Mechanical Engineer Podcasts

The relatively new vice-chancellor at James Cook University in Townsville is a scientist-turned-to-business. Professor Sandra Harding reminds us that over one third of Australia is tropical and yet only one major university in this country, apart from Charles Darwin in the NT, is properly equipped to handle the range of topics so important to the north of our region. And, unlike some, they also have a successful campus in Singapore. TRANSCRIPT: Robyn Williams: Good evening, Robyn Williams with In Conversation, tonight coming from the north and here´s a question I sometimes lob to the unwary - how much of Australia do you think is tropical? Well the answer is 38% - a lot, and so all those considerations that apply to the tropics a different kind of medicine, lively weather, coral reefs with huge tourist connections, all this and much more needs to be handled with expertise at a university. And we have only two up there, Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory and James Cook, both in Cairns and Townsville. Now James Cook University has a superb reputation as a centre for research and a relatively new Vice Chancellor, she´s Dr Sandra Harding, once of Brisbane and a scientist now in northern Queensland. Professor Harding when you came up here any surprises? Sandra Harding: It did surprise me, it was a very welcoming place, it surprised me particularly around the intensity of the relationships within the university and between the university and the region. Robyn Williams: So it´s actually connected to where it is both in Cairns and Townsville? Sandra Harding: It is connected and I think what was most interesting is that people within those broader communities are looking for more, they are looking for the university to play a major role in the social and economic development of the region. And that´s a role we are very happy to play. Robyn Williams: Now looking back at the history, is it 50 years ago that the first intention back in 1958 was manifest? Sandra Harding: It is, it was in the 50s when that occurred, a lot of local advocacy, vigorous argument about where the second university in Queensland should be and ultimately the Townsville community won the day. Robyn Williams: What were the choices then being mooted? Sandra Harding: I understand that it was looked to be put in Toowoomba actually, the second university in Queensland, but ultimately the Townsville community I think made the point quite appropriately in my view that Toowoomba was rather more accessible to Brisbane than Townsville could be. Robyn Williams: So when did the Cairns campus come to be? Sandra Harding: Oh that was in the 90s when we began to express our presence in the Cairns area in particular and the Cairns campus is going very well as well. Robyn Williams: So you´ve got those as well as a campus in Singapore. Now I think it´s perfectly well known that sadly the University of NSW which intended to open a campus there then pulled out. How did you come to be so successful? Sandra Harding: The university started in Singapore in 2003 and I think it started really quite quietly with very little fanfare, it was working with a partner and that partner was part of the Singapore government in order to very slowly build its presence and look to attract students certainly but also to do research on campus as well. The university chose very carefully the programs we gave there and the most popular program is psychology and it´s done very well. Robyn Williams: That´s a surprise, how come? Sandra Harding: Well I think it´s interesting, when you think it through where a lot of universities do business in IT in locations in south east Asia and indeed north Asia for that matter, when you think about it mental illness, mental health issues have not been recognised well in Asia more broadly. And so programs in that part of the world associated with psychology, there are relatively few of them, and this was a particular market need. So it´s been interesting for us that this has been incredibly popular. Robyn Williams: So you´ve got about a thousand students? Sandra Harding: We do have about a thousand students across the programs and we are moving to a new location because we´ve grown out of our existing location and we are shortly to move into a new campus. Robyn Williams: So are you just about the only Australian campus there or are there others? Sandra Harding: Other universities play a role in the Singapore education sector but they often do it through franchising arrangements and you´ve got a number of universities now that have been seriously looking at working in the same way that we are, or as close as they can I suppose, Curtin University, Newcastle University of course are working there with a partner too. So there is some that are trying to work into this market and into this Asian world city, it´s a fantastic place to be, but I think it´s fair to say that we are the only group doing research there. Robyn Williams: Now the interesting thing about James Cook University is that you´re smack in the middle of the tropics and 38% of the Australian land surface is tropical and so you´ve got this huge remit. What does that tropical association mean to you? Sandra Harding: This goes to the heart of what our university ought to be focusing upon. From the early 60s when the Universities Commission of Australia determined that the University College of Townsville would become a university in its own right they wrote on their report that this should become Australia´s National University for the Tropics. And while of course we were here to meet local labour market needs and to meet the needs of the northern Queensland community for education programs and research activity, I think it was with a lot of foresight that those early people who were involved in setting up the university could see the importance and the strategic nature of having a university in a developed country in Australia but looking at issues of relevance to the tropical world. So in that report it said that we should become Australia´s National University for the Tropics and I think that is exactly what we should be. And indeed, what we have done for a long time at the university now is determine to clearly and sharply focus on this going forward. Robyn Williams: How does that manifest in what sort of areas? Sandra Harding: For us there are a number of areas that we are looking to develop our interest in teaching and research and now across the spectrum. Of course as we are all aware the university is very well known for its marine and tropical biology, we will continue working in those areas of course. In addition tropical health and medicine is an area of growing importance and we have a medical school and we have a veterinary school. We have growth in our research profile there too but to my mind it also deals with matters of the environment, ecology, water also the humanities and social science. I think we mustn´t forget that at the end of the day a lot of the critical issues of the tropical world there are certain scientific issues but a lot of the science is relatively well known. What we need to do with here about people and communities and the way the tropical world is developing and I do believe that as a university located