Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing (WOW) doctoral candidate, Libby Sander has been awarded a 2013 Outstanding Reviewer Award from the Organizational Behavior (OB) Division of the (US) Academy of Management (AoM).

One of 129 (from a total pool of 1 262 OB Division reviewers) to receive this honour, Libby’s high quality, constructive feedback and timely assessment of the large volume of papers considered for the 2013 AoM conference, keeps her in very select company.

Libby acknowledges the support and guidance of her PhD supervisor, and WOW member, Associate Professor Arran Caza in this achievement.

Through the efforts of its international scholar, student and practitioner membership base, the AoM seeks to further the scholarship of around 25 management disciplines globally.

 

A Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice double degree program is expected to begin in 2015 at the Gold Coast campus.

Students who wish to begin studying this program in 2014 at the Gold Coast can enrol in the Bachelor of Laws (Gold Coast) and then transfer into the double degree in 2015.

Alternatively, you may be able to enrol in the Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice available at Nathan in 2014, and then transfer to the Gold Coast program in 2015.

For further enquiries please visit the Ask us website.

Written by Amy Brticevich

A merger of psychology and technology is the basis of research being conducted at Griffith University in the hope of making our roads a safer place.

PhD candidate Brenton McNally says it is a general interest in people and their behaviours that has led him to pursue this career path.

“It’s not only an interest in people, but in why they do the things they do and why they think the way they think,” Mr McNally said.

Mr McNally’s PhD is based on identifying the predictors of unsafe driving behaviours in young drivers, or, what risks they take and why.

Three categories of risky driving

Under the research, risky behaviours have been grouped into three categories; distracted, positioning and substance use.

Statistics show that people between the ages of 17-24 comprise just 13 per cent of Australia’s driving population, but account for a quarter of road deaths.

“Young drivers are consistently over-represented in road death and injury rates and through my work into those identified behaviours, the goal is to provide a platform of understanding to those developing road safety intervention programs,” Mr McNally said.

“Essentially, this is aiming to bring varied branches of research together as a way of fostering a better understanding of the concept of reckless driving, particularly among young drivers.”

According to Mr McNally, the diversity of driving behaviours is what makes it such an interesting subject for study.“Driving is a complex behaviour in itself and it’s something that affects a vast majority of the population. That’s why we have to study all facets of it.”

As for technology helping to play a role in decreasing the risky behaviours of young drivers, Mr McNally and his supervisor Associate Professor Graham Bradley from the School of Applied Psychology are in the process of applying for a Griffith Health Institute grant.

If the application is successful, the focus of the associated project is to assess the attitudes and perceptions of young drivers towards an In-Vehicle Data Recorderthat would measure their driving behaviours and serve as a way of adjusting insurance premiums.

“Once we know what young drivers views towards these devices are, the goal is to make it beneficial for them not to engage in risky behaviours,” Mr McNally said.

“One way of doing this would be to introduce cheaper premiums for those who drive safely.”

The grant and its related project are still in the very early stages, with Mr McNally hoping to find some compatible industry partners for further, experimental research in to the presence of the data recorders on driving behaviour.

by Caitlin Evans @ One Girl

One Girl has just launched their ‘Do It In A Dress’campaign, calling all Australians to complete challenges in school dresses this October in the aim of raising awareness and much needed funds to empower and facilitate the education of girls in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

On 19-20 October a group of Griffith University students will run the Relay for Life event as the “Legalites for Equal Rights”, in nothing more than a school dress. Their mission is to raise money which will give girls in Sierra Leone, West Africa access to education through scholarships, school rehabilitation projects and access to sanitary pads.

One of the students, Michelle Gunawan says, ” I’m really passionate about this cause because education has afforded me the ability to chase my dreams. The sad reality is that a lot of girls growing up in the developing world don’t have this ability.”

As well as running in the Relay for Life the law students will be holding school-dress themed market stalls, bake sales and parties.

This October marks the third annual ‘Do It In A Dress’ campaign. This year, the goal is to raise $500,000 to support the start-up Australian charity One Girl to run education projects in Sierra Leone. “It only costs $300 to send a girl in Sierra Leone to school for a whole year. With the support of people like Michelle Gunawan across Australia, we hope to empower more than 5,000 girls to become educated girls, women and mothers,” says Chantelle Baxter, co-founder of One Girl.

Last year saw over 700 people from all over the world ‘Do It In A Dress’, raising more than $270,000 to support One Girlto send girls in Sierra Leone to school, with participants across Australia and the world sky-diving, wake-boarding and running marathons – even Dave Hughes from Channel Ten’s The Project did it in a dress.

There are 60 million young girls around the world not in school[1], and in Sierra Leone, only one in six girls get the opportunity to go to school[2]. Since 2009, One Girlhas funded scholarship for 150 girls, building new classrooms, and business training.

“The impact of sending just one girl to school is undeniable: she will marry later, have a smaller and healthier family, and for every year a girl stays in school she’ll increase her income by at least 10%, investing 90% of it back into her family,” says Chantelle.

“It doesn’t matter what activity you do, just as long as you do it in a school dress!”

