title: Tokomaru Bay Wharf and heritage buildings restoration design: Innovating a holistic final year civil design project

authors: Boston, Megan

abstract: CONTEXT The discipline of civil engineering focuses on creating the built environment necessary for a functioning society, however, curriculum often focuses on the design of specific structures in isolation from the larger world in which they exist. While emerging civil engineers need have the technical competency to design sound structures, it is also critical that they understand how their designs integrates into society as a whole. As such, the final year design project for the inaugural batch of civil engineering graduates at the University of Waikato has been created to carefully integrate the civil engineering specific knowledge with wider interdisciplinary concepts through a real life restoration design of the historic Tokomaru Bay region. This project provides the students with the necessary tools to take a holistic approach to the restorative design of a heritage community centre. 

PURPOSE OR GOAL The purpose of this project is to provide students with the opportunity to get engaged with a large scale design project while training students to think about how the project fits into the larger community. Students have the opportunity to create a holistic design proposal for the restoration of the Tokomaru Bay Wharf and Historic Buildings that considers of the wants and needs of the community and local jurisdiction, incorporates local policy, and integrates principle of urban planning and community engagement.
APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS Students work in teams to create a plan for the restoration of a wharf and historic buildings. As part of the project, students consider how the restoration efforts will integrate into the wider community. Students are taught by an interdisciplinary team about urban planning, architecture restoration, risk analysis, and community engagement. Students have the opportunity to fully engage with all the steps in a design process through site visits, working with the local heritage trust and district council, and use of historic maps to create a plan and design for the restoration that meets the needs and wants of the local community. 
ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES It is anticipated that by using the real life design project, the Tokomaru Bay Wharf and Heritage Buildings restoration, as a case study for the final year civil engineering project will motivate students to engage with all aspects of the project. Designs produced by the students should be holistic in nature, demonstrating how their ideas for the reconstruction project fit into the larger needs and demands of the local community and the district council. Student projects should also be mindful of the significant nature of the area and incorporate the history into their final design.
CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY It is vital that students are prepared to meet the expectations and demands outside of university. Involving students in real design projects motivates them to engage with the project. The holistic nature of this project, further teaches students key skills that will be beneficial to their future engineering careers.

text: Tokomaru Bay Wharf and heritage buildings restoration design: Innovating a holistic final year civil design project CONTEXT The discipline of civil engineering focuses on creating the built environment necessary for a functioning society, however, curriculum often focuses on the design of specific structures in isolation from the larger world in which they exist. While emerging civil engineers need have the technical competency to design sound structures, it is also critical that they understand how their designs integrates into society as a whole. As such, the final year design project for the inaugural batch of civil engineering graduates at the University of Waikato has been created to carefully integrate the civil engineering specific knowledge with wider interdisciplinary concepts through a real life restoration design of the historic Tokomaru Bay region. This project provides the students with the necessary tools to take a holistic approach to the restorative design of a heritage community centre. 

PURPOSE OR GOAL The purpose of this project is to provide students with the opportunity to get engaged with a large scale design project while training students to think about how the project fits into the larger community. Students have the opportunity to create a holistic design proposal for the restoration of the Tokomaru Bay Wharf and Historic Buildings that considers of the wants and needs of the community and local jurisdiction, incorporates local policy, and integrates principle of urban planning and community engagement.
APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS Students work in teams to create a plan for the restoration of a wharf and historic buildings. As part of the project, students consider how the restoration efforts will integrate into the wider community. Students are taught by an interdisciplinary team about urban planning, architecture restoration, risk analysis, and community engagement. Students have the opportunity to fully engage with all the steps in a design process through site visits, working with the local heritage trust and district council, and use of historic maps to create a plan and design for the restoration that meets the needs and wants of the local community. 
ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES It is anticipated that by using the real life design project, the Tokomaru Bay Wharf and Heritage Buildings restoration, as a case study for the final year civil engineering project will motivate students to engage with all aspects of the project. Designs produced by the students should be holistic in nature, demonstrating how their ideas for the reconstruction project fit into the larger needs and demands of the local community and the district council. Student projects should also be mindful of the significant nature of the area and incorporate the history into their final design.
CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY It is vital that students are prepared to meet the expectations and demands outside of university. Involving students in real design projects motivates them to engage with the project. The holistic nature of this project, further teaches students key skills that will be beneficial to their future engineering careers.

