One of Charles Sturt’s major initiatives is to develop a new Rural Medical School in Orange, in partnership with Western Sydney University (WSU).
This significant undertaking will support the training of doctors, focussing on the delivery of medicine in a remote and regional setting. The project not only involves building new facilities but also extensive planning and implementation to support admissions and course delivery.
To assist with the planning we met with senior members from the WSU Information Technology team at our Orange campus in February.
As well as discussing and reviewing progress for the medical centre, we considered a wide range of other technology-related issues, opportunities, and developments common to both institutions.
A key point of discussion was the emerging Coronavirus threat. At the time of our meeting, this was an issue localised to China and impacting only our respective Chinese students. We did not know then how the situation would change so dramatically to the point at which we find ourselves today. The conversation around remote access strategies and business continuity planning was definitely pertinent to the current situation.
WSU and Charles Sturt use some of the same key technology platforms such as Blackboard, Ascender Pay, Panopto and Oracle. WSU is also moving to Banner Student and other Ellucian products such as Degree Works, both of which we have been using at Charles Sturt for some time.
The use of common systems, and the fact WSU also has separate campus locations, added significant value to the conversation. Our commonalities highlighted many key learnings and opportunities for both sides. WSU was interested to hear about some of our recent projects, in particular the sourcing of replacement HR and Finance platforms. And they were able to share their experiences with Zoom, which is now live at Charles Sturt.
Cybersecurity was another major topic of conversation. WSU is facing the same challenges as Charles Sturt, and indeed other institutions, when it comes to maintaining a secure network and protecting personal information.
Both teams were given a tour of the Bloomfield Medical Centre, located across the road from the Orange Base Hospital. This is a new and impressive facility that the joint program medical students will be using.
The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to ensure alignment from a technology perspective on the new medical program. It also enabled discussion around themes pertinent to both organisations. We hope that this exercise will become an annual event.
Find out more
Keep up to date with the details and progress of this project at CSU/WSU Joint Program in Medicine.