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Advance
THE UNIT E C MAGAZINE OF INN OVATI ON A ND RESEA RC H SU M M E R 07
Working models of bio-horticulture Unitec’s “sanctuary” demonstrated in Indonesia – p6
Exiting the fishing industry The ongoing impact of fishing quotas in New Zealand – p8
Regional source of biofuel Coconut-based biodiesel on trial in Volkswagen Polo – p10
In the limelight Shane West invents sustainable building products – p11
EDITORIAL
of Advance we feature stories that reflect the diversity of research projects and the range of disciplines and schools involved: architectural design in areas vulnerable to cyclones, the development of biofuels (coconut oil) as a means of obtaining cleaner emissions, ecohorticulture, quota-managed fisheries and the re-thinking of what constitutes sustainable construction.
editor Jade Reidy design
Clearly, sustainability is embedded in our consciousness and will continue to evolve as we seek more effective ways of ensuring appropriate stewardship and protection of the earth’s resources.
Brigitte Smits cover image Unitec’s Pacific Centre for Sustainable Communities printing Norcross Group of Companies Advance is published by Unitec New Zealand ISSN 1176-7391 phone +64 9 815 2945
Ongoing dialogue about the term sustainability has morphed from its original environmental domain to encompass broader issues such as economic and social impacts.
freephone 0800 10 95 10 web www.unitec.ac.nz address Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Private Bag 92025, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland 1142, New Zealand Disclaimer Unitec New Zealand has used reasonable care to ensure that the information in this publication is accurate at the time of publication. However, to the extent permitted by law, Unitec is not liable for, and makes no warranties or representations as to such accuracy and may change or correct any such information without prior notice.
In the recently published Marketing Directions 2007 Australian study (afrboss.com.au, May, 2007), 2006 was considered a tipping point in community awareness, with more than 60 percent of the respondent organisations reporting receiving questions and opinions from customers for more information and action on sustainability and green issues. Clearly sustainability is not a fringe issue and it is therefore not surprising that the issues surrounding it have captured the interest of a number of academics here at Unitec. In this edition
MURRAY MUNRO CERTIFICATE IN ANIMAL MANAGEMENT GRADUATE
It would be remiss of me not to celebrate some of the achievements recently promoted here at Unitec. Glenda Jacobs, Associate Dean of the Undergraduate Division, won best Academic Paper Award at a conference on corporate communication, and another Best Paper Award was received by Dave Hodges, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Division, and Diana Ayling, Senior Lecturer in the Unitec Business School, for their joint paper at the New Zealand Association for Co-operative Education Conference. Our congratulations also go to Judith Speight, Director of Programmes for the TEC-funded Accelerating Auckland project. Judith was one of 11 international recipients of the 2007 Champions of Digital Literacy Award.
CONTACT Prof Gael McDonald Vice President, Research email gmcdonald@unitec.ac.nz
RESEARCH IN BRIEF
Mapping historical architecture for future use
Wet prospect for Auckland
In making use of a historic building in modern design, architects must identify a middle ground between copying the past and misinterpreting it. The path towards the middle ground starts with accurate knowledge.
Their survey employed modern laser technology to render accurate drawings. These are accompanied by essays providing a detailed analysis and exploration of the design history, proportional system and the classical orders of the villa.
Auckland’s infrastructure planning must take account of the probable effects of global warming, says Babar Mahmood of Unitec’s School of the Built Environment. He has prepared a predictive study on how the region’s water resources are likely to flow in the next few decades.
The book is co-edited by US Mathematics Professor Stephen Wassell and published by Acanthus Press. Mitrovic studied Architecture and Philosophy in Belgrade and has received grants from Harvard University and the Humboldt Foundation, among others. This is his second book about Palladio.
By 2020, the average temperature in Auckland will rise by 0.15˚C, and sea levels and rainfall will also increase, he says. There will probably be higher rainfall in the west, less in the east, and greater exposure to floods and droughts. Overall, Auckland’s municipal groundwater supply should be abundant.
CONTACT Professor Branko Mitrovic School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture Email bmitrovic@unitec.ac.nz
Mahmood based his predictions on historical data from Auckland City Council and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Testing (NIWA), comparative data from the UK, and global studies. He found ample evidence of climate change in the Auckland region since 1900: an increase in average temperature by 1.5˚C, sea levels rising at a rate of 1.4mm per year, more rainfall (from 1241mm in 1925 to 1276mm in 2006), and mounting levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
With that principle in mind, Unitec Professor of Architectural History and Theory Branko Mitrovic undertook to survey the Villa Cornaro near Venice. Designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1550s, the villa gained architectural significance for the motif of a protruding pedimented portico, yet no major surveys had been made since the 1700s. Branko took two former Unitec Architecture students, Tim Ross and Melanie Bourke, to Italy for the survey in 2003, which has now resulted in publication of the book Andrea Palladio: Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese.