year: 2019

title: Actinobacteria and cyanobacteria diversity in terrestrial Antarctic microenvironments using culture-dependent and independent methods

authors: Rego, Adriana

subjects: Actinobacteria

abstract: Bacterial diversity from McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, the largest desert on earth, has become more easily assessed with the development of High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) techniques. However, some of the diversity remains unachievable by the power of sequencing. In this study, we combine cultivation and HTS techniques to survey Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria diversity along different soil and endolithic micro-environments of Victoria Valley in McMurdo Dry Valleys. Our results have demonstrated that the Dry Valleys Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria distribution is driven by environmental forces, in particular the effect of water availability and endolithic environments clearly conditioned the distribution of those communities. Data derived from HTS show that the percentage of Cyanobacteria decreases from about 20% in the sample closest to the water source to neglectable values on the last three samples of the transect with less water availability. Inversely, Actinobacteria abundance increases from the wet to the driest samples. Over 30% of the total HTS data set was composed of Actinobacterial strains, mainly distributed by 5 families: Sporichthyaceae, Euzebyaceae, Patulibacteraceae, Nocardioidaceae and Rubrobacteraceae. However, the 11 actinobacterial strains isolated in this study, belonged to Micrococcaceae and Dermacoccaceae families that were underrepresented in the HTS data set. A total of 10 cyanobacterial strains from the order Synechococcales were also isolated, distributed by 4 different genera (Nodosilinea, Leptolyngbya, Pectolyngbya, Acaryochloris). In agreement with the cultivation results, Lepyolyngbya was identified as dominant genera in the HTS data set. Acaryochloris genus were found exclusively in the endolithic sample and represented 44% of the total 16S rDNA sequences, although despite our efforts we were not able to properly isolate any strain from Acaryochloris genus. The importance of combining cultivation and sequencing techniques is highlighted, as we have shown that culture-dependent methods employed in this study were able to retrieve Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria taxa that were not detected in HTS data set, suggesting that the combination of both strategies can be usefull to recover both abundant and rare members of the communities.

text: Actinobacteria and cyanobacteria diversity in terrestrial Antarctic microenvironments using culture-dependent and independent methods Bacterial diversity from McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, the largest desert on earth, has become more easily assessed with the development of High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) techniques. However, some of the diversity remains unachievable by the power of sequencing. In this study, we combine cultivation and HTS techniques to survey Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria diversity along different soil and endolithic micro-environments of Victoria Valley in McMurdo Dry Valleys. Our results have demonstrated that the Dry Valleys Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria distribution is driven by environmental forces, in particular the effect of water availability and endolithic environments clearly conditioned the distribution of those communities. Data derived from HTS show that the percentage of Cyanobacteria decreases from about 20% in the sample closest to the water source to neglectable values on the last three samples of the transect with less water availability. Inversely, Actinobacteria abundance increases from the wet to the driest samples. Over 30% of the total HTS data set was composed of Actinobacterial strains, mainly distributed by 5 families: Sporichthyaceae, Euzebyaceae, Patulibacteraceae, Nocardioidaceae and Rubrobacteraceae. However, the 11 actinobacterial strains isolated in this study, belonged to Micrococcaceae and Dermacoccaceae families that were underrepresented in the HTS data set. A total of 10 cyanobacterial strains from the order Synechococcales were also isolated, distributed by 4 different genera (Nodosilinea, Leptolyngbya, Pectolyngbya, Acaryochloris). In agreement with the cultivation results, Lepyolyngbya was identified as dominant genera in the HTS data set. Acaryochloris genus were found exclusively in the endolithic sample and represented 44% of the total 16S rDNA sequences, although despite our efforts we were not able to properly isolate any strain from Acaryochloris genus. The importance of combining cultivation and sequencing techniques is highlighted, as we have shown that culture-dependent methods employed in this study were able to retrieve Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria taxa that were not detected in HTS data set, suggesting that the combination of both strategies can be usefull to recover both abundant and rare members of the communities.

year: 2019

title: Street-level bureaucracy and occupational therapy practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. A genealogical critique.

