The Cairns Institute offers professional development, masterclasses and other non-award courses which capitalise on expertise within James Cook University and extend learning opportunities to wider audiences.
An example of our professional development work is the Masterclass in Native Title for Anthropologists which has been has successfully run as an eight day intensive course in 2013, 2014, 2015 (and will be run again in 2016) thanks to a generous grant from the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department. This masterclass is designed for early career anthropologists, and benefits archaeologists, cultural heritage workers, lawyers or other professionals looking to learn more about the very latest in Native Title practises with a particular focus on northern Australia and providing participants with targeted, skills-based training to prepare them for Native Title work.
There is currently no other similar opportunity available in Australia, within the range of course options tailored for Anthropologists, that brings this range and depth of workplace experience together in a context where participants have time and opportunity to fully engage in the process. The masterclass is an intense and intensive course that included field trips in the Cairns and Kuranda regions to a range of significant Aboriginal sites.
Each year the course has been filled to capacity and post-course participant reviews were analysed for qualitative and quantitative indicators. Pleasingly, in 2015 100% of the participants would recommend the course to others, and 96% were satisfied with the outcomes. Overall the course has been a resounding success with much of the praise being for the extremely high calibre of the contributions from the presenters and the majority of participants stating in feedback forms that they would now definitely seeking work in Native Title.