Facing predicaments in early education A dilemma can be defined as a complex, recurring problem. In early childhood education, leadership dilemmas often arise through a tension between the needs of an individual and the needs of the organisation. With an absence of literature in this field, Professor Carol Cardno and Dr Bronwyn Reynolds of Unitec’s School of Education undertook to explore both the nature of dilemmas and challenges leaders faced when attempting to deal with them. Through interviewing 15 head teachers of early childhood care and education centres in Auckland, two clear types of dilemmas emerged: clashes in professional values and staff performance. Common responses to dealing with dilemmas included offering remediation and a focus on
communication, while the barriers to resolving dilemmas included personal feelings of avoidance and the need to keep all parties happy. Delays in acknowledging and taking action on dilemmas, says Cardno, correlates with other research studies in this field. The paper “Leadership Dilemmas in Early Childhood Education” is being published in the Education journal and was presented in September at the New Zealand Early Childhood Convention in Rotorua.
These research findings were presented at the Fourth International Conference on Water Resources Management in Greece. The conference acknowledged Mahmood with the Hromadka Award for “Outstanding Scientific Contribution”. He is now completing a PhD on land-based water treatment systems.
CONTACT Professor Carol Cardno Head of School School of Education email ccardno@unitec.ac.nz
CONTACT Babar Mahmood Lecturer School of the Built Environment email bmahmood@unitec.ac.nz
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RESEARCH IN BRIEF
Chronic conditions Slaying the plastic dragon and ageing With China continuing to dominate The collaborative technology model is People are living longer and hence are more prone to developing chronic conditions such as asthma, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. Yet, there is scant clinical understanding of the nexus between ageing and chronic illness. Dr Dianne Roy has been co-conducting two research studies to find out how health professionals can improve the wellbeing of older women with chronic conditions. The health system, she says, is good at caring for acute episodes but not well structured for ongoing care.
global manufacturing, New Zealand industries are being forced to reexamine their strategies for staying competitive. The plastics industry and the associated mould-making sector are no exception. When in doubt, New Zealand has typically sought to develop niche markets but a research survey carried out by Unitec’s Business School shows the real positioning power lies in collaboration. Four strategic models were recommended. The collaborative brand owner model is driven by an established brand owner and is focused on their end-customer requirements. The collaborative start-up/high-growth model is driven by suppliers (for example, mould-makers). This model needs an appointed coordinator to identify and organise a collaborative effort with emerging brand owners.
driven by an idea carrier, such as the brand owner or designer, and requires a coordinator to pull together project teams around technical innovations. Finally, the formalised industry collaboration model is membership driven and looks at continual innovation across all areas, i.e. equipment, machinery, materials, process, product, distribution and service. This model is the most radical, generating wealth for an evolving membership base. The research was commissioned by the New Zealand mould-makers and plastics manufacturers, with support from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. CONTACT Dean Prebble Unitec Business School email dprebble@unitec.ac.nz
How financial reporting changes are affecting the NZX 50 The first study, with women aged 50-58, is now complete and the second, with women aged 60-74, is in process. Focus group participants fed back their experiences of living with a body that does not function optimally and, as a result, surviving on reduced budgets. While the experience foreshadows the process of ageing, women develop expertise and strategies to live well despite their limitations and to negotiate the health system. They excel at taking preventative self-care measures. However, there are times when the “double whammy” of a chronic condition and ageing makes them less able to cope. The findings to date have been presented to interest groups and Australasian conferences, and reported in the Journal of Advanced Nursing. The second study is due to be completed by June 2008. CONTACT Dr Dianne Roy Lecturer School of Health and Community Studies email droy@unitec.ac.nz
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The most significant change in New Zealand’s financial reporting requirements has been transitioning into place over the past two years. Mandatory since January 2007, the New Zealand equivalents of the International Financial Reporting Standards (NZ IFRS) must now be used by companies when preparing external financial reports. The actual and anticipated impacts of the changeover are being studied by Unitec Business School Senior Lecturer Elizabeth Rainsbury and Lecturer Carol Hart. It was generally anticipated that some NZX 50 companies would report higher profits, partly because goodwill is now subject to impairment testing rather than being amortised, i.e. gradually written off. This was proven in practice with 12 of 16 “early adopters” of the new standards (prior to January 2007) analysed in the study. Those who adopted the new standards after January also commonly expected the goodwill change to have an impact, and nearly all the companies surveyed identified potential increases in deferred tax assets and liabilities in their balance sheet, which also may affect income
