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Our meeting was chaired by Marjorie Gerlinger.
Apart from our guest speaker, Dr Ken Walker from Museum Victoria, there was one other guest, Sara Tanah. Sara was introduced by Anne King who is a mentor to Sara under an Enactus managed programme. Enactus is a US based international organisation with Australian headquarters in Sydney that connects university students, academic and business leaders through entrepreneurial based projects empowering people to transform opportunities into real, sustainable progress for themselves and their communities.
Anne with her ENACTUS mentoree Sara Tanah
President’s Announcements
President Roy:
- advised that acceptance of Honorary Club Membership had been received from Ian Angus, Brian Downie and Keith Frampton
- noted that today was the centenary of the commencement of World War 1.
Other Announcements
- Greg Cuthbert, Director Fundraising, advised that the 6th sensational Rotary Garden Designfest will take place on the weekend of 15/16th November 2014 featuring 25 superbly designed gardens. The Rotary Club of Kew founded this activity, Rotary Club of Brighton subsequently became involved and now our Club through the initiative of Rob Hines is also joining in. Gardens are located around Melbourne suburbs, Mornington Peninsula and now Euroa. Greg asked that we diary to support this event. Check www.gardendesignfest.com.au for further and updated details.
- Neville John mentioned that August is Membership month and reminded us that it is the role of every Club member help identify new members.
Sergeant
After a very warm welcome from the Chair (no surprise really), Sergeant Bernie proceeded to ask trivia questions which had mixed responses. Something we did learn however is that, unfortunately, 20% of the world’s poker machines operate in Australia.
During this session, Kevin Love donated to the Can by announcing to applause the safe arrival of a second grandson.
Showing his compassionate side, the Sergeant finished by mentioning (to the understandable great disappointment of all members in attendance) that he would not be questioning us on Rotary acronyms this week but strongly advised us to study the four components of the Objects of Rotary for next week’s meeting. Possible bedtime reading for some????
Member Behind The Badge
In what could have doubled for a Member Job Talk, Dr Kerstin Steiner gave a detailed talk on her academia life over the last 10 years. Kerstin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University’s Caulfield Campus.
Kerstin stated that her time as an academic can be divided into 3 segments:
- Teaching (40 %) Lecturing to both Undergraduates and Post Graduates in classes both big (600) and small (50).
- Service (20%) Covers both internal e.g. Committee work and external e.g. Rotary and as an associate of the Melbourne German Foundation.
- Research (40%) This is where Kerstin’s passion for her role shone through. Admitting upfront that Research provides a way to promotion (otherwise known as Publish or Perish), Kerstin went on to exemplify that aspect by displaying 2 books she had recently published as well as referring to her various conference presentations and research projects.
She freely admitted that her research had taken her, and continues to take her, to many overseas places (her “peripatetic” ways). Amongst other places, she will be revisiting and presenting at University of Oxford and Osaka University in Japan later this year.
Kerstin has a very strong research interest in the study of Southeast Asian legal systems and has become an expert on Islamic law and a specialist on Islam in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where she also visits from time to time.
Through all of this, Kerstin currently also finds time to supervise 4 Ph D students.
Guest Speaker
Dr Ken Walker, Senior Curator, Entomology and Arachnology, at Museum Victoria was then introduced.
Not everyone may have been looking forward to hearing from a person with such a title but Ken easily kept our attention whilst speaking enthusiastically on “The role of the ‘citizen scientist’ in caring for Australia’s flora and fauna”.
Ken said that ‘citizen science’ is a collection of large scale research projects in which ordinary people carry out the legwork in fossicking for information which in turn is provided to professional scientists, thereby assisting them in building big pictures of what is happening with biodiversity and species migration. He gave us a very simple definition of a citizen scientist (“CS”) i.e. a person who adds value to a hobby.
At the Museum Ken said, with the help of the CS, they are able to track species in space and time...…whether it be places of habitation, within like rainfall regions, time of year (breeding patterns) etc. He strongly believes that we learn from the past to plan a better future. According to Ken, the oldest CS was commenced in America in 1900, an annual bird count that continues today.
The role of the CS throughout Australia continues to grow and there is very little that does not escape the eye of these people. They become the eyes of the scientists. Whether it be a recently discovered new species of flatworm or the latest exotic pest, the CS alerts us. Ken strongly urged us to go to the key website, www.bowerbird.org.au, and at some stage we may be sufficiently enthused to join Bowerbird….a place to share and discuss Australia’s biodiversity.
In closing, Ken commented that many schools were engaging in this research and placing their results on Bowerbird. All up, Ken said that there were approximately 10 new species being discovered each year. He assured us that we can all become scientists’ eyes. Just snap and send!!
Marjorie thanked Ken on behalf of the club and presented him with the gift of East Timor soap pack.
Roy formally closed the meeting.
Robber fly devouring Ellipsidion -
This web site is fascinating.
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Parsu Sharma-Luital
