Jump to Content

Media Release

August 29 2003

2,000 to graduate from UniSA

Next week will be a landmark in the lives of more than 2,000 people who will graduate with degrees from the University of South Australia.

Graduation ceremonies will be held at the Adelaide Festival Theatre on Monday, September 1, at 10.30am and 3.00pm.

Indigenous trailblazer to take centre stage

When Nyrell Pattel graduates on Monday morning with a Masters degree in Social Science (Counselling) from UniSA’s School of Psychology, she will be the first Aborigine to be conferred with the degree.

For Pattel – who is also a grandmother of eight and the Regional Coordinator for Aboriginal Health at the Adelaide Central Community Health Service – it will be a proud moment, but she looks forward to a day when all the trailblazing has been done.

“In most places I’ve worked and studied I’ve been a forerunner, often the only Aboriginal person on staff, but that’s a very lonely place to be,” she says.

“Try and think of one Aboriginal who is the head of a major company or university or government department – I’m talking about in the mainstream, not Aboriginal organisations – and you won’t come up with much.

“I want to work in the mainstream because that’s where the changes need to happen.”

Pattel hasn’t finished with study yet though, and has already begun work towards a doctorate in counselling at UniSA, which she expects complete in 2005.

“The more I learn about other the more I understand about myself and my place in the world. I don’t believe I’ll ever stop learning or studying. I believe we never know it all.”

Nyrell Pattel can be contacted on 0407 772 328.

Nobel laureate to be conferred with honorary doctorate

Nobel laureate Dr Yuan T Lee will be presented with the honorary degree of Doctor of the University at the graduation ceremony on Monday morning.

Currently the President of the Academic Sinicia in Taiwan, Dr Lee was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and is renowned the world over for his studies of molecular beams, reaction dynamics, primary photochemical processes, and the spectroscopy of ionic and molecular clusters. (A detailed biography is available on the internet at www.unisa.edu.au/itee/news/LecSem/Lee/default.asp)

Dr Lee will be presenting a public lecture, Meeting the challenges of the 21st century, at UniSA’s Mawson Lakes campus on Monday, September 1 at 6.00pm in room GP1-09.

What: UniSA graduations
Where: Adelaide Festival Centre
When: Monday, September 1, 10.30am and 3.00pm
Guest speakers
AM: Professor David Wilkinson, UniSA’s Pro Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences
PM: Leon Davies, Chairman of Wespac Bank and Deputy Chairman of Rio Tinto

Media contact

 

top^