tax. In the income statement, employee benefits, intangibles and financial instruments were most frequently cited. This study is only the first stage of a longer examination of the effects of moving from national to international Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP) and contributes to the growing international literature on the subject. CONTACT Elizabeth Rainsbury Associate Head of School Unitec Business School email erainsbury@unitec.ac.nz
FEATURE ARCHITECTURE
Applying ecology to Pacific designs Architectural designs that embrace environmental cataclysms, rather than attempt to withstand them, may help Pacific communities rebuild faster, and more effectively, after cyclones. Unitec researchers have been modelling a range of “what-if” scenarios, based on observations of the way nature recovers. Cyclones are a fact of life in the South Pacific, accounting for approximately 11 percent of those that occur world-wide. International aid to these island nations has concentrated on simply replacing what was lost, rather than looking at new ways of approaching the rebuilding that follows such devastation. Perhaps it’s the very notion of “devastation” that requires re-evaluating. Researchers in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Unitec are applying the view that these events are a healthy part of self-regulating environments. Using this disturbance theory principle, possibilities are emerging for new patterns of design and construction. “Pacific ecosystems actively require disturbance to maintain their health and vitality,” says Associate Professor Rod Barnett. “They recover remarkably quickly. Just as forest management practices have altered because we now understand that forest fires are necessary to the health of forest landscapes, urban design practices need to embrace cyclones and rising sea levels as part and parcel of dynamic and continuously evolving landscapes.”
later, however, Alofi shows few signs of urban architectural regeneration. Looking at the ways in which flora and fauna were recolonising, Barnett and his colleague Associate Head of School Jacqueline Margetts applied to urban development this symbiotic relationship of plant communities within a relational ecosystem. How could buildings colonise the landscape in a way that responds to the changes occurring within it? “Instead of a car-dominated urban layout, a clustering strategy drawn from plant seed-dispersal patterns could be adopted,” says Margetts, “to allow for greater ease of pedestrian access. Building materials should be movable or able to be reconstructed so that cyclone damage can be repaired more cheaply using existing materials.”
of a resort developer at Sovi Bay, to analyse the landscape conditions and run a number of surveys. The resort design followed a pattern of consumption familiar to other island resorts, with facilities being placed to maximize their patronage.
FROM TRADITIONAL TO TOURIST Modelling a traditional Nuiean village would be a complex cultural task, so Barnett, Margetts and research assistant, Nikolay Popov (a Masters candidate) decided as a first step to model a “simplified” village – that of an island tourist resort – using Multi-Agent Simulation techniques.
THE EXAMPLE OF NUIE In 2004, Cyclone Heta struck Nuie, rendering the southern part of its capital Alofi uninhabitable. The fossilised coral island was pushed to its ecological limit, yet only three months after the cyclone, plants began colonising the extensive areas of bare rubble. A natural evolution was occurring: far-from-equilibriumconditions, cataclysm and then a shift to a new order of complexity. Three years
Ocean-side pools, such as this one at the Westin Hotel in Fiji, are vulnerable to cyclone damage.
“Such techniques have been used extensively in large-scale urban planning for mapping dynamic interactions of factors over differing time scales,” says Barnett.
SIMULATING SCENARIOS The researchers and fourth-year Bachelor of Landscape Architecture students went to Fiji, at the invitation
Running differing and identical scenarios through a simulated computer model showed that dynamic qualities could emerge following cyclonic disturbance, yet those designs could still meet a developer’s pre-determined set of consumption objectives. “Landscape Systems Modelling: A Disturbance Ecology Approach” is being presented at the 2007 ANZ Systems Conference at Unitec.
CONTACT Jacqueline Margetts Associate Head of School School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Resorts, such as this in Denarau Island, Fiji, could be designed to adapt in response to cyclones but still meet developer objectives.
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HORTICULTURE
House and garden for healthy living Research and applied practice are cyclical in nature, just like the seasons in a garden, one sustaining the other. Unitec has a garden devoted to eco-horticulture and a gardener committed to polycultural practices.
Unlike neighbouring Katiet on Siporo Island, Mentawai, Basua Village streets were abundantly lined with edible vegetables and fruit trees.
