Professor Robyn Bartel recently retired as Chair Academic Board after serving on the Board’s executive and in various other governance-related roles since 2014. The role of Academic Board is vital in ensuring the quality and integrity of the University’s academic (research, and teaching and learning) programs, and Robyn’s leadership has guided the University’s continuing compliance, development and focus on academic and institutional quality. Her period of leadership coincided with a particularly challenging period of operation for the University, including the pandemic, resulting in Robyn taking on a greater than usual workload to ensure student support, research and other learning journeys continued smoothly. Various Committees, but in particular the Academic Freedom Working Group, which progressed policy development and feedback regarding freedom of speech, academic freedom and Code of Conduct policies in response to the French Review, benefitted from Robyn’s leadership during this time.

Robyn is succeeded as Chair Academic Board by Associate Professor Jennifer McDonell who brings to the role a strong record of service to the University, extensive leadership experience as well as experience in teaching and learning, postgraduate and postdoctoral supervision, and staff mentoring.

Jennifer kindly took the time to answer Pulse’s questions which can be read below.

• What motivated you to stand for Chair, Academic Board?

 A desire to make a difference, by taking steps towards responsible and effective change to make the university a better place for students, staff and the communities we serve. Sounds grand doesn’t it?  But I choose to believe that the majority of my colleagues deeply care about their disciplines, their research and their students,  and therefore they deserve strong participatory academic governance that supports such values as accountability, transparency, autonomy, academic freedom, diversity of participation, trust, and reliability. I suspect service must be “in my DNA”, as the cliché has it, as I have been actively involved since my school days in social justice movements and then at university in the competitive training ground of Sydney University student politics. Like most academics I would prefer to be reading books and researching, but I guess the “If not me, who? If not now, when?” mantra must be somehow hardwired in.

• What do you feel you bring to the role of Chair, Academic Board?

 I take accountability seriously: I am decisive by nature and I aim to ‘own’ my decisions and actions.   I also have an organic knowledge of UNE as an institution as well as experience of the Higher Education sector in Australia. I have been fortunate to have been fully employed as an academic in universities since graduating from my undergraduate Honours degree, and before coming to UNE taught full time for 9 years at the University of Sydney, 3 years at UNSW (Canberra), and a year at Macquarie University. Internationally I have spent extended periods of time at the University of Cambridge (3 years) and have taught in the North American system on occasion through the University of California system (UCSC, Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis), all of which has helped cultivate a perspectival habit of mind towards local institutional matters.

• What are your favourite things to do when you are away from the office?

I have very little “free” time outside office hours. The Chair of Academic Board is a demanding, time-intensive role. However, I would like to maintain a research footprint whilst serving as Chair, and therefore I spend most evenings and weekends on research-related activities, including my higher degree and other supervisions.  When I do have the leisure to ‘do nothing in a grand manner’ I like to cook, read, and watch movies with my partner and our dog, Keeper (a 48kg working-line German Shepherd who rarely sleeps).  I spend an inordinate amount of time obsessively playing the game of fetch in all its scintillating variations – stick, ball and toy!  My favourite thing in the world to do, though (and seriously), is to take long walks on relatively people-less beaches with Keeper and swim in the ocean, irrespective of season.

For more on Jennifer, read her Q&A with retiring Chair of Academic Board Professor Robyn Bartel, which recently appeared in the Across the Board newsletter, below.

Welcome Associate Professor Jennifer McDonell

Associate Professor McDonell (English, HASSE) joins us as the new Chair of Academic Board. We asked Jennifer some questions (in, but not about, English), here are her answers:

What are your motivations as an academic?
Knowing that good teaching has the power to transform lives was a primary motivation in becoming an academic. One reason I accepted a position at UNE is that I believed in the university’s historic mission to provide educational opportunities to all irrespective of geographic location and life circumstances. Having descended from five generations of primary producers, and having spent my first school years at a tiny multigrade bush school I was aware of the obstacles posed by rurality to equal educational access, including for Indigenous communities and women. I was also drawn to academia because it promised time and space to focus intensely on developing one’s craft in what I naively imagined would be semi-monastic seclusion. Despite its challenges (the gruelling teaching, grant writing, thesis-correcting cycle, and so on), academe allows people the freedom to think deeply, and to use their research time to solve problems that they care about and that are of societal value: it is a privilege but also a huge responsibility.
 
What are your motivations as an academic leader?
Providing academic leadership through service to UNE’s key governance committees is, foremost, a way of bettering the institution for students, staff and the communities we serve. Democratic processes can be messy but upholding such principles of good governance as accountability, transparency, independence, academic freedom, diversity of participation, trust, and reliability is essential to maintaining an appropriate balance between the autonomy granted to universities and public accountability. Regarding the role of Chair of Academic Board my main aim will be to work efficiently and collaboratively within the framework of policies, structures, relationships, systems and processes that define strong shared academic governance. I will be aiming, for example, to responsibly manage the functions and business of the Academic Board in ways that support the Board to collectively make informed, evidence-based decisions about, and provide authoritative oversight of, the university’s academic activities (teaching, learning, research and research training). As such, strong academic governance supports the long-term sustainability of the institution.  

Can you recall a pivotal moment in your career?
A pivotal turning point in my career was probably the decision to continue with higher degrees in English literature rather than proceeding with a more utilitarian profession promised by my ‘other’ degree, which was Law.  In this I was undoubtedly inspired by the example of some of my English lecturers at the University of Sydney and my high school English and History teacher. In High School I was fortunate to be taught by a young, dedicated teacher who went ‘over and beyond’ in ensuring that we were primed to succeed at the NSW HSC. She even held weekend intensives in her home (at the then Jesuit seminary at Springwood). In an otherwise punitive environment, she acknowledged and rewarded academic and literary talent when she saw it. Later in life she was honoured with an OAM for her contributions to education, and I have often pondered whether my path might have been very different had she not been the person she was, or through some twist of fate, she had not been assigned to my school or year.  
 
What are three things you would like to achieve in the role of Chair, Academic Board?

1. Efficiency, innovation, creativity, flexibility, and continuous improvement in the Board’s oversight of of the university’s academic activities;
2. Actively embody the principles of sound university governance, and
3. Encourage wider and more active participation by academic, professional staff and students in governance.

Any final words of wisdom?
Radically desist from judging yourself by the standards of others. Damaging mindsets are not unique to academic culture, but in a highly competitive, hierarchical environment like academe it is easy to internalise extrinsic markers of ‘success’. Work out what your core values and principles are, and aim to live them fearlessly, rather than accepting the judgements of others as an index of your worth and contribution in life. 

Associate Professor Jennifer McDonell assumes the role of Chair of Academic Board in May, and had previously been appointed Chair of Teaching and Learning Committee. A new Chair of Teaching and Learning Committee will be appointed soon.