From the Chancellery
by Professor Michael Rowan,
Retiring Pro Vice Chancellor, Division of Education, Arts and Social
Sciences
I
joined the Murray Park College of Advanced Education in 1978,
teaching Philosophy of Education, which I knew very little about,
and Philosophy, which I knew very little about how to teach.
I muddled along with the help of my Head of Department, the late Brian Condon. I would be up late each night writing lectures in longhand, and then deliver them the next morning, sometimes to large lecture theatres, often to small groups gathered in my office, always while smoking my pipe.
Murray Park was mainly about teacher education, but it also offered a Diploma in Journalism. Soon after I began, Dr Gunther Kress was appointed to head the development of a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, and I worked on this proposal and moved into teaching argument in natural language in the Communication Studies degree.
The next few years saw much institutional change as Murray Park CAE became Hartley CAE, then part of the South Australian College of Advanced Education, and finally a campus of UniSA.
When the University was founded I thought that as an active researcher I had some responsibility to assist in the development of a research culture appropriate to a university. Until then I had conducted my research by working with colleagues in the philosophy departments at Adelaide and Flinders universities. I put to them that we now had three universities in SA teaching philosophy, and all should be active in research. They readily agreed to join a research seminar I planned to establish at Magill – the Magill Philosophy Forum. Things looked promising, but when I went to book the room for the first seminar I was politely told that I could book rooms for teaching or for meetings, but not for research!
Much has changed. My academic colleagues now rightly expect that research seminars, support when applying for research grants, supervising higher degree students, support for publication, the development of research centres and all the elements of a culture which values research as the basis of academic practice will be part and parcel of working in the University. But each of these elements had to be argued for and built up in a time of very scarce resources. I saw it as a long-term program of gradually making teaching less greedy in absorbing all of the academics’ time and all of the space, professional staff and other support and I think this still needs to continue.
While there is no doubt that staff work much harder now than in earlier years, there is also no doubt that the work is richer and more rewarding. My personal aim has been to make the part of the University for which I was responsible more and more the kind of place a good academic would want to work. From the quality of staff we have recently employed – and the flourishing careers of staff who like me have been members of the University for many years – I think that has been achieved.
I took that approach from something I happened to read soon after taking over as a Head of School. Manning Clark, the famous ANU professor of history, had advised his successor to, "Talk to people, find out what they are interested in, and then try to find ways to help them get on with it". I pass that advice on to anyone brave enough to have a go at university management – but I need to add the warning that the conversation sometimes reveals that people are not interested in much, whereupon the "helping them get on with it" becomes a more difficult process. But it is a process we cannot shirk if we are to continue to make the University a better place for good academics to work.
Certainly it has been a good place for me. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have worked with extraordinary people, and for the wonderful support I have had from the staff of my Division in particular.
I am happy to be moving on to another part of my life, but also regretful that I am not now beginning my career in the University as a young academic. It would be a great time and place to be starting out. Good luck.