NEWS
Ripple effect
Researchers cannot remain ‘blind’ to effects
of climate change on their work.
W
hile awareness of the far-reaching impact of climate
change is rapidly increasing, the extent of the possible
negative effects is still being discovered.
A new study has prompted Australian experts to warn the higher
education sector to prepare for climate change’s ripple effect on
academic research.
A collaborative study between the University of Queensland
and RMIT found extreme climate change weather events such as
bushfires, hailstorms and floods impacted on research output.
UQ scientist and director of science at the Wildlife Conservation
Society, Professor James Watson, said climate change was an
escalating threat to research-intensive universities.
“Researchers are going to have to adapt their work to our
changing climate,” Watson said.
“It will inevitably affect the physical assets needed for research
such as buildings and equipment, research processes and practices,
and the human groups and organisms studied.”
On the outside
Greater support needed for students
from refugee backgrounds.
D
espite improvements in recent years, students with a refugee
background are struggling with the transition from high
school to university, with new research showing many feel
socially excluded and isolated while studying.
While Australian universities are collectively aiming for growth
in domestic undergraduate enrolments of students from low
socio-economic backgrounds, the participation rate of refugee-
background students is below that of disadvantaged groups.
The research paper – ‘Traversing the Terrain of Higher Education:
Experiences of Refugee Youth on the Inside’, published in the
6
campusreview.com.au
Watson urged institutions to start compiling climate change risk
plans that address the issue.
Associate Professor Lauren Rickards from the RMIT Centre for
Urban Research said the recent bushfires had been a wake-up call.
“Ecological fieldwork is one of the most exposed and sensitive of
any human activity to climatic and biophysical disruption,” Rickards
said. “Even fieldwork designed to study exactly such events can
find vital data streams, research projects and intellectual agendas
disrupted. Interruptions like this are especially consequential for
groups unable to pivot their work to studying bushfire recovery or
find alternative sites.”
Rickards said extreme weather events also affected people on
time-sensitive work contracts or scholarships, with inflexible or
limited budgets, or without the time or means to re-establish studies.
Even research seemingly safe inside buildings can find itself
suddenly disrupted by climate-related events.
“The recent hailstorms [in Canberra] severely affected research
at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO) by damaging three greenhouses and
destroying years of experiments, many on crop sustainability and
resilience,” Rickards said. “According to CSIRO’s chief operations
officer, most of those projects will be totally lost and the remainder
will take years to recover.”
Watson said researchers had to change their approach and accept
that they could not study climate change as independent observers.
“We can’t continue to be blind in the research sector, as it will
ultimately affect our ability to report on climate change-related
issues,” he said. ■
International Journal of Inclusive Education – suggests that this is
because universities have not sufficiently supported students with
a refugee background (those who have been forced to flee their
country because of persecution, war or violence).
Instead, universities are taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach, failing
to individually tailor learning techniques, resulting in students being
unable to realise their study ambitions.
The study’s author, Associate Professor Loshini Naidoo of Western
Sydney University, says students who were once refugees have
long been an invisible group in the eyes of university policymakers.
Standardised programs and pathways designed to aid students in
their transition into higher education fail to properly consider the
nuanced learning and social barriers these students face, she argues.
“Detailed knowledge of the particular histories and educational
trajectories of individual refugee background students are required to
give insights,” Naidoo says.
“Effective pathways, programs and transition strategies should not
be isolated or disjointed. They need to be part of a carefully thought-
out and planned, long-term approach.”
The paper cites the stories of four students with refugee
backgrounds as examples of the findings, which demonstrate the
students were generally unfamiliar with the university environment,
and faced social isolation and disillusionment at university.
The data from the study showed that establishing a network on
campus of students from refugee backgrounds would be a big help.
This prompted Western Sydney University to establish United Voices,
a student group bringing together people from refugee and asylum-
seeker backgrounds with sector leaders to improve the transition to
higher education. ■