Civil Engineering - Student Newsletter February 2011

Welcome back

Welcome back to all our existing students, and an extra special welcome to all new first year students. We have a separate additional welcome page for our first year students.

Continue your journey to becoming professional engineers with us.

Infrastructure improvements in civil engineering over summer

We have been busy working on the civil engineering building over summer to provide a better research and study environment for our students.

• Lecture rooms: Lecture rooms 4 and 5 have been completely renovated with airconditioning, carpet and new furniture. These rooms will be well suited for tutorial and smaller group teaching.
• Laboratories: Our structures, soils and fluids laboratories are experiencing major upgrades. As you visit them for lab classes or thesis experiments you may notice new equipment, benches, computers and more.
• IT Resources: For 3rd and 4th year students, the Hawkins lab has been updated with new PCs running Windows 7 and Office 2010. The air-conditioning in Hawkins is now fully operational.
  All students now have unlimited and free access to internet downloads in most computer labs across uni (fair use in downloads apply).
  A new wireless access point has been installed in the Civil Engineering foyer, and a laptop booth with bench and powerpoints provided.
• Civil Engineering Building: Major air-conditioning works of all offices is now completed. We have just painted all the walls, and spruced up the corridors with new noticeboards and furniture.

Room 338: Student and staff room

The School has converted Room 338, which has been used by both students and staff as a lunch room/kitchenette and by SUCE for some storage, into an additional office. We are working towards finding alternative facilities for the previous student use.

The School is in need of finding office space for its increasing number of academics and post doctoral fellows, and to find additional office space it was decided to convert the student and staff area in R338 on Level 3 to an office.

The Room used to house SUCE equipment and a table and chairs for students and staff to use for meetings and lunch or morning tea. The SUCE equipment has been moved to a dedicated SUCE room adjacent to Lecture Room 1 on ground floor Level 2, which will make it easier to organise BBQs and the like in the Civil Engineering courtyard.

Meetings are about to be held between SUCE executives, Civil staff and Campus Infrastructure Services (CIS) to redesign the lawn area of the Courtyard to include shaded areas with tables and benches to be used by students and staff in lieu of R338. Additional student areas will be made available as part of the redevelopment of the Engineering Library space to be completed in 2011/2012.

A request has also been made by SUCE for a dedicated room for undergraduate students to be made available. While such is not easily found in the School at present, the Head has committed to discuss the matter with the Faculty and request that the future planning of the Engineering precinct includes a dedicated room for Civil students similar to those available for students in other engineering schools.

Cynthia's Column: Make enrolment faster and easier

You can speed up the process and avoid waiting yourself by doing the following before seeing me in person concerning any change of enrolment.

Visit our enrolment advice page to find out how.

Enrolment Rules

Faculty rules state that if you failed a core unit last year you must enrol in it this year.

Faculty rules state that if you failed a core unit last year you must enrol in it this year. If you have a clash the earlier year subject must take precedence. Students are not generally permitted to enrol in later year subjects unless they have done all the previous cores.

Timetable clashes can occur where you are taking units across different years. We have removed formal prerequisites to allow enrolments of this type, however, it is your responsibility to ensure that any clash is manageable. We strongly recommend against you enrolling in a program with clashes without first seeking the advice of your academic advisor. Advisors will normally only recommend high loads above 24 credit points or clashes for students with good academic records.

If a clash occurs between a lecture in one subject and a tutorial in another it may be possible to rearrange tutorial times and you should approach the course coordinator of the subject with the tutorial. If you have any other concerns about clashes you should speak to your year advisor.

Timetable changes 2011

All students should now have their timetables for 2011. Returning students may have noticed some changes to lecture times. We explain the need for timetable changes below.

• Removing clashes: In Semester 1 last year, the 5 worst clashes between civil subjects involved nearly 100 cases, this year the number is less than 25. While clashes have never existed amongst classes in the same year, we have an increasing number of students doing subjects across different years (eg combined degree students), and we have made changes to reduce those incidents.
• Increased tutorials and labs: Many subjects have changed and increased the number or arrangements for their lab and tutorial sessions.

We realise that not every student will have the perfect timetable that optimises their time at university and time available for other activities. Our priority has been to maximise the opportunities for all students to be able to attend the scheduled classes for an increasingly complicated set of different enrolments.

Want the latest news - check the bulletin board regularly

The Civil Engineering Bulletin Board contains important notices concerning individual units of study, assignments and exams.

Job vacancies and opportunities for work experience will be posted on the board when we receive them.