Vice-Chancellor awards take a big leap forward

The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards are going from strength to strength with this year’s awards attracting more entries than last year, and research categories also added to the annual awards.

This year’s winners included Raul David who took out the award for Higher Education Teaching Excellence for his work in creating active experimental learning in audit and accounting subjects.

He played an important role in revamping the Bachelor of Accounting program to be more inclusive and address the needs of graduates in the industry.

Mr David also established the New Colombo Plan Mobility Program in the Philippines offering accounting students cross cultural learning experiences.  He also started the CDU Free Tax Clinic offering free tax services to lower-income earners while providing practical work experience for CDU students.

The winner of the VC Award for VET Teaching Excellence was Willie Melville of the CDU TAFE Civil Engineering delivery team.

He has held a long-standing partnership with Ironbark Aboriginal Corporation, spanning seven years, delivering training on live worksites in Daly River communities and is recognized as one of the most proficient educators in remote delivery.

Responding to requests this year, he successfully delivered training to students with limited English language skills during Alice Springs' wet season, resulting in 15 graduates receiving job offers.

This year was the inclusion of research into the Vice-Chancellor awards.

This year’s winner of the Vice-Chancellor Award for First Nations Research and Innovation was Dr Tracy Woodroffe.

Dr Woodroffe is a proud Warumungu Luritja woman, and teacher for over two decades with the NT Department of Education. 

Since 2014, she has worked at CDU as a lecturer and researcher. 

Her work examines the Australian education system through a First Nations Women’s perspective and helps to inform Territory-wide and national best practice on engaging with Australian First Nations students and concepts in an educational context.

The other VC award winners were: 

• Early Career Teaching Excellence - Mr Shane Pomeroy
• Early Career Research - Dr Milad Bazil (winner), Dr Guzyal Hill (highly commended) and Dr Steven Kho from the Menzies School of Health Research (highly commended)
• Excellence in Teaching Support – CDU Careers Centre (Student Engagement)
• Higher Degree by Research Supervision – Dr Gabrielle McCallum from the Menzies School of Health Research
• Higher Education Teaching Excellence – Dr Maneka Jayasinghe (highly commended), Dr Bhanu Bhatia (highly commended) and Debajyoti Chakrabarty (highly commended).  
• Research Impact – GroundUp Research Team, Professor Mamoun Alazab (highly commended) and Communicate Study Partner
• Research Partnerships or Industry Engagement – Menzies Timor-Leste Team, Remote and Rural Service Research Team (highly commended), and North Australia Centre for Autonomous Systems (highly commended)