The best way to get to know Brendan Hoare is in his natural element, Unitec’s Pacific Centre for Sustainable Communities, more affectionately called “the sanctuary”. In that element, he’s just as likely to offer you a handful of edible broadbean shoots as any theory on eco-horticulture. In the midst of so much food and variety, malnutrition (including obesity) exists, he says, because we no longer grow and have lost daily connection with sources of healthy food. The part-time lecturer in sustainable production systems at Unitec’s School of Natural Sciences, and NGO worker with a passion for surfing, believes in getting the basics right first. “The house and garden are integral to human health,” Hoare says. “By designing communities with appropriate houses at the centre, surrounded by vegetable gardens and then land for horticulture use and forestry or firewood at the periphery, it’s easy for people to pick or graze on vegetables on their
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way home. It’s the paddock to plate approach. Simple solutions.” Eco-horticulture does embrace complexity however, it’s an umbrella term for organic, biodynamic, biodiverse horticulture practices. And the very opposite of monoculture.
RETURN TO THE ROOTS The sanctuary, run by Hoare and colleague Richard Main, is designed as a centre of excellence for organic system practice and research, extending throughout the Pacific. Established in 1999, it provides a community education resource, as well as a training ground for Unitec students in eco-horticulture and sustainable land management practice and design.
Members of the Auckland Tongan community who participated in a small-scale food production research project called “Tokanga and Falehanga Gardening Project” went through a significant change in perception. “People came into the gardens and saw banana trees interplanted with acacia and lemon bushes and taro,” says Hoare. “They said, wow, this looks just like our gardens at home. They had tears in their eyes and you could see the sloughing off of that colonial mindset that told them, it isn’t OK to make gardens this way. We were happy to remind them that Aotearoa is indeed the largest of the Pacific Islands. We are Pacific peoples.”
MENTORING MENTAWAI As the home of a vertical composting unit, the sanctuary takes organic waste from businesses and local councils and feeds it through a five-metre high unit that breaks the material down into compost in three weeks. Research projects have been a “homecoming” for Maori and Pacific peoples.
In 1989, Hoare took off with a backpack to spend five years studying traditional land use in Asia, from Afghanistan to the Philippines. He lived the village life and completed a Masters Degree in Agriculture Systems and Rural Development as a consequence. One of his favourite places was Mentawai in Indonesia. The pristine beaches and
HORTICULTURE
Mentawai Islands, undertaking resource assessments, taking soil profiles, making case studies and then assessing the literature on land management. This year he has been employed as a programme leader for SurfAid International to pilot a Living Centre in Katiet Village, Mentawai. A team of seven people, under Hoare’s leadership, is creating a demonstration sustainable village ecosystem, based on concepts of purposeful disorder; there is structure yet room for living systems to interact without human interference. The centre combines natural science, anthropology and design.
The vertical composting unit in Unitec’s Pacific Centre for Sustainable Communities.
required no change. “Some farms that had been handed down through families for thousands of years were some of the best examples of intensive gardening systems I’ve ever seen,” acknowledges Hoare. “I get blown out by it. The peculiar facet of my work is the insight into the human condition, whether it be in the Pacific or remote Indonesia. Some people have knowledge and others don’t, while some want to adapt and learn, and others can’t make that step. The real work lies in helping people to learn.”
“The change process is the same when working in any field – creating energy for change and demonstrating it is slow, hard work.”
SHOWING THE WAY rolling surf of these remote equatorial islands on the west coast of Sumatra were magnets. “It takes three days to get to Mentawai,” says Hoare. “The village where we are working on the island of Siporo has no electricity, no motorbikes or machines. Imagine! But that idyllic scene hides serious problems of malnutrition through poor dietary practices, malaria and other contractible diseases. The village’s 2000 families have a high infant mortality rate, poor nutrition and the island’s sinking at a rate of 2cm a year. Where they used to be playing on the beach a generation ago, it’s now knee deep in water.” In mid September this year, the island chain was badly hit by twin earthquakes, reducing some villages and towns to rubble and adding to food security problems. More earthquakes are predicted. Implementing lasting, positive change requires cyclical stages of “design, analysis, plan, act and reflect”. Hoare spent part of 2006 on field trips to the
The houses are being built of lightweight, low cost local materials, rather than the existing concrete and asbestos which are earthquake and health hazards. The traditional pig toilet is being redesigned using carbon organic matter to reduce odours and produce a compostable product. The gardens are based on the Unitec sanctuary’s principles of eco-horticulture; there will be solar ovens for cooking, and a programme for managing malarial mosquito larvae. It is to be a site where SurfAid’s programmes can be integrated. “In many ways it’s a return to tradition, undoing the status often associated with western building materials, designs and agriculture, yet still introducing the best technological advances that fit with people’s dreams and values. If the pilot grabs, it will become an integral part of SurfAid’s methodology,” says Hoare. “Although the true test will be when I feel safe taking my young children there!” On the flip side, some local gardeners in Mentawai were worthy of study and
Brendan Hoare
FORUMS AND NEXT STAGES The sanctuary at Unitec is Hoare’s inspiration and turangawaewae during extended field trips away from home. “The research work we do here feeds and informs my other work in the Asia Pacific region, and vice versa.” Hoare has also driven the establishment of a number of organic forums, journals and professional bodies. In the past two years he has helped create and work with the East Asian and Oceanic Pacific forums, the Auckland Organic Advisory Programme, and a low-cost organic certification programme at Unitec, called Organic Farm NZ. Last year, he co-launched the Oceanic Journal of Organic Systems. Hoare also sits on the World Board of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. Despite all the activity, Hoare believes the sanctuary has yet to reach its full potential. The next stage is to have Unitec students build a house with sustainable features (see more on page 11) on the site, which would be used for meetings and as a demonstration house, in the same way the Katiet Living Centre functions in Mentawai. CONTACT Brendan Hoare Lecturer School of Natural Sciences email bhoare@unitec.ac.nz
Field work in Mentawai, Indonesia.
