Subscribe
What's New
Professor Paul Greenfield was my mentor both at the University of Queensland and in the Healthy Waterways campaign. Paul recently retired from his role as Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland and I would like to provide my perspective on his role as a human catalyst. Sometimes the most difficult thing to measure is [...]
Continue Reading »
A new special issue on Water Education for Sustainability in Higher Education in the Journal for Contemporary Water Research & Education was published, an outcome of a workshop organized by the International WaterCentre. The special issue is dedicated to Dr. Peter Oliver, an educator who passed away last November. The special issue includes a tribute [...]
Continue Reading »
The sad news that Dr. Peter Oliver passed away on 20 November 2012 arrived during our week of Thanksgiving. There was some solace in learning that after many months of medical insults (e.g., chemotherapy, radiation therapy, etc.), Peter’s last moments were not painful. We also can give thanks for having had the wonderful opportunity of [...]
Continue Reading »
Peter Oliver gave his final lecture entitled “Effectively communicating wicked problems–emotion, ethics, action and those funny little things called facts” at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. The lecture was originally scheduled to be held at the University of Queensland, but the interest was too high and Peter’s desire was to have people seated at [...]
Continue Reading »
Dr. Peter Oliver gave his “Retirement Lecture” at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in Queensland, Australia on 23 August 2012. I provided the introduction to Peter’s lecture and the text of that introduction is what comprises this blog post. Peter provided a thought provoking, funny and well delivered talk, with audience participation and interaction. [...]
Continue Reading »
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is an organization which funds research that protects and preserves the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the face of climate change. The Foundation convened a workshop to develop a synthetic publication that charts the vision for assessing the vulnerability to climate change. The Great Barrier Reef components used in this [...]
Continue Reading »
Sponsored by the Australian Water and Environmental Research Alliance (AWERA), a workshop on environmental report cards was held near Brisbane, Australia. This workshop focused on how environmental report cards have emerged as a technique to integrate data and provide feedback to a wide range of stakeholders as to the ecosystem health of a particular region. [...]
Continue Reading »
QUESTION: One of the things we have been noticing through the Healthy Country project is there has been a complete lack of people coming up through the system that have the skills and the capacity actually, more or less, to do what we needed. Your advice that it is necessary for us to make this [...]
Continue Reading »
The seminar was rounded off by some dancing with Dewey the Dugong, thanks to Dr. Peter Oliver who wrote and performed ‘Dugong Rock’. Peter also inspired the dancing with his Dugong Rock competition. Also, thanks to Dr. Tanzi Smith, a former University of Queensland student now working in the Mary River Catchment, who drove Dewey [...]
Continue Reading »
I want to wrap up with a little bit of vision towards the future and a ray of hope and optimism. And that comes from an analysis I did of the history of paradigm shifts that have occurred in societies starting in the 1500′s. There is a great book, “Human accomplishment: the pursuit of excellence [...]
Continue Reading »
