Two Edith Cowan University academics have been announced as the 2012 winners of $5,000 professional development awards presented under the Perth Convention Bureau’s annual Aspire Program.
They are Professor Caroline Taylor AM, the Foundation Chair in Social Justice with the Social Justice Research Centre at the university’s Joondalup campus; and Dr Lisa Paris, Senior Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator for Secondary Art in the School of Education at the Mount Lawley campus.
They were among eight academics and an administrator from Perth’s five leading universities who were presented with professional development awards at a breakfast function at the State Reception Centre in Kings Park today.
The annual awards are part of the Bureau’s Aspire Program which also includes a $10,000 City of Perth Convention Scholarship and four convention travel grants to members of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.
The Foundation Chair in Social Justice is a research post that Professor Taylor has held since 2008. Her current research includes a soon-to-be completed project funded by the Australian Research Council in partnership with Victoria Police, examining their response, investigation and management of reported sex offences.
As someone who came from a significantly disadvantaged background, Professor Taylor in 2004 established her own registered charity, Children of Phoenix. The organisation provides educational scholarships and mentoring for children, adolescents and adults whose educational pathways have been affected by sexual violence.
Professor Taylor is a member of several professional organisations including the Australian Sociological Association, the Australia and New Zealand Society of Criminology, the Australasian Council of Women and Policing, and the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
She plans to use her professional development award to attend the Annual International Police Executives Symposium in New York in August. The symposium, which this year for the first time is being held in conjunction with the United Nations, will provide Professor Taylor with a unique opportunity to present her work to a global human rights audience.
She also plans to canvass support for a potential Perth bid to host the conference in 2015.
Dr Paris in 2011 was part of a team that won an Australia Research Council grant to investigate the complexities of digital representation of creative works in assessment contexts. The research is being undertaken in partnership with the Western Australian School Curriculum and Standards Authority.
She is a member and a former president of the Art Education Association of Western Australia and a member of Art Education Australia.
She plans to use her professional development award to attend the 3rd World Congress on Arts Education in Columbia in 2014 to expand her professional network as well as laying the groundwork for Perth to present a bid to host the 2018 congress.
Perth Convention Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer Paul Beeson said today that the Aspire program had been responsible for generating convention business worth more than $80 million in direct delegate expenditure to the Western Australian economy, in addition to the knowledge and innovation conferencing brings to our community.
He said: “Through the Aspire Program we’re delighted to be able to assist the professional development of our academic institutions and not-for-profit communities. The program allows the recruitment of potential Western Australian “Local Conveners”, who with our support may choose to pursue and secure the conferences of interest to their speciality.”
Aspire Program Award Recipients for Edith Cowan University: Dr Lisa Paris and Professor Caroline Taylor AM with University Representative Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Kerry Cox.
