Revitalising a sense of community

In December the UniSA Council endorsed and adopted a strategic plan that will see UniSA become an even stronger player in regional communities in SA.

The Regional, Industry and Community Engagement (RICE) strategy formalises and strengthens what are already strong University characteristics - commitment to equity and access; a partnership approach to working with industries, the professions and communities, and a role in the development of sustainable and resilient communities.

UniSA Pro Vice Chancellor for Organisational Strategy and Change, Professor Hilary Winchester, said RICE is all about looking for win-win situations.

"We want to identify opportunities where there is a nexus between what we are doing through our students and graduates, our research or our educational offerings that can be of benefit to all of our communities," Prof Winchester said.

"The next phase of the project will be to undertake broad community consultation so that we can explore areas of need and high potential for successful engagement."

Prof Winchester said the consultation would involve state and local government, industry and community groups all over SA.

She said the University had already developed key projects that were demonstrating the reciprocal benefits of community engagement.

These include the Centre for Regional Engagement through UniSA’s campuses in Whyalla and Mt Gambier, but also metropolitan examples.

"Through the highly successful UniSA Northern Adelaide Partnerships (UNAP) we have pioneered projects already showing positive outcomes," she said.

"Under the UNAP umbrella, the robotics peer mentoring program has matched school students with Uni students and local business so that they can work on real world projects. This means the high school students get a realistic idea of how a science education can be applied in the workplace and we’re now seeing some of the first students involved in the mentoring program start to come into university."

Other programs in the northern area include a creative community arts project exploring new digital media and targeting marginalised youth, human movement student placements to redress coordination deficit disorder in primary school children, and psychology student placements to reduce assessment waiting times for children in crisis.

"The University Council endorsed five key result areas for regional engagement which really highlight what we are trying to do," Prof Winchester said. "They are that UniSA fosters innovation and effective access to education, that we continue to build a high level of interaction and partnership with industry in the way we do research and provide professional education, that we reflect our commitment to social justice and ethical responsibility in our outreach to communities and the values we instill in our graduates, and that we contribute to the development of professional and business opportunities through our teaching and research.
"Taking these tenets on board is something we intend to do in an integrated way at all levels across the University."

More information about RICE is available from project leader, Alan Fairley on (08) 8302 5665.