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The vendor will supply products from its H3C network family including switches, schools in a box (router, voice, wireless, 3G and data connectivity in one device), wireless controllers and access points as well as an intelligent management centre to oversee network infrastructure.

The contract also includes maintenance for each of the schools and training of staff at Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy and Darwin.

“3Com has gained a reputation among education and government institutions for offering the most high-performing, resilient and secure networking infrastructures in the business at the best possible value,” Angela Hughes, country manager for 3Com Australia and New Zealand said in a statement. (more…)

Home > Media Centre > Media releases > Opening of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence

Opening of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence

26/02/2010

Joint Media Release with The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister
The Hon Warren Snowdon MP, Minister for Indigenous Health
The Hon Jenny Macklin MP, Minister for Families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today officially opened the $50 million National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) in Redfern, Sydney.

Created with the support of the Indigenous Land Corporation, the facility will provide world-class facilities in sport, education and the arts for up to 5,000 young Indigenous people from around Australia each year.

The Centre has a fully equipped gymnasium and sports hall, outdoor 25-metre swimming pool, intensive literacy tutorial centre for 60 primary school students, arts/craft activity rooms, sporting field and campus accommodation for visiting groups of more than 100 people.

This is a world-class facility that symbolises a new era in Indigenous education, engagement and leadership.

Through its four development pathways of Sport, Learning and Innovation, Culture and Arts and Health and Wellbeing, the NCIE will create opportunities for young Indigenous people from across the country.

A number of existing programs will be accommodated at the new facility including the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy and the Lloyd McDermott Rugby Development Team, which encourages healthy lifestyles through sport.

The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, also based at the facility, is working to match Indigenous high school students with mentors from universities to make sure they stay the course in school and progress to university.

Primary school children will have access to a six-month accelerated literacy program at the Centre’s intensive literacy tutorial centre.

This program, run in partnership with Macquarie University and the Exodus Foundation has produced phenomenal results, with literacy levels for some kids rising 2 years in just 6 months.

The Centre will also provide new education and employment opportunities for local Indigenous youth including jobs in sport, recreation, youth and community programs, and hospitality when the Centre is fully operational.

As a facilities partner, the YMCA is helping to train NCIE staff to manage the health and fitness and camp facilities.

The Australian Government congratulates the Indigenous Land Corporation for backing the vision for this tremendous new development.

International Student Admissions Test moves to computer-based testing

This article was taken from the February 2010 edition of ACER’s Higher Education Update – a newsletter outlining ACER’s work in the higher education sector. To read the full newsletter visit http://www.acer.edu.au/highed/

A move from paper to computer-based testing for the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT) will improve access to Australian degrees for international students. ISAT provides universities with the opportunity to use a reliable and efficient way of testing students’ potential to cope academically with Australian tertiary courses. It complements existing English-language competency tests.

The test is independently administered by the ACER. ISAT is currently used by a range of Australian universities to assist in selection of international candidates to medical, dentistry, health sciences and veterinary science courses. Most of these courses require domestic applicants to sit a relevant aptitude test, such as the Undergraduate Medical Admissions Test. ISAT allows universities to apply the same rigorous admissions standards to international applicants through a test developed specifically for a culturally and linguistically diverse candidature.

The move to computer-based testing from 2010 will allow international students to take the test in locations and at dates and times that suit them. Candidates will pay to sit the test at secure, accredited Prometric test centres. Prometric has more than 4,000 test centres globally. Candidates may still have to travel to a test centre to sit the test, but there will be a greater number of centres in many countries, and more flexibility in test availability. Previously ISAT had been administered on fixed dates, often in examination rooms with a large cohort of candidates taking the test. There will no longer be mass sittings of the test. Instead, the computer-based system will allow individuals to attend a secure test centre, undergo an identity check, sit the test on a video-monitored computer, with the answers transmitted back to ACER through secure channels for marking.

ISAT will continue to be a useful predictor of student ability for use in the university selection process for international applicants, but with greater ease of use for candidates and universities, according to ACER’s ISAT Project Director Susan Nankervis.

