KEEPING IN TOUCH
2000s
Matt Boden (BMus 2001, MMus 2003) and the Matt Boden Quartet launched their first, self-titled CD at the Clarence Jazz Festival in February. Matt – a pianist, composer and bandleader – studied at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, and held residencies at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, and the jazz club The Temple Place. In 2004 he moved to Melbourne and then, three years later, to Paris, France, where he now resides. Matt said the CD has a strong focus on melody. “It has something with which people can identify,” he said. “It’s a modernist approach with the traditional values of swing – and is joyous. It should make you smile and want to dance.” The CD can be purchased online at: www.mattboden.com
Cambodia: Alison Birchall, who is helping deliver services to vulnerable children near the Thai border, proudly models her World Social Work Day T-shirt.
Together we develop the agenda World Social Work Day, which was celebrated on March 15, was particularly significant at UTAS this year with two of our alumni volunteering to support the newly-established social work community in Cambodia. Mara Schneiders (BSW 1990) spent 18 months working as an adviser with the Social Work Department at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. This is Cambodia’s first-ever undergraduate social work course and, with the first cohort due to graduate in 2012, the faculty aims to produce future leaders for a country that’s still experiencing the devastating impact of civil war, genocide and poverty. Mara returned to Tasmania in August last year and is now working with the UTAS social work team, teaching community work practice. 28 | ALUMNI NEWS | JUNE 2011 • Issue 39
Meanwhile Alison Birchall (BSW Hons 1999) is working in Battambang province, close to the Thai border. Alison is working as a social work adviser for a local NGO that delivers services to vulnerable children and their families – particularly street children, trafficked children, and children orphaned by HIV, AIDS and other causes. The theme for this year’s World Social Work Day was ‘Social Work voices responding to global crises: Together we develop the agenda’. This year Tasmanian social work students gathered with faculty on the three UTAS campuses sharing an exchange of messages and photos with Cambodian students, who hosted their own event in Phnom Penh. Mara and Alison both volunteered with Australian Volunteers International.
Dr Jo-Anne Kelder (GradDipInfoSys 2002, BInfoSys Hons 2003, GradCertCommercialisation 2008, PhD 2009) is currently working as a project officer on the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s “Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Project” for the Science Discipline (www.altc.edu.au/ standards). The challenge of this 12-month project is to develop meaningful statements describing Threshold Learning Outcomes for science graduates that can be used by teachers in higher education, auditors, students and employers. Dr John Tasirin (PhD 2004), who is an employee of the Wildlife Conservation Society Indonesia Program and who also teaches within the Faculty of Agriculture at Sam Ratulangi University (Sulawesi, Indonesia), was recently presented with an international conservation award by the Van Tienhoven Foundation for International Nature Protection. This award recognised John’s conservation work in the province of Sulawesi – work which ranged from helping villagers protect their sea turtles to providing conservation advice to the governor of North Sulawesi.