Media Release
August 14 2008
UniSA honours contributions to art and Indigenous education
Almost 1400 students will leave their study regime behind and move
into the professional world over the next two days when they graduate
from the University of South Australia.
Among the graduates from all four divisions at the University - in health, sciences, business, education and the arts - 29 will attain their PhDs.
Four ceremonies will be held across Thursday and Friday in the morning and afternoon each day at the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Graduation speakers include Owen Hegarty, independent non-executive director of Oxiana Ltd; Dr Lyn Arnold AO, CEO of Anglicare; international businessman David Mallinson; and Madge McGuire, director of Catherine House Inc.
UniSA will also award an honorary doctorate to renowned ceramicist and former Head of Ceramics at the SA School of Art, Milton Moon AM and Aboriginal educator and policy maker, Professor Paul Hughes AM, FACE will be made Emeritus Professor of the University.
A Yunkunyatjatjara/Narunnga/Kuarna man, Prof Paul Hughes retired from the University in June this year following a distinguished 43-year career in Aboriginal Education. Ten of these years were with the University of South Australia and its predecessor institutions.
He has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Flinders University and a Master of Education degree from Harvard University. He was the first South Australian Aborigine to be promoted to Professor.
He has been a teacher, leader, policy maker, academic, and consultant and researcher on Indigenous education issues worldwide.
Throughout his career, Professor Hughes has influenced and led the discussion on the education of Aboriginal children. He has been a pioneer, delivering keynote addresses focusing on curriculum development in Aboriginal Education and the education of the Aboriginal child in the early 1970s. He is said to have started the discussion in Australia on the lack of participation in and quality of the provision of education for Aboriginal children from an Aboriginal perspective.
He championed the development of the Indigenous academy in the Colleges of Advanced Education and later at the University of South Australia and at both State and Commonwealth government levels. He has also been a driving force behind the formation of the University’s David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research, one of the largest employers of Indigenous academics nationally and providing for four individual business, research and scholarly portfolios.
A potter for over 50 years, Milton Moon has played vital role in the development of ceramics in Australia.
From 1969 to 1975 he was Senior Lecturer and Head of Ceramics at the South Australian School of Art. His influence made a lasting impression on South Australian crafts practice and established the School of Art as a centre of excellence in the teaching of ceramics.
His interest in pottery began in 1950 while he was studying as a part-time post-war student of painting and drawing in Brisbane. His first major exhibition was in Brisbane in 1959, followed by his first major Sydney exhibition in 1963. Across his career he has exhibited in one-person and group exhibitions in all of Australia’s major centres. He has also represented Australia internationally in exhibitions in England, Germany, Japan, and in America where his work has been shown twice at the Smithsonian Institute.
Moon was also honoured with the rare opportunity to hold a major one-person exhibition in Japan. In Japan he has been welcomed for over 40 years with the highest regard and respect by the Japanese ceramic community, a country where pottery is seen as one of the most pure and admired forms of craft and art.
Moon has maintained absolute integrity in his work and is widely revered for his outstanding work as an artist-craftsperson, teacher and mentor and admired for his quest to incorporate, interpret and express a unique Australian identity and legacy through his work.
Both Professor Hughes and Milton Moon will be honoured at the afternoon graduation ceremony at 3 pm today.
Media contact
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Michèle Nardelli office (08) 8302 0966 mobile 0418 823 673
email michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au