“Computer-based administration of ISAT will be considerably more flexible for candidates in the choice of test dates and locations. This will improve equity in many countries by reducing the need for candidates to travel to take the test and allowing a wider exposure of candidates to the test,” she says.

“It will ensure the security of data, the confidentiality of the test and of candidates’ results, and it will reduce the carbon footprint of the test by eliminating the need to print test papers and to send them around the world.”

Candidates receive an electronic copy of their respective results, and results are also listed on a secure ACER database to be independently verified by Australian universities.

ISAT requires students to answer 100 multiple-choice questions in three hours. The questions measure critical reasoning drawing on material in the humanities and social sciences, and quantitative reasoning using material from science and mathematics. ISAT aims to test abilities that are considered important for coping with the intellectual demands of most tertiary courses. The emphasis is on thinking skills rather than curriculum specific knowledge and English-language proficiency.

Registrations for ISAT 2010 will open in March 2010. For more information, visit http://isat.acer.edu.au

Speaking at the Universities Australia Higher Education Conference this morning, Ms Gillard said that following on from the success of the My School website, which publishes rich achievement information about each of Australia’s schools, it is now time for the Government to implement a similar tool at the university level.

The My University website will inform students about institutions, courses and pathways and showcase the quality of Australia’s higher education providers.

Measure which My University could include are:

• Student to staff ratios
• results of student satisfaction surveys
• measures of graduate skills
• graduate outcomes
• information about fees
• information about access to student services, and most importantly
• quality of teaching and learning outcomes

The Government wants students to use this data to make their choice about their university on the basis of information about quality rather than students having to rely on hearsay, inference from entry requirements or the perceived prestige of universities.

My University will provide a robust, consolidated and transparent source of information about all of Australia’s 39 universities. Information will be provided in an easily accessible form for students and parents.

My University will also allow universities to learn from the success of their colleagues and inform the community about the quality of teaching at our universities.

This is a Government that believes every able student should be given an opportunity to go to university because we know that this is the path to a stronger and fairer nation. That’s why in 2012 we are uncapping university places so that the Government will fund a place for every student universities accept.

As universities move to this demand-driven system, My University will ensure that students can make their choice based on robust and easily accessible data, which will in turn drive institutional behaviour.

The Government has the support of universities because they know it’s in everybody’s interest to share the very best practices throughout Australia’s 39 universities.

My University will be developed over time with input from the university sector and will commence in time for the beginning of the new system in 2012.

Lawyers for two of the workers injured in the deadly Feb. 7 explosion at the Kleen Energy powerplant in Middleton, Conn. are alleging that “multiple” ignition sources were in operation while natural gas was being purged from the nearly $1 billion construction site.

Electricians Timothy Hilliker and Harold Thoma of Ducci Electric, Torrington, filed a lawsuit at Superior Court in Hartford claiming the gas purge at the 87,000-sq-ft facility was conducted with minimal supervision and without following standard protocol to protect against accidental ignition. The suit names Kleen Energy Systems, the project’s owner, O&G Industries, Torrington, general contractor and minority shareholder and Keystone Construction & Maintenance Services, Middletown – the contractor that hired and worked directly with Ducci – as defendants. Welding and grinding operations were taking place at the time of the purge, according to the suit, and a lawyer for Hilliker and Thoma says electricity was running through the site and a gas-fueled torch heater was running.

“This was a definite breakdown of communication,” says attorney Joel Faxon of Stratton Faxon. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say if you release a massive amount of natural gas and you have all of these ignition sources operative that you have the potential for disaster.”

Five workers were confirmed dead over the course of the first day and a half following the explosion. A sixth died in the hospital earlier this week. Twenty-six were injured and Faxon says his firm will be filing similar suits on behalf of “at least a dozen” of those workers.

Hilliker and Thoma claim there was a lack of supervision on the site which allowed the multiple ignition sources to continue running and Faxon says project leaders had become more interested in getting the project done quickly than in running a safe site.

