North Ryde. Vice-chancellor retires

The federal government is likely to reimpose limits on the number of student places at universities to control costs, says the outgoing vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, Steven Schwartz. who retires today after 6½ years in the job. ''You can expect that that might happen,'' Professor Schwartz said. ''Because there are very large numbers of students now, the government may find that it is quite expensive, and may start looking to put caps back on the system,” he said.

North Ryde. Only one in hemisphere

Macquarie Neurology, a specialist neurology practice located at Macquarie University, and providing services to Macquarie University Hospital, is one of 24 official study sites for the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), and the only site in the southern hemisphere.

North Ryde. Pioneer pilot project

The University of Brawijaya, located in the city of Malang in East Java, will pioneer a pilot project to introduce a range of services for students with disabilities, modeled on Macquarie University Accessibility Services (MQAS), a unit of the university’s Learning and Teaching Centre that serves the unique needs of students with disabilities. MQAS converts learning materials into formats tailored to accommodate students’ individual needs and also researches and trials the latest in assistive technologies.

North Ryde. Students' payment services

Macquarie University has signed an agreement with the National Australia Bank Group and China’s bankcard association, UnionPay, that will make it even easier for Chinese students to study with it. The agreement will introduce UnionPay payment services to the university campus to enable Chinese students to more conveniently pay tuition fees and living expenses. The agreement, the first involving an Australian university, The university has over 5000 current Chinese students and a further 14,000 Chinese alumni.

North Ryde. Centre officially opened

The Centre for Workforce Futures, at Macquarie University, has been officially launched. The innovative new research centre that will focus on workforce and workplace issues with application to public policy, industry and the community. The centre will have one of the largest concentrations of expertise in the Asia Pacific region.

Region. University is one of six

Macquarie University is one of six universities to partner the Centre for International Finance and Regulation in providing education and training programs at honours, master and doctoral levels. “We want to be a key influencer on the international stage in terms of best practice regulation and policies for the financial sector,” said Ros Brady, the centre’s CEO. The education, research and advisory centre is charged with positioning Sydney as the services hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

North Ryde. Tim Flannery recognised

The Australian Academy of Science announced its annual election honours, and recognised Macquarie University’s Professor Tim Flannery among 21 academics and researchers. Dr Flannery has been elected as a Fellow for his work in advancing public awareness and understanding of science. The new Fellows will be admitted at a ceremony in May this year.

North Ryde. Expansion of service

Access Macquarie Ltd (Access MQ) has announced an expansion of its innovation and commercialisation service provision. MTBI, the Macquarie Technology Business Incubator. MTBI has contracted Alchemy Equities to provide advisory services to its clients and businesses in Sydney’s north.

Access MQ is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Macquarie University and serves as a link between academics and researchers from Macquarie University and Australian industry. The incubator services include assisting with finding expertise for research projects as well as virtual and serviced office provision.

North Ryde. Young Australian

Macquarie University alumni Jennifer Star (nee Purcell) has been announced as the 2012 NSW Young Australian of Year. The 25-year-old youth educator was awarded for her efforts in establishing an education partnership organisation, which benefits thousands of Indian children.

North Ryde. First for Sydney

Macquarie University is planning to become the first Sydney university to adopt the controversial ‘‘Bologna model’’ and restructure its degrees, it announced yesterday. One element of the model is to replace the one-year honours degree with a two-year masters degree which the university said was more in line with institutions in North America, Europe and China.

North Ryde. Key to success

The key to success for Australian universities engaging with India is to focus on a single concept: “Indianisation”, according to Mark Gabbott, executive dean, of the faculty of business and economics, at Macquarie University, in The Australian Financial Review. Whether in content, delivery, pricing, academic values or focus, it is critical to develop responses which reflect the many unique aspects of the Indian education sector, and avoid the temptation to treat this market as anything remotely similar to China, he said.

North Ryde. Media trailblazer

Macvquarie Univerity’s vice-chancellor, Professor Steven Schwartz, is one of Australia's social media trailblazers, according to a report published by the Guardian Professional Network. In a report profiling ten Australian social media identities, Professor Schwartz was identified as having built a reputation of excellence for Macquarie University, especially through social engagement.

North Ryde. Uni wins marketing award

Macquarie University's marketing team have been recognised with a top award at the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) 2011 NSW Awards for Marketing Excellence.Macquarie's Future Students (Undergraduate) campaign was named the Education category winner, for its integrated approach to increasing the number of prospective students who placed the university as their first choice. The campaign connected with students across a variety of platforms, including direct mail, electronic direct mail (EDM), social media, events and more.

North Ryde. University moved up ranking

Macquarie University has moved up the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for the fifth consecutive year. Compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the ARWU ranks more than 1000 universities worldwide based upon a number of indicators including their number of highly cited researchers and the number of articles published in journals Nature and Science. Macquarie was officially placed in the 200-300 band worldwide, equal 8-9th with the University of Adelaide in Australia.

North Ryde. First phase launched

Macquarie University launched the first phase of a university-wide reporting and analytics program, Datamart,.which, by Yellowfin's Business Intelligence (BI) solution, delivers self-service data analysis to the university academic and business decision-makers anywhere, anytime, on any device. “Macquarie has a strategic goal - to be one of the top 200 universities in world rankings by 2014, and to be one of the top eight research universities in Australia," said Macquarie’s chief information officer, Marc Bailey. "To get there, we need to understand how we're performing. To achieve that, we need great data. Actually we have the data, but we weren't able to surface it. Now Datamart, with Yellowfin technology underpinning it, provides us capability to expose that data and leverage it."