UTS launches its Graduate School of Health including orthoptics

Prof Benrimoj, whose own background is pharmacy, oversees a school encompassing five disciplines: Clinical Psychology, Orthoptics, Good Manufacturing Practice, Pharmacy, and Health Policy.
He delivered an enthusiastic overview of the GSH, its staff, and his determination to produce professionals that are ‘different’ from those produced by competing institutions. He praised the quality of the staff in the GSH and the purpose-built, state-of-the-art building on the university’s Broadway campus it occupies.
In addition to offering innovative, practice-based, research-led courses, the GSH has established a number of industry advisory boards to monitor relevance, course content, currency, and quality of ‘product’ (graduates).
New head of orthoptics disciplineThe launch is especially important for the orthoptics discipline which launches its new course at its new home (UTS) at the beginning of the 2015 acadic year.
The graduate orthoptics course intake will be fully subscribed (40-45 enrolments) and a significant number of graduate research students have commenced their programmes already.
That augers well for the discipline which weathered some turbulence in the final years of their tenure at their previous University of Sydney home (as reported in Insight in October).
Stability and continuity of course content is almost guaranteed by virtue of the core of the previous acadic and clinical team resurfacing at UTS.
Prof Kathryn Rose has been appointed head of discipline, a step-up for the discipline given her previous position at USyd was at the associate professor level.
The first UTS full-time acadic appointment (lecturer), Dr Amanda French, will be joined by associate lecturers (part-time) Ms Mara Giribaldi and Ms Michelle Courtney-Harris. Other part-time professionals will also be involved as required.
The stability and certainty offered by a keen permanent home, the GSH at UTS, will be welcomed by orthoptists everywhere.
The only other course in Australia is hosted by La Trobe University in Melbourne. Together the courses shoulder responsibility for training orthoptists for Australasia.