“We hear that there were substantial bonus payments available to O&G and other contractors for early completion,” he says. “Given the number of people on the jobsite and the amount of overtime, you can put two and two together and there’s a reasonable explanation for why they might have gotten sloppy.”

Calls and e-mails to O&G were not immediately returned. Kleen Energy declined comment.

Crews arrived at 6 a.m..on the morning of the explosion, with intentions, Faxon says, of beginning the purge operation at 7 a.m., even though many of the 114 workers were allegedly unaware the procedure was taking place that day.

“They had an hour from when they arrived on-site before they started the purge at 7,” Faxon says. “There’s no way they could have done all of their safety checks in that amount of time. And [Hilliker and Thoma] were working with Keystone, but no one from the company came to tell the guys from Ducci what they were going to be doing. There was no coordination among all subs on the job.”

A Keystone spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit but indicated the company was cooperating with state and federal authorities investigating the incident.

According to Faxon, both Hilliker and Thoma suffered brain injuries and both have been diagnosed with post-concussive syndrome. Hilliker is still under observation at the hospital, he says.

Two months after he was arrested for allegedly defrauding former employers URS Corp. and STV Corp. of up to $3 million, an engineer and former executive of those companies, George Papadopoulos, entered a plea of not guilty at a Feb. 23 arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston.

He was released on $25,000 bail.

Papadopoulos’ next court hearing on federal fraud and larceny charges is scheduled for March 22.

The arraignment caps months of effort that began last May to uncover and prosecute the former corporate vice president’s alleged illegal activities.

Federal prosecutors claim that between 2004 and 2009, Papadopoulos submitted phony expenses to San Francisco-based URS, for which he had been vice president and Boston branch manager, and hid the fraud by inflating bills to two major clients whose projects he managed and whose billings he handled.

A court filing identifies the clients as Harvard University, for which URS managed construction of a new science facility, and Massport, a state agency for which URS managed the $1-billion upgrade of Boston’s Logan Airport.

According to the court filing, Papadopoulos submitted 250 fabricated expense reports to URS alone.

“He took advantage of a URS policy permitting employees to be reimbursed for business expenses they have personally incurred,” says the court filing. “He even generated false emails to appear as authorizations form Harvard and Massport supervisors to make such purchases.”

Prosecutors contend that an analysis of Papadopoulos’ finances shows “habitual spending well beyond his means,” including $515,000 in home improvements, $111,000 in Armani clothing and more than $1 million in personal credit card expenses.

According to the filing, Papadopoulos continued the fraud at STV. He was hired in spring 2009 as vice president and deputy director of its construction management division, based in its New York City headquarters and reporting directly to President Milo E. Riverso.

Prosecutors charged Papadopoulos with one count of larceny for submitting $15,000 in moving expenses “despite the fact that he never moved,” says the court filing. “In reality, Papadopoulos only moved a car full of clothes to White Plains, [N.Y.].” An STV pokeswoman could not say when he left the firm or was terminated.

According to a statement from U.S. Attorney Martha Coakley in Boston, Papadopoulos was arrested last December at his home in Medford, Mass., and pleaded not guilty two days later in Boston Municipal Court.

In its own statement, URS says that it “identified this issue internally, notified the affected clients and cooperated fully with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.” It also says that Papadopoulos was terminated “upon completion of an internal investigation. URS maintains the highest ethical standards and takes issues of this nature very seriously.”

Also in a statement, STV says that during Papadopoulos’ “very short tenure at the company, his salary and expenses were not charged to any client and have been eliminated from STV’s overhead.” The company contends that background checks made before his hiring “did not reveal any improprieties,” but that the company “will undertake even more extensive background checks for future employment applicants.”

According to published reports, Papadopoulos held engineering degrees from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University and was a Fullbright scholar at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He also served as a senior program manager for construction of a new airport in Larnaca, Cyprus and was a licensed engineer in that country as well as in Greece and England.