Relay for Life: http://www.relayforlife.org.au

The 2013 Griffith University Relay For Life will be held at Griffith University (Gold Coast campus) on October 19 & 20 (3pm-9am).

Teams of up to 15 people keep a baton moving in a relay-style walk or run overnight – 18 hours straight – during which they celebrate cancer survivors, remember loved ones lost to cancer and fight back against a disease that takes too much.

Girls education in Sierra Leone:

About One Girl:

For more information about One Girl’s work in West Africa, visit: www.onegirl.org.au

To join the Do It In A Dress campaign, head to: www.doitinadress.com

 

Criminology student Diana Foster gained an inside look at Australia’s leading crime research centre recently.

She attended the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Student Forum in Canberra along with criminology, police studies, corrections, and law students from around Australia.

Australia’s national research and knowledge centre on crime and justice, the AIC met with students who are proposing to work or research in criminology or criminal justice areas.

Diana says the forum was informative and engaging and gave her insight into new research happening across Australia.

“I loved being in a criminological research environment and interacting with those in the main research centre in Australia.”

The School of Criminology and Criminal Justice funded Diana’s travel expenses for the AIC Student Forum and will continue to sponsor a limited number of students to attend this annual event in the future.

Diana shares her experience of the forum with the School.

“We were first welcomed by the Director of the AIC, who gave us a brief summary of the roles and research areas conducted by the AIC and he also spoke about youth justice. We were then addressed by the Deputy Director who presented about crime prevention, specifically focussing on manufacturers and their products. I found this interesting, as it was a new idea surrounding crime prevention that I hadn’t learnt too much about during my university degree so far. For example, he spoke about things such as designing laptops/computers with built in anti-virus protection to prevent cyber crime.”

“Next, I was involved in the ‘Drugs in Australia’ workshop. Here we mainly discussed the trends and patterns of drug use in Australia and we heard about the DUMA (Drug Monitoring Program run by the AIC) process. A tour of the JV Barry Library followed the workshops, in which we were able to take home a book of our choice from a selection of older books used in the library.”

“After lunch, I attended a ‘Trafficking of Persons’ workshop. This was my number one highlight of the day as it is an area I am interested in later in my career. The AIC is the only research centre that has investigated trafficking within the Australia context and a research project by the AIC that was scheduled to last 6 months has been going on for 3 years. This illustrates that there is a clear gap in research in this field and that further research is neccessary. Within this workshop, we distinguished trafficking from people smuggling, discussed trafficking statistics and prevalence and analysed numerous case studies.”

“After this, we had a cyber crime seminar which outlined the various modalities of internet and computer crime. The final discussion of the day was on child exploitation material (CEM) which was my second favourite part of the forum. During this presentation, we defined CEM, discussed 2 case studies, the nature of CEM and methods used by law enforcement bodies to monitor CEM offenders,” she said.

58 high school students from Tweed Heads, Murwillumbah, Redland Bay and Surat Basin descended on the Gold Coast campus last week as part of the Titans 4 Tomorrow program.

The students received a half hour guided tour of the Gold Coast campus on Tuesday 24 September by the staff from the GUMURRII Student Support Unit and a team of Griffith student ambassadors, with a little help from retired Titan’s rugby league star Preston Campbell.

With ages ranging from grade 8 to 12 the students from the Titans 4 Tomorrowprogram then participated in two workshops to complete a set of science and health challenges.

The first workshop focused on the principles of science and engineering and an introduction to the world of electronics, requiring hands-on lab work to build their own bike light.

The second provided an innovative, visual and physical session that combines technology with human anatomy and physiology in a clinical exercise test.

The Titans 4 Tomorrow programs focus on supporting and engaging students to reach their full potential in all aspects of life.

Director of the GUMURRII Student Support Unit Ms Bronwyn Dillon, said the aim of the visit to the Gold Coast campus was to build the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander secondary school students.

“The campus visit gives the students a first-hand look at a university campus and how accessible the learning environment is.” Ms Dillon said.

“We want to show them that they can consider higher education by providing them with a greater understanding of the pathways, services and support available to them at Griffith University.”

“They have a lot of fun with their class mates in this new environment. But they also learn how to manage the practical demands and academic expectations of a university learning environment in order help them to be successful in their studies.”

More news and information on Titans 4 Tomorrow can be found at the Titans website:www.titans.com.au/news-display/Students-gain-fresh-focus-from-T4T-camp

 

One of the world’s most respected and honoured criminologists, Cambridge University’s Professor David Farrington, will be a keynote speaker at the 26th Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC) conference in Brisbane from October 1-3.

Hosted by Griffith University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security and the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, around 250 criminologists will gather at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre to discuss a range of issues including crime prevention, criminality, teaching and research.

“This is an opportunity for a major exchange of ideas between people whose credibility and calibre is making such a contribution to our understanding of, and response to, crime and criminality,” said Associate Professor Janet Ransley, Head of Griffith’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Professor David Farrington is Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology at Cambridge and is this year’s winner of the prestigious Stockholm Prize for Criminology.

The judgesrecognised Professor’s Farrington’s many years as a champion of early-life crime prevention programs, most notably his three decade-long involvement with the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.

