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VC ’ s corner euphemism for ‘ it ’ s really challenging every day ’. But it ’ s also full of real invention and real uplift and real solutions . So I take , even from COVID , the fact that it has been universities in the world that have been centrally placed in finding vaccines .
It ’ s been university commentators and vaccinologists and virologists who ’ ve helped the public all the way through , so we ’ re going to find solutions to teach and learn better under the pressure of crisis .
It has just made the sector reinvent . We were already reinventing , but it ’ s accelerating just by necessity . People at universities are amazingly resourceful . They ’ re inventive . That ’ s what PhDs are , for example . Discovering new knowledge .
I ’ ll give you a concrete example . The VU block model predated the pandemic and was brought in five years ago , one subject at a time , each one for a fourweek period . No lecture theatres , no large classes , no one in a class larger than 32 students . That ’ s the model for every first year student in the university . So in a sense , that ’ s a radical experiment , which happened pre COVID .
Now , when COVID hit , the transition of that to fully online was almost instantaneous because there was no need to reinvent the curriculum or the pedagogy or the assessment . It was already reinvented . So that ’ s a huge advantage . And what we have found therefore is student satisfaction rates have stayed almost the same throughout COVID , and indeed employability rates have gone up , which is fantastic to see . The skills of employment at VU have been rated the highest in Australia . So I pay tribute to my predecessors .
I came in on the tail end of that completely , but it ’ s also the element of something called the first year college , which was again , invented way before COVID . There are something like 97 staff under the first year college with its own dean . It ’ s like a super faculty . And it teaches every discipline in VU . Science , arts , everything related to the engineering and IT fields , health , business , you name it , it ’ s in the first year college and it ’ s in the VU block model .
There is not a student at the university who doesn ’ t experience that and there ’ s not a student who doesn ’ t benefit from it . So I think we are now the largest proponent or exponent of a first year college and the block model in the world . So , it ’ s good for Australia , leading in different ways , and there are other models being developed too .
How will you seek to differentiate VU from its competition ? Differentiation isn ’ t just something you aspire towards . You have to absolutely recognise the potential within an organisation . What I saw when I arrived just a year ago is an immense amount of interest in research , which has an impact for the world , of the world , what we call in our new strategic plan the ‘ area of protecting country ’.
And it ’ s a word that ’ s used by indigenous Australians to talk about deep care for the environment , for climate change research and practice , and also being able to deal with problems of health and planetary health in a really deep way too .
We ’ ve invented a new strategic plan in record time at Victoria University and I got some great advice from colleagues at places like UTS and Swinburne . We used a crowdsourcing tool called Crowdicity and started the process in March 2021 . We had nearly a thousand members of staff contribute in a crowdsource way to the writing of the plan and to the issues in it , and , of course , from that a lot of original ideas came up .
One of them was clearly to partner with industry on each campus , not five or three kilometres away , or even one kilometre away , but right on the campus – and unless ethical aligned industry is on the campus , it ceases to become a campus .
That ’ s a fairly radical notion , but that ’ s where we ’ re headed and we ’ re also headed towards research with impact : where you track it , you trace it , you measure it , you do it and the community benefits .
Now , others will do that too , of course , but that ’ s something we really hold dear . But choosing the right partner , that ’ s the trick , and it ’ s not every partner that ’ s going to do that . We have to be both selective and very enlightened in doing it .
VU ’ s strategic plan for the next seven years involves a flipped campus approach . What does that mean ? Can you give us some examples ? It takes that extreme case I mentioned before about university with industry at the core and makes it real . Let me give you some real life examples . One that ’ s already in place involves the Western Bulldogs AFL team .
We ’ re going to find solutions to teach and learn better under the pressure of crisis .
They are based in Footscray . The actual headquarters of that team is called the VU , short for Victoria University , Whitten , short for EJ Ted Whitten , Oval . And at that oval , we have 12 PhD students working in sports science doing everything from sports performance to performance mechanics , sports technology and tracking . That ’ s one of our strongest areas of research
We also have elements of the Polytechnic because we ’ re a dual sector university . So for example , remedial massage , post workout training happens on site at VU Whitten Oval . And 24 members of the teams – the women ’ s , men ’ s and subsidiary teams – are students with us . That ’ s the flipped campus .
In other words , the VU Whitten Oval is a practising professional sports place . It is also a fully embraced campus of the university , where we are planning access for research as well .
That ’ s the way of the future we think , where you align it totally : infrastructure , people , teaching , learning , research . All in one place and successfully .
We hope to do the same on every campus . For example , we ’ re speaking with Ambulance Victoria about setting up shop with its headquarters for training on the Sunshine campus in Melbourne , where we also teach paramedical science and non-emergency patient transport .
There ’ s a real life ambulance station , so then we ’ d have the back office , the front office , the collaboration , and the kind of national centre for excellence in paramedicine dream to bring about .
So that ’ s the model . Bring it together , put industry at the core , do certain things differently that no one else has done and see it happen .
I think authenticity is really needed . There ’ s so much in the political sphere that you would describe as anti-authentic . We ’ ve got to be the reverse . Universities have got to be the trusted supplier , giver , partner of futures for students , for staff , for collaborators and partners . If we don ’ t , we ’ ve failed in our mission . ■
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