Mental health consumers and future service providers will benefit from the development of a new course at Central Queensland University which will link in with nursing students spending more practical time in mental health units.

CQU’s Head of the School of Nursing and Health Studies, based in Rockhampton, Dr Lorna Moxham last year identified the need for nursing students to access more information and acquire more skills to better work with mental health consumers.

CQU researcher Jim Douglas has watched hundreds of music videos and searched world-wide for various early short films while researching links with past music technology.

Mr Douglas has examined the emergence of sound and image recording technologies in the late 1900s and has discovered similarities with early twentieth century and more contemporary forms.

Asha Burnett of Gladstone State High and Patrick Stockall of The Cathedral College have been chosen as Round 2 winners of Rockhampton's High School Newsreader of the Year competition.

Round 1 winners chosen last week were Morgan Graham and Ryan Rostron from Rockhampton Grammar School The final heat will run next Thursday from 4pm at City Centre Plaza.

CQU Rockhampton will once again host Relay for Life, on May 20-21 next year on behalf of the Queensland Cancer Fund.

Details are available from Rachel Speechley via RelayForLifeCentralQld@qldcancer.

CQU graduate Mark Greenaway is now Operations Support and Maintenance General Manager with the CQ Ports Authority, based in Gladstone.

But he told the audience at the recent launch of CQU's Managing the Student Journey program that he would not have been able to achieve so much without access to a "local university".

The audit of CQU by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) reached its final week (October 17-21) with visits to both the Mackay and Rockhampton campuses.

The AUQA audit commenced on September 19 at the Fiji International Campus, and was followed by audit visits to the CQU sites in Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Melbourne.

The Minister for Small Business, Information Technology Policy & Multicultural Affairs (as well as Acting Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries), Chris Cummins toured CQU's Centre for Railway Engineering (CRE) facilities last Friday (October 7).

He was guided by Professor Elizabeth Taylor, Dr Colin Cole, Associate Professor Manicka Dhanasekar, Professor Bob Miles, Bernard Jansen and Chris Bosomworth from CQU.

Gladstone engineering students, Zach Zwisler and Michael Wilkinson will be heading out west for their summer vacation to gain valuable work experience with the Diamantina Shire Council.

Located at Bedourie, 1600 kilometres west of Brisbane, the first-year students will put theory into practice when they take on the roles of assistant engineers within the council.

Three CQU Rockhampton researchers will attend the World Association for Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology/Australian Society of Parasitology Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, from October 16-20.

Eridani Mulder (who studies parasites of dusky rats and pythons) will present at the conference, Haylee Weaver (parasites of arid rodents) will display a poster, and Lee Barnett (parasites of marine snails) will attend as a participant.

CQU Masters student Tabassum 'Neeta' Ferdous has been highly commended by the Public Health Association of Australia for her recent conference poster (presented in Perth).

Neeta's poster was on Participation in breast-screening information session: issues in the recruitment of non-English speaking women in an Australian regional city.