Cultural connections across time and place : Wardell's late 19th century Genazzano FCJ College Kew

The Catholic Church was profoundly affected by the 1872 Victorian Education Act, which made education secular, compulsory and free, and led to the withdrawal of state aid to religious schools. In order for the Church to run its own schools, it had to look overseas for help and invited religious teaching orders, such as the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJs) to set up schools in Victoria, Australia. In many instances purpose built buildings were designed by architects. William Wardell was well established in private practice in Sydney when he designed the new Convent and School, Kew, Victoria, for the FCJ Sisters, in the late 1880s. Building commenced just before the crash of Marvellous Melbourne. Less than half of the total concept of Wardell’s original plan was built. It opened for business in April 1891. Today this building forms the heart of the contemporary Genazzano FCJ College Kew. Many histories intersect in this commission. The vision for Catholic education in Victoria in the late 19th century is critical. The FCJs charism and their experience of teaching in Europe, in France, England, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, provides a model for their work in Australia. At this time the importance of architecture to society is made manifest in education and its demands on building: if learning is valued then buildings should reflect this, for public buildings can shape morality. Wardell was trained as a Gothic Revival architect and his building participates in a broader medieval and Gothic tradition. Wardell’s original plan for this late Victorian Gothic style asymmetrical three-storeyed building, was designed to integrate a convent, school, chapel, and dormitories. This paper considers architectural history from diverse perspectives, educational, social, religious, economic and political, recognising the complexity of this project and the people who played a part in its conception and realisation.

Entry-level college mathematics success predictors : developmental performance, 'stopping-out' and demographics

Institutionally collected data identifying student demographics, course performance in both the precollege mathematics course and the college-level mathematics course, and 'stopping-out' time between the pre-college course and the college-level course were used to create a predictive model of academic success for 'high risk' college-level mathematics students. The two most significant factors were the pre-college mathematics course grade and the student's over-all college GPA.

William Wardell's 1859 St John's College - a rare realisation of Pugin's ideal Catholic College?

William Wardell’s St John’s College, Sydney, considered the grandest and architecturally most distinguished university college in New South Wales, is an exceptional example of 19th century Gothic Revival architecture.  The information board outside the college states that St John’s is ‘a rare realisation of Pugin’s ideal Catholic College’ and further that ‘it demonstrates [Pugin]’s profound influence on the work of Wardell’. This is but a small part of the story. The commission for St John’s College was far more complex.  The correspondence between the architects, William Wardell, Edmund Blacket and others, and St John’s Council indicates that right from the beginning there was a general lack of understanding of Wardell’s original design concept for the building. This has continued to the present day, as evidenced by the information on the board outside St John’s College, in which it is incorrectly assumed that Wardell’s proposal included a quadrangle as featured in Pugin’s ‘ideal College’. This paper, based largely on primary sources, investigates such claims about St John’s, considers William Wardell and the Gothic Revival, examines St John’s College within the University of Sydney – its design and its translation and posits a few conclusions leading to new understandings.

Building capacity in sexuality education : The Northern Bay College experience : Report of the first phase of the sexuality education and community support (SECS) project

The Sexuality Education and Community Support (SECS) project aims to introduce a P-12 approach to sexuality education at Northern Bay P-12 College (NBC) through a collaborative partnership process between the schools within the College and local, regional, and state health and education agencies and has set out to change current sexual health education practice in the College and assist other schools in the region to do the same. The Project’s goal is a ‘sustainable, responsive, whole school, regionally consistent, best practice sexuality education’. During this first or establishment phase of the SECS project strategies have been implemented to begin the process of building capacity in sexuality education at NBC. These strategies are aimed at developing a sustainable approach during the next three and a half years.