Head of School's Overview

Head of School on Engagement

The traditional view of universities, as being generators and transmitters of knowledge, is being augmented with the emerging engagement role of universities. The latter involves collaboration between higher education institutions and their larger communities for mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. That focus is pivotal to the view of UWS as the ‘university of the people’.

In terms of engagement, we continue pursuing a number of initiatives with Western Sydney Councils, Chambers of Commerce, State Government and businesses. Our connections with the Fairfield City Council is especially strong with a number of student projects in place.

The property staff continue to excel in engagement and this year won a UWS award for the ‘Australian Property Institute – an outstanding example of the university’s engagement strategy’.

Two of our property students were awarded Stockland scholarships worth $20,000 each. On May 22 there was a major property derivatives seminar at the Hilton Hotel in the CBD with 250 of the top legal, property and derivatives experts. Who was the star attraction? A 31 year old former UWS property student who completed in 1997. He has spent the last ten years as a derivatives trader around the world. He formally acknowledged UWS in his presentation for giving him a wonderful start along his chosen career path.

In terms of service to UWS and broader community service a number of staff contribute actively. We might mention Anne Maureen Scarff who is Academic Vice President of NTEU at UWS and Steve Keen who continued a frantic pace of media engagements. Comments from Steve on Interest Rate Activity, Growing Consumer Debt, Mortgage Activity and the Government’s Economic Policy received steady coverage throughout the year across radio, television, the internet and print media. The UWS media Monitors report of November 8th that listed his activities stretched to 12 pages – too many to record in detail. Highlights of the year included articles in The Age (Melbourne) (15/11) and The Financial Times (UK)* and an interview on ABC TV’s “The 7.30 Report” with Kerry O’Brien (7/11). The College of Business attracted 520 media mentions during the October to December 2007 quarter. Of that total 76% of the media hits came from the School of Economics and Finance.

We anticipate a challenging 2008 where we continue to consolidate on the foundations laid in 2007, in an environment of increasing fiscal stringency.

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