to an MEA member institution for third and fourth year.
Other plans for the CASR grant are to expand the program of elective courses and to develop a national marketing strategy to promote study in the mining engineering field.
MEA executive director Professor Bruce Hebblewhite said the grant had the potential to provide “a mining education with access to students from all parts of Australia and internationally, at a time when the mining industry is desperately short of mining graduates.
“This nationally collaborative initiative is all about working outside and beyond traditional university boundaries. Students will have access to a combined national cohort of mining academics who will be working together, not just on course development but also course delivery,” he said.
Hebblewhite said the MEA was well positioned to enter the international mining education sector where conventional education frameworks were struggling to survive.
