28 April 2011

Monash Staff Rewarded For Outstanding Contribution

Story by Michelle Kiob with pictures by Fotoprime

A total of 121 staff beamed with pride as they each received the coveted PVC’s Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching and Administration.

Held twice a year, award recipients were recognised for their outstanding contributions to the university. Each will be entitled to a 12.5% loading on base salary for a six-month period.

“It is wonderful that people are making changes on their own initiative and demonstrating excellent outcomes. The individual, team and collective achievements of staff is indeed a great thing to recognise,” Prof Pollard, who presented certificates to the winners, said.

Touching on campus targets, he said that the campus’ “aim is to make the academic and non-academic experiences for students at this campus highly distinctive, and this includes the courses they take, as well as all the facilities and services offered to them.”

At the event, Deputy President (Academic) Prof Chris Messom also commended all staff for making unique contributions to the campus.

“In this round, 97 projects were submitted involving a total number of 214 staff. After a rigorous selection process by a committee headed by Prof Messom, 57 projects carried out by 113 staff were awarded (17 – Research; 20 – Teaching; and 20 – Administration).

“The projects submitted were excellent and innovative, and covered a wide range of expertise, with many cross-discipline collaborations,” Prof Messom said.

Among winning research projects were Human Genomics beyond boundaries by Prof Maude E Phipps and Expanding the horizons of infectious disease beyond MUSC by Assoc Prof Sharifah Syed Hassan from the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Dr Crystal Yap Sheau Fen from the School of Business won for her project Lessons that click: Using rich and engaging feedback to enhance student learning experience, winning her an award under the teaching category.

From the pool of administration project winners, Prof James Chin and his team from the School of Arts and Social Sciences won an award for their project Bringing Law to Sunway campus, in which the School and the Law Faculty of Monash University Australia initiated a program to bring six units of the Law degree to the Malaysian campus.