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BUSINESS
Charting the demise of the small fisher Small fry in the marine fisheries industry are being swallowed up by bigger fish in the wake of quotas introduced to keep stock levels sustainable. But, as Unitec Lecturer James Stewart has been investigating, fishers would rather have remained in the industry. New Zealand’s exclusive marine fisheries waters extend to 4.4 million km², based on a 200-mile exclusive economic zone around the country. At one time, those waters were thought to contain an inexhaustible supply of fish, but by the late 1970s the Hauraki Gulf was severely depleted. A moratorium was introduced and, in 1986, quotas were established for existing commercial companies that set a total allowable commercial catch, collectively called the Quota Management System (QMS). The quotas were allocated among the various fishers in proportion to their previous catch levels but with scaled down volumes.
FROM ANECDOTE TO EVIDENCE To find out how sustainable the industry was, Stewart and research assistant Peter Callagher sent questionnaires to all 3000 exiters from the QMS. They received 340 replies to a range of questions, including why they left, whether they’d had a planned strategy for exiting and what they did with the assets. Those results were published in the Journal of Sustainable Development. A second paper, “The Demise of the Small Fisher”, co-authored with Kim Walsh and Beverley Moodie, was published in the Marine Policy Journal in 2005.
A DIFFERENT KETTLE OF FISH POST-QUOTA EFFECTS The QMS has proven effective in maintaining stock levels of the 130 marine species that are commercially fished. But were the allowable catches still economically viable? Unitec Business School Lecturer James Stewart went looking for answers. Seven years and three refereed papers later, his research is being widely referenced, as it threw up some surprising results – including how few fishers ended up in the unemployment queue. By 2000, over 3000 mostly smaller-scale fishers had given up the occupation. Anecdotal evidence suggested that cashing up your quota could result in a nice nest egg for retirement. “I caught a taxi to the airport one day,” says Stewart, “and the Croatian driver told me he had sold his snapper quota for $1 million!” Yet, as the research revealed, the value of a quota was a double-edged sword. Those who wanted to remain in the industry were often left with an uneconomically small quota and unable to afford to purchase additional quota.
Surprisingly, personal reasons such as retirement and health were very low on the list of reasons for exit, but the compliance costs and burden, along with poor profitability, were most often rated as the catalyst and inducement. “Fishers are a different breed,” says Stewart. “Form filling doesn’t mix well with fish bait and seaweed. They were required to count every single fish caught, plus all the other paperwork involved in complying with the quota system. Before, it had been an openaccess arrangement.”
The survey also showed that many who exited had been working part-time in other jobs while fishing. Only three percent ended up in the unemployment queue. The majority increased their part-time work, which tended to be fishing related. These findings resulted in the paper, “Compliance costs and the small fisher”. A range of issues was presented by research assistant Josefino San Diego at this year’s New Zealand Association of Economics conference in Christchurch. The resulting trend within the industry has been for fewer, larger scale fisheries, which have increased their quotas by buying them from the exiters. Stewart’s premise is that, with more at stake, i.e. a larger investment in the industry, the greater the efforts will be towards fishing within sustainable limits. A follow up study is planned to assess the accuracy of that premise and look at other trends associated with concentration of quota ownership. CONTACT James Stewart Lecturer Unitec Business School email jstewart@unitec.ac.nz
In the wake of a Quota Management System for catches, is the fishing industry economically sustainable? Many small fishers are saying no.