authors: Silcock, Elizabeth Mary

subjects: power

abstract: As a human science that is also part of administering and supporting bureaucracy, occupational therapy functions in multi-layered networks of power  that support many different social structures. Occupational therapists’ work often involves operationalising health, education and social services at the street-level, positioning them between the aspirations of both policy and social activism and material life outcomes. Through a genealogical critique, this thesis problematises the practice of occupational therapy through a Foucauldian lens that views everything as dangerous. By viewing occupational therapy practice as dangerous, the power relations at the street-level of the mundane and taken-for-granted have been problematised as part of much larger social structures of power and discourse. 
Several Foucauldian tools were deployed in order to ensure that a focus on occupational therapy practices was maintained; three distinct research methods were utilised to access a range of heterogeneous genealogical information.  Firstly, an historical archival analysis of the four iterations of the Competencies for Registration for occupational therapists document (1990 to the current day) produced by the regulatory authority, the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand, was carried out.  Secondly, practice observations of occupational therapists working in different practice settings were analysed as three individual case studies. Concurrently with these two methods, a critical action method using a research blog was developed to create a medium for public discussion of practice through an open engagement with the profession. The combination of these three methods enabled access to a range of elements for analysis.  Many of these elements inter-linked, overlapped and connected to historically contingent networks of dominant power that have formed through the processes of colonisation, the establishment of the health system and normalised medical practices, and economic forms of governance. The nuances of how occupational therapy is practised at the street-level offered opportunities to contest the dominance of these networks. In all three case studies there was an unspoken understanding and a normalisation of materiality as an accepted and significant element of how the profession practised.  The material regimes of knowledge and material practices in these unspoken norms were highly productive and able to contest other lines of power.  Along with this alternate network of power, the most recent version of the Competencies for Registration offers a further opportunity for occupational therapists to contest dominant power relations in a way that could capitalise on the secure position the profession has developed through its material network of power.  Opportunities for alternate pathways of practice which privilege Te Ao Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are a possibility in the legally sanctioned Competencies. The close connection of occupational therapy practices to real life material outcomes for other people, position the street-level doing of occupational therapists at a juncture where action and decision making can re-configure power relations. Re-thinking practice in terms of what the doing of occupational therapy does in relation to networks of power, is an opportunity for practitioners to enact policy at the street-level in ways that use their ability to influence power from the bottom up whilst being alert to the dangers presented by doing so.

text: Street-level bureaucracy and occupational therapy practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. A genealogical critique. As a human science that is also part of administering and supporting bureaucracy, occupational therapy functions in multi-layered networks of power  that support many different social structures. Occupational therapists’ work often involves operationalising health, education and social services at the street-level, positioning them between the aspirations of both policy and social activism and material life outcomes. Through a genealogical critique, this thesis problematises the practice of occupational therapy through a Foucauldian lens that views everything as dangerous. By viewing occupational therapy practice as dangerous, the power relations at the street-level of the mundane and taken-for-granted have been problematised as part of much larger social structures of power and discourse. 
Several Foucauldian tools were deployed in order to ensure that a focus on occupational therapy practices was maintained; three distinct research methods were utilised to access a range of heterogeneous genealogical information.  Firstly, an historical archival analysis of the four iterations of the Competencies for Registration for occupational therapists document (1990 to the current day) produced by the regulatory authority, the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand, was carried out.  Secondly, practice observations of occupational therapists working in different practice settings were analysed as three individual case studies. Concurrently with these two methods, a critical action method using a research blog was developed to create a medium for public discussion of practice through an open engagement with the profession. The combination of these three methods enabled access to a range of elements for analysis.  Many of these elements inter-linked, overlapped and connected to historically contingent networks of dominant power that have formed through the processes of colonisation, the establishment of the health system and normalised medical practices, and economic forms of governance. The nuances of how occupational therapy is practised at the street-level offered opportunities to contest the dominance of these networks. In all three case studies there was an unspoken understanding and a normalisation of materiality as an accepted and significant element of how the profession practised.  The material regimes of knowledge and material practices in these unspoken norms were highly productive and able to contest other lines of power.  Along with this alternate network of power, the most recent version of the Competencies for Registration offers a further opportunity for occupational therapists to contest dominant power relations in a way that could capitalise on the secure position the profession has developed through its material network of power.  Opportunities for alternate pathways of practice which privilege Te Ao Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are a possibility in the legally sanctioned Competencies. The close connection of occupational therapy practices to real life material outcomes for other people, position the street-level doing of occupational therapists at a juncture where action and decision making can re-configure power relations. Re-thinking practice in terms of what the doing of occupational therapy does in relation to networks of power, is an opportunity for practitioners to enact policy at the street-level in ways that use their ability to influence power from the bottom up whilst being alert to the dangers presented by doing so.

year: 2018