Dean's Report

Prof Marcia Langton
Prof Marcia Langton

Last night saw the first in person MGSE Dean’s lecture in more than a year and it was wonderful to once again be together enjoying the hum and energy of a crowd. It was also International Women’s Day, and we were indeed fortunate to have a woman of the calibre of Professor Marcia Langton AO speak to us. To an attentive audience Marcia outlined the progress being made in Indigenous graduate student enrolments at Go8 universities and at the University of Melbourne in particular. She stressed that this data reveals the progress that is being made in this Closing the Gap indicator, which is not often discussed but yet is fundamental to the future of Indigenous Australia in building strong Indigenous leaders. The recording of this lecture will be available soon and I encourage staff who were unable to attend the event to take the time to watch this important lecture. My thanks to Marcia for giving us her time, wisdom and challenging us all to focus on these important issues.

Front Cover of MGSE's new strategic plan
Education - The Time is Now

Setting the Scene

I was delighted so many staff were able to attend our Setting the Scene event last Friday at MGSE. The Provost, Professor Nicola Phillips joined us and spoke about her pleasure in seeing the campus come back to life as staff and students return. She also briefly discussed her ideas around what a university community means, her ambitions for integrating our education and student strategies and a renewed emphasis on access, equity and diversity at the University. The focus of our day was the launch of our new five year Strategic Plan titled Education – The Time is Now. As you will recall last year a series of forums were held to discuss and develop our new strategy and I’d like to thank staff for their enthusiastic participation. I’d also like to thank Keryn Negri and her working group for all their hard work in bringing the plan to fruition. We heard from the leaders in our various portfolios across MGSE on their priorities for 2022, and beyond, underpinned by the new Strategic Plan. We now move into the dissemination and implementation phase of the Plan. There is much work to do but we are starting from strong foundations and I am greatly looking forward to working together to realise the vision of our Plan.

Prof Larissa McLean-Davies

Appointments

Congratulations to Larissa McLean-Davies who started in her new position of Professor of Teacher Education on Friday. After an extensive search I was delighted to see one of our own appointed to this prestigious role. Larissa will provide key academic direction in the significant field of teacher education across the lifespan at MGSE.

Footy Tipping

Don’t forget to enter our MGSE footy tipping competition, which will again be run by Steph Watson – thanks Steph. If you’re interested go to footytips and click Join Comp.

Alternatively, you may visit the footytips website and click Join Now or Sign Up (depending on whether you already have an account). Once joined, you will then be able to search for the competition MGSE 2022.

Jim