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POSTGRADUATE
Challenges of postgraduate study To be considered “research active” under the present government funding scheme, academics in tertiary education must have at least a Masters Degree. How tough is it to upgrade qualifications when combined with the pressures of teaching? Unitec’s Dr Kay Fielden posed the question. ability to integrate their research and teaching. “Each set of activities needs to feed off the other,” says Fielden. Perceptions in both institutions differed about the levels of support actually supplied and received. “Management needs to walk the talk and not just espouse recognition and equitable, transparent funding. Organisational culture makes a difference, as we found by identifying differences in the cultures of the two institutions surveyed,” says Fielden. “With good management practices in place, staff expectations for time release to study are more often met and they feel less isolated.” Dr Kay Fielden, whose research has highlighted that stress, lack of time and isolation are key inhibiting factors to staff upgrading their qualifications.
While many academics were employed without the need to have a postgraduate qualification, the goal posts have moved. In 2004, the Government began phasing in a new system for funding research in the tertiary sector, called Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF). Instigated to encourage research excellence, resources are now allocated amongst tertiary sector institutions based on the quality of research undertaken by “research active” staff. Fielden and AUT colleague Krassie Petrova’s paper “If We Only Had Time” speaks to the competing demands experienced by polytechnic staff upgrading their qualifications to postgraduate level in order to be evaluated as research active. An extension of an earlier study by Fielden and Malcolm, the paper won the award for Collaborative Research at this year’s 20th Annual Conference of the National Advisory Committee on Computing Qualifications.
COMPETING DEMANDS The study compares two polytechnic institutions and multiple points of view within each. Heads of school, human resources personnel, senior management and 36 lecturers either engaged in postgraduate study or having completed it were interviewed and sent questionnaires.
“We wanted to gain a comprehensive picture of the reasons for encouraging staff to upgrade their qualifications and of the benefits the institution gains from the process,” says Fielden, “as well as the experiences of staff.” Postgraduate study is traditionally seen as the training ground for competent research. Active engagement in research has been found not only to enhance staff job satisfaction, but also improve the educational experience of students. Yet academics perennially find themselves splitting time and energy over a multiplicity of teaching and study-related tasks.
IDENTIFYING THE FACTORS Fielden knows the territory only too well, having engaged in 11 years’ parttime postgraduate study, while working full time as an academic and raising a family. Her research in this field in 2000 had already identified individual clusters of motivators and inhibitors which, when combined, tipped the scales either for or against completing postgraduate qualifications. These were time, stress, isolation, funding, recognition, professional and family support, and the balance of learning and teaching. While alignment of vision, policy and procedures within schools and across the organisation is the biggest challenge for leaders, the most important “survival” characteristic identified for staff was the
Equally, she says, staff who received little or no time relief from teaching duties experience stress in a number of ways. “Many feel as if they are not performing adequately in any area of their lives.”
WORK LIFE BALANCE Staff upgrading tend to isolate themselves from the rest of the school in order to focus on study. This results in a lack of collegiality, less informal discussion and absence from social functions. They have less contact with their families and friends at a time when support from nearest and dearest is vital for success. Study is prioritised at the expense of all other activities. The legal requirements for work/ life balance need to be built into employment contracts and a level of self-discipline is also required to maintain that balance. Fielden and Petrova’s study is ongoing. The tertiary sector itself, they recognise, is under considerable stress from falling student numbers, the current competitive funding system and looming staff redundancies, all of which make the issue of postgraduate qualifications and the teaching/learning nexus even more crucial. CONTACT Dr Kay Fielden Associate Professor School of Computing and Information Technology email kfielden@unitec.ac.nz
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APPLIED TECHNOLOGY
Testing the driving power of biodiesel Fuel economy and cleaner emissions are key outcomes for a successful hybrid. Unitec automotive and electronics staff and students are putting a Volkswagen Polo TDI through its paces with coconut-based biodiesel. Getting to the start line involves hurdles such as borrowing driveline technology from a donor hybrid vehicle and integrating it with the Volkswagen 1.4 three-cylinder ICE. “Volkswagen has been brilliant in sharing technical information on their product,” says Liggett. “The inherent challenge is that the TDI engine has a different torque speed characteristic than that of the four-cylinder Toyota engine. We also hope to start the diesel engine with the Toyota electric motor, which was not designed to start a diesel with 19.5:1 compression ratio.” Steve Liggett and Rex Harrison are two of the Unitec team trialling biodiesel in the Polo.
Wander past the Applied Technology workshops at Unitec and a rich, sweet smell of coconut might set you dreaming of a tropical holiday in the sun. What’s actually going on is the production of biodiesel. Made from a base of raw coconut oil, the biodiesel is being trialled in a Volkswagen Polo TDI, donated for the purpose. “Unitec has proven expertise in biodiesel research, as does Volkswagen,” says Volkswagen General Manager for New Zealand, Dean Sheed. “They’re also the largest provider of autotrades education in this country, so the decision to enter a partnership was a logical one.” At present, there are very few diesel hybrids in manufacture. Most hybrid vehicles on the market, such as the Toyota Prius, are petrol electric.