This project began in the early 1960s and has followed the criminal lives of more than 400 boys born in London in the 1950s. By interviewing them in every decade of their lives, Professor Farrington has been able to draw significant conclusions aboutthe reasons for criminal and other anti-social behaviour, and offer guidance on programs and policies applied in early life to prevent future crimes.

Professor Farrington’s research, books and hundreds of articles have influenced government policy in many countries, including the UK and US.

Emeritus Professor David Farrington

Emeritus Professor David Farrington

His work emanates from four key platforms – risk and protective areas for crime appear very early in life; high-risk children can be helped from birth; programs for children under the age of 10 can be beneficial; and investing in these programs can save massive amounts of taxpayer money later in life.

“There is no doubt that Professor Farrington is a world leader in his field and the insights and information he brings to the ANZSOC conference will be of enormous interest,” Associate Professor Ransley said.

Other keynote speakers at the conference will be Professor Lorraine Mazerolle, Research Professor in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, who will speak about policing partnerships; and Professor Richard Wortley, Head of the Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London, who will speak about understanding crime events.

 

More than 270 influential students will converge on Griffith University during this week’s mid-semester break for a powerful leadership conference.

The Griffith University Gold Coast campus will host a student leadership conference on Tuesday October 1, for students from across the Griffith community and many fields of study.

These inspirational student leaders make it their aim to create change through volunteering, mentoring, representation, organisation and community action both within Griffith and the broader community.

The conference theme for 2013 is “Leading today for tomorrow” and it provides an opportunity for delegates to interact with like-minded students, be exposed to new ideas from a selection of 39 presentations and workshops and celebrate the work that Griffith student leaders are already achieving.

Many Griffith students are already participating as leaders in a vast variety of roles both within Griffith and the broader community. Leadership takes many forms. Students need not wait until graduation in order to become leaders either in their own discipline areas or within the community.

Sanesie Dukuly, President of the Griffith University Refugee Students Association (GURSA) says he is looking forward to the opportunity of speaking to such a large audience of students and aspiring leaders.

“This is by far the biggest audience I have ever presented for,” he said.

“I will be discussing the challenges faced by refugees when they arrive in Australia and as students arriving at university for the first time.”

“I will share some of my own personal experiences, what drove me to establish the Refugee Students Association, the support we provide for students and how we engage with the university.”

The Student Leadership Conference – ‘Leading today for tomorrow’ is hosted by the Student Success Unit at Griffith.

Students presenting at the conference will speak on a variety of initiatives and experiences including the Surgical Interest Association (Surgia), Refugee-Background Students Association (GURSA), Criminology Student Society and Healthy Start (refugee support program)

Students will also enjoy a picnic in the sun with giant games or show off their creative talents in juggling and ukulele workshops.

At the end of a controversy-plagued AFL season and an NRL campaign not without its issues, a Sport and Crime Conference to be hosted by Griffith University on Monday is perfectly timed.

The one-day event, running from 9am to 3pm at the Gold Coast campus, also comes near the end of a year when Australian cycling stalwart Stuart O’Grady admitted to doping and at the end of a month when a soccer match-fixing syndicate may have been unearthed in Victoria.

“This is a growing area of community concern,” Professor James Skinner, head of Griffith’s Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, says.

“The need to combat the issues involved is more and more apparent and will require the involvement and cooperation of different agencies and organisations.”

Damian Voltz from the National Integrity of Sport Unit will deliver the opening address on Monday morning before a wide range of presentations runs the gamut of sport and crime.

Among them will be Richard Redman, former Director of Legal Services, ASADA, and current legal counsel to Cronulla Sharks who will offer a practical legal perspective on doping in sport.

Griffith University’s Terry Engelberg will be joined by University of Canberra’s Stephen Moston to discuss psychological profiling of elite athletes intending to use performance enhancing drugs.

Ellen Bloxsome, also from Griffith, will evaluate off-field behaviours in sports news.

Matthew Dunn, Deakin University, will explore how gambling and sport can be framed as a public health issue, and Bob Stewart, Victoria University, will make the case for the re-regulation of drug use in Australian sport.

“These threats to the integrity of sport cause significant damage to the sports industry, with consequences such as reduced attendances at sporting events and reduced sponsorship among some of the most pressing concerns,” Professor Skinner said.

Monday’s conference will showcase some of the latest Australian research on crime in sport, and the issues that will affect the emerging research agenda.

It is sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Hotel and Sport Management and the Centre for Tourism, Sport and Service Research.

WHEN: Monday, September 30, 9am to 3pm

WHERE: Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Arts and Education 1 (G30), Room 1.09.

PROGRAM: Click here.

 

As most people know I see every new building as an opportunity for a very large sign.

I’ve noticed recently an increasing number of flights traversing the Nathan campus’ airspace – and with the very imposing Sir Samuel Griffith Centre drawing the attention of those passing – I thought is was important to attach a name to our site.

Anyone who flies over the Nathan campus will see our distinctive presence, and a large and striking “Griffith University” logo painted on top of our Library building. Now the New Griffith is visible not only from the ground but also from the sky – and soon from Google Earth.