MIM CEO to address UQ graduates
Outgoing MIM Chief Executive Officer Nick Stump will address graduates at a University of Queensland graduation ceremony at 4pm today.
Mr Stump, a UQ Senator, was appointed Managing Director and Chief Executive in 1995 after a career with the CRA Group. He was Chief Executive of Comalco Limited and a group executive of CRA Limited, having been with the CRA group since 1970. He is a director of the Minerals Council of Australia and Queensland Mining Council Ltd.
Mr Stump will retire as CEO of MIM next March. He was recently appointed to chair the Queensland Tertiary Education Foundation, which helps tertiary institutions market their courses internationally.
Students from UQ's Engineering, Physical Sciences and Architecture Faculty will graduate at the 4pm ceremony in Mayne Hall, St Lucia campus.
Graduates of interest at the ceremony include:
o The first graduates of the Undergraduate Site Learning Program (USLP) - a first in Australia for the mining discipline - will receive their degrees. The USLP is part of an education-industry partnership formed between UQ engineering company Thiess in 1999. Under the program, Thiess mining projects host and provide a mentoring role to undergraduate students in their third or fourth year of study. Students are sent to mine sites for up to 12 weeks during university semester, where they complete mine site tasks and study a curriculum developed by UQ with Thiess input. They are linked to the University via the internet. The program encourages students to "learn in context" and combine learning with professional responsibilities, managing relationships and working in the pressured environment of an operating mine. For more information contact Professor Brian White (telephone 3365 8232).
o Beth Forde (telephone 0412 046 279) and her brother Gareth Forde (telephone 0414 303 243) will graduate Bachelor of Chemical Engineering, both with first class honours. Ms Forde, older by 18 months, had planned to study veterinary science, but a backpacking trip to Europe after she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in 1997 changed her mind. "My brother was already studying engineering and I'd been to a few engineering seminars with him," she said. Ms Forde said it had helped having a sibling studying the same course. "My brother is pretty competitive so I think that spurred us both on - his marks improved even further after I started studying engineering," she said. Ms Forde will join international oil and gas exploration company SANTOS as a graduate chemical engineer next year, after another backpacking trip to Europe. Her brother has won a Cambridge Australia Trust Scholarship and will begin his PhD in chemical engineering at Cambridge University in April.
o Paul Guard (telephone 07 4635 0989) will graduate Bachelor of Civil Engineering with first class honours and a grade point average of 6.93 (out of a possible 7). During his degree Mr Guard was part of a project aiming to protect North Stradbroke Island's lakes, worked on the Pacific Motorway Project and spent five months studying in Canada. Mr Guard's thesis focused on the hydraulic parameters of perching layers on sand islands - that is, the layers of sand that support a body of water. "My thesis was part of a very worthwhile project that UQ is undertaking with sand mining company CRL on North Stradbroke Island, to protect the lakes from any potential damage from mining activities," Mr Guard said. Mr Guard participated in one of Australia's biggest road projects - the Pacific Motorway Project - when he won the 1998-2000 Thiess Scholarship in Civil Engineering. In 1999 Mr Guard won the Overseas Exchange Bursary to study structural civil engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, as part of a UQ exchange program. The former senior prefect and dux of Toowoomba Grammar School had already spent twelve months on an AFS exchange in Iceland in 1996-97. His other achievements during his degree include the Philip Dimmock Memorial Bursary (1998), C.N. Ross Prize (1998), Cromwell Old Collegians Prize (1998), Cromwell College Foundation Prize (1998), Walter Bruce Darker Scholarship (1999), C.K. Chin Memorial Prize (1999), Kenneth A. Thiess Prize (2000) and the Esso Achievement Award (2000). He is also vice president of the Young Engineers University of Queensland and helped to run the SIEMENS Science Schools for year 10 students through the Young Scientists of Australia.
Managing Director of Global Banking & Securities Transactions (GBST) John Puttick will address graduates at the Engineering, Physical Sciences and Architecture Faculty graduation ceremony at UQ at 6.15pm today.
With a career spanning 30 years in business and computing, Mr Puttick is the founder of GBST, originally named Star Systems. He has developed the company from a general software house into an award-winning provider of integrated solutions for the finance, banking and securities industry.
Mr Puttick serves on the Faculty Advisory Committees for The University of Queensland and QUT, and South Bank Institute of TAFE. He is Chair of Vision Queensland and past president of the Rotary Club of Brisbane.
For more information, contact Helen Lewis in the UQ Communications Office (telephone 3365 2619) or email communications@mailbox.uq.edu.au.