TRIALS TEST POSITIVE A team of staff from a range of disciplines within Unitec’s Applied Technology Institute (UATI) has been conducting biodiesel research for the past two years, using coconut oil supplied from Fiji and Vanuatu. “We chose it with an eye to what is abundant and sustainable in the Pacific region,” says head of Building Technology, Rex Harrison. “Pacific Island communities often rely on imported diesel for electricity generation, which is prohibitively expensive. It’s a win-win situation.”
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The 50/50 mix of coconut and diesel has been successfully running a generator at Unitec all year, as well as a Toyota LiteAce for 3000km. So far, trials on the biodiesel engine on the institute’s dynamometer and along Auckland’s Southern Motorway show only a slight drop of 2-3 percent in performance power to attain a fuel economy of four litres per 100km in the 1400cc Polo. Particulate emissions are less than 50 percent of an equivalent diesel engine, says Harrison.
Another hurdle to overcome is communication between the engine management controller and the hybrid control system. The two systems pass information back and forth by way of a two-wire CAN network. “Because we’re no longer using the petrol engine, this communication presents a few challenges.” CONTACT Associate Professor Shane West Head of School Unitec Applied Technology Institute email swest@unitec.ac.nz
PRODUCING BIODIESEL The biodiesel is produced by heating the raw coconut solid into a liquid, mixing methanol and caustic soda into it, pumping the mix to a holding tank until it settles, then separating the glycerine out from the biodiesel. The mix is washed two to three times, pumped again and heated to evaporate any remaining water. Then, diesel is combined with the oil at a 50/50 ratio.
A RALLY CHALLENGE UATI lecturer Steve Liggett, whose UK experiences include working as a development engineer in the field of hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cells, is overseeing a team of students. Their first task is to strip the shiny Polo back to basics for the biodiesel trials. If successful, they’ll build a hybrid rally vehicle to enter into the 2008 Tertiary Hybrid Open Rally Challenge, in a special class for hybrids developed by students.
Student Michael Lan gaining experience with hybrid engines.
IN THE LIMELIGHT
Verifiable green products go west Reassessing sustainability criteria may result in building product choices far removed from mud bricks and rammed earth, says Unitec Associate Professor Shane West. There’s an urgent need to widen the scope of materials deemed to be green. Australia has been that high thermal mass designs, such as clay or mud brick, automatically mean good insulation, whereas in reality, they have high thermal conductance.”
Guardian commentator George Monbiot recently noted that, “It is easy to picture a situation in which the whole world religiously buys green products and its carbon emissions continue to soar.” That, says Shane West, is partly because we tend to leave economics out of the sustainability equation, feeding ourselves a diet high in so-called greens that actually have no significant ongoing energy savings.
High thermal mass is often used to promote sustainability but high mass structures, besides being potentially poor insulators, also contain large amounts of raw material, and thus energy. They need to be used appropriately for any thermal benefits.
BLOWING IN THE WIND West, who is head of Unitec’s Applied Technology Institute and spent 25 years as a consultant and researcher on sustainable buildings, is patenting new building products that stand their ground on total lifecycle energy cost. One of his most recent inventions, a wind directional skylight vent, won the People’s Choice Award on an episode of ABC Television’s “The New Inventors”. “The wind vent is a radical departure from turbine-style whirlybirds,” says West. “It has clear efficiencies for ventilation and the added benefit of daylight in the one product.”
HYBRID FOR THE FUTURE
Shane West with an award for university teaching from the Australian Institute of Building, based on developing real-world products.
NEW CRITERIA NEEDED The clear dome is ideal for roofs and attics in New Zealand because the light provides solar illumination and deters possums from scampering in the roof space. Equally importantly in New Zealand’s humid climate, it improves air extraction, ventilating by turning as a vane into the wind.
A wind vent that provides solar lighting as well as improved air extraction.
West’s research on the difficulties in defining product sustainability was presented at the Australian conference Clients Driving Innovation: Moving Ideas into Practice. Green building assessment schemes, he says, often fail to consider cost efficiency in their criteria. “Developing countries are confronted with pressing social and economic concerns so their constraints on making environmental progress are qualitatively different from those in developed countries.”
West came to the conclusion that, under many conditions in both developed and developing countries, mediumto-lightweight, highly insulated, mainstream hybrid design structures were more energy efficient and could be built quicker for less cost. He invented the R5 Supatherm insulated aerated concrete wall panelling system, which can be installed as part of a hybrid design that includes a concrete slab floor and timber frame. The panels have twice the insulation value of standard construction, 4.5 times less weight than brick veneer and are estimated to be 30 percent faster to build. They will feature, funding permitting, in the “one-stop sustainability shop” planned for construction by Unitec students in the Pacific Centre for Sustainable Communities on campus (see page 6). The planned building is based on the standard, relocatable, timber-frame housing design already in use as a teaching tool, but with adaptations that ensure affordability is a feature of sustainability.
West has experience with minimal budgets, having designed and project managed a range of community buildings in Australia before joining Unitec in 2005.
Besides West’s new vent and walling system, the building will have solar power supported by a stand alone biofuel processor and generator, a roof heat exchanger, rainwater tank collection, and, possibly, bio-cycle methane recycling.
“Low-cost, lean, community buildings begged the question, ‘what are acceptable materials and methods?’ which led me to challenge the conventional wisdom relating to green building labelling. Take wall panelling, for example. Traditional teaching in
CONTACT Associate Professor Shane West Head of School Unitec Applied Technology Institute email swest@unitec.ac.nz
Advance Summer 07
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NEWS IN BRIEF
From television to te reo professor “I was thinking about doing some kind of professorship in the future but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly and especially at my age, so it’s quite a huge honour,” said the 35-year-old. A powhiri was held on September 10 at Unitec and attended by around 70 people, including his wife Stacey Daniels and cousin, former Shortland St star Temuera Morrison.
Television personality Scotty Morrison received a pleasant surprise recently when he was made Adjunct Professor.
Morrison was selected by Unitec as Adjunct Professor due to his extensive knowledge in Te Reo me nga Tikanga Maori as well as his leadership, passion and dedication to the Maori language.
The Te Karere presenter is now an Adjunct Professor at Unitec’s School of Maori Education Puukenga, becoming only the second at the school after Maori co-party leader Dr Pita Sharples.
One of his first duties will be working closely with Unitec staff and students on the protocols regarding the campus’ new Marae, to be completed some time next year.
Thompson chairs Charter working party A public review of TVNZ’s Charter was recently headed by Unitec academic Peter Thompson.
TVNZ has come up with a redrafted Charter to make it easy to understand as well as including the public’s view.
A Senior Lecturer at Unitec’s School of Communication, Thompson chaired the working party set up to review public submissions on the re-drafted Charter.
Findings will be presented to the Minister of Broadcasting and Parliamentary Select Committee later in the year.
The review is a statutory requirement under the Television New Zealand Act 2003, and occurs every five years.
Thompson’s appointment follows a series of research publications examining broadcasting policy developments in New Zealand and the OECD.
First Pacific civil managers graduate A Unitec partnership with the Pacific Islands has its first ever graduates of the Graduate Diploma in Not for Profit Management. Two ceremonies were held in September and October in Papua New Guinea and Tonga for the graduates, attended by Unitec officials. Programme Director Margy-Jean Malcolm and Deputy President Dr Andrew Codling were at the ceremonies to hand out the diplomas. Malcolm says there are now more than 180 students involved in the programme conducted in block courses established “to build the skills and networks required for managing the complexities of civil society work in a Pacific context, and to strengthen their particular organisations”.
The diploma programme is a partnership between Unitec, the Pacific Islands Association of Non Governmental Organisations (PIANGO) and NZAID. Islands to gain graduates included Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and the Solomon Islands.
Spring ceremony marks first grads Unitec’s Spring Graduation Ceremony held special significance for some of the graduands capped. More than 200 students graduated on September 19, including the first ever graduates of new programmes implemented by Unitec. Amongst the graduates were Unitec’s first Doctor of Computing Peter Catt, the first graduate of the Postgraduate Diploma in Social Practice, Dr Shahul Hameed and a handful of graduates of the Diploma in Applied Computer Systems Engineering, including Thomas Laurensen. Dr Catt hopes to use his studies to help businesses improve their sales forecasts. Dr Hameed was a support worker, which ignited his interest in social practice. Laurensen stumbled upon the new computing programme at Unitec and is now going on to postgraduate level. He is already eyeing the Doctor of Computing programme.
Paradise lost and re-found It’s not quite the book h he intended to publish but Unitec Adjunct Professor Rod Oram iss nonetheless pleased with his first offering. Reinventing Paradise is a combination of articles Oram has had published during his time as a business reporter, as well as some new material looking at the sustainability of New Zealand’s economy. He was initially approached by publishing house Penguin to write a book on the New Zealand economy but was unable to commit to it fulltime. The compromise was Reinventing Paradise, which has already had good sales. The book was launched at Unitec’s Carrington’s bar at the end of September.
For more information about any of these news items, please contact Unitec’s Media Manager on +64 9 815 4321 ext 7601 or email lkumitau@unitec.ac.nz
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