in a tropical land mass of a large developed country we should be playing a leadership role. Robyn Williams: Yes, because if you look at the map you´ve got practically the whole of Africa, you´ve got vast amounts of Asia, our neighbours as well as the Pacific. Now the Pacific might have small countries, well until you get to South America perhaps but you´ve got an awful lot of very interested people in the areas of anthropology, marine science you´ve mentioned, and making that connection is something that many of the other universities around Australia seem to have forgotten about sometimes. Sandra Harding: I think it´s very important that we do that and we do that in a context because of what this university is designed to do and its strategic intent is around a brighter future for life in the tropics worldwide. So for us, when you think about it, most of the critical issues facing the world today whether they are environment, ecology or health and medicine, whether it is about economic and social development, whether it´s about democratisation for goodness sake, many of those problems occur in its rawest form in the tropical world and to my mind our program and our research should be addressing those very issues. Robyn Williams: Yes, but what´s different say about your medical school which is quite new actually, is it in its training and its research quite different from the other medical schools in Australia? Sandra Harding: It is quite different, our medical school now has been around since the late 1990s, it´s an undergraduate program and it´s one where we focus on rural remote exposure. We focus on producing medical practitioners who certainly are fully aware of and up to date with modern technology and what you need to do in order to be a practitioner in the 2000s, but also are aware of how it is you operate in rural and remote locations with indigenous communities. And with communities that are basically under-served in many ways - so that´s a particular focus of our program and it´s one that has been very well received. Robyn Williams: And you´ve got a new hospital just down the road? Sandra Harding: Yes the Townsville hospital was relocated adjacent to our medical school which is a terrific thing. Of course the synergy is wonderful in terms of teaching and research as well. Robyn Williams: And Sandra Harding you trained yourself originally in science - what aspect? Sandra Harding: I did parasitology, I studied a parasite in sheep at the time, spent a day a week and much of the year on the killing floor of an export abattoir at Goulburn getting bits of parasites out of tissues - so that´s what I did initially. Robyn Williams: What aspect were you researching then? Sandra Harding: Oh, this was a relatively little known parasite, it was a relatively new one and we were really doing some very basic work on it, it was a parisone parasite and trying to better understand it and what its affects might be in meat. Robyn Williams: So how did you do a segue from that to business? Sandra Harding: Well a bit of a long story and to put it very briefly I thought very hard about whether or not I ought to be continuing on and do a PhD in that area. Had I done so it would have been around trapping feral cats because we thought that was the alternate host at the time. But I did take stock and I thought to myself I didn´t know if that was quite what I wanted to do and I´ve always enjoyed everything quite frankly, I enjoyed history, and sociology, and economics and maths and all of that. So I decided to give myself a bit of time out and decided to think again. So what I ended up doing was a Masters degree in a government related area, worked for a while, then ultimately went overseas to do a PhD on economic sociology. Robyn Williams: You didn´t miss the abattoir? Sandra Harding: I didn´t miss the abattoir for a moment and there are still hints of it when I´m cooking mince you know to make spaghetti bolognaise, it´s still there, there´s an echo there of the smell of the abattoir on a hot day. Robyn Williams: Yes, I can imagine. There´s something strange however about the ways in which business studies have changed institutions; I mean broadcasters, universities and so on. Do you have a view on the way that the new managerialism needs to be more connected to what you were saying before about how human beings really behave, about how communities behave so that you´ve got this tension between efficiency in a managerial sense and people and the flexibility they need to get on to be creative? Sandra Harding: Well I don´t see it as a tension quite frankly, to my mind if you think about it from the university´s perspective, as a university we are here to generate new knowledge, as a site of catalyst for innovation, we are here to generate human capital, we are here to be partners with advocates for various professional communities and indeed for our own community. Those are the things that we are here to do. However, in order that we do them we need to make sure that we are managing our organisation well so that we apply resources in the right areas so that we can in fact free our scientists up not to have to worry about those matters but so they can get on and do the science that we want them to do. So I don´t see it as intention, I actually see the business approach to these things is an enabler. Robyn Williams: In some places it isn´t. I remember in your old university QUT there was someone from the business school who did wonderful send-ups of some of the great clichés in management and the pillorying of that sort of ultra bureaucratic approach at QUT was well riveted. Sandra Harding: Well to my mind you can poke a lot of fun at it of course and there´s a lot of jargon and I think sometimes it´s easy for people to lose sight of what it is at heart that you´re trying to achieve. And to my mind as long as you´re mindful of managing in a responsible way, the financially accountable way but not losing sight of the heart of what the institution is all about. You know to do a bit of social ology for the moment, universities are institutions in a sociological sense and that means that it´s not good enough for universities simply to have a good bottom line, we are meant to be providing a benefit to society and that´s the basis of our esteem and that´s the basis on which we ought to be recognised I suppose and ultimately supported whether that´s through public funds or through private funds. So to my mind a university or an institution can´t lose sight of the heart of what it´s on about but that doesn´t mean to say you don´t have to be mindful of the business imperatives that are attached to meeting the needs of that heart. Robyn Williams: Now on the face of it, especially with a university if you like outside the major capital cities, you would expect it to be mainly an educational institution giving students degrees. But this campus is famous, world famous for its research - how did that come to be, this emphasis on research? Sandra Harding: I think that´s because of the birth of the university, initially it was set up as a university under that traditional model, to conduct research and certainly to undertake teaching learning programs as well but we were set up under the stewardship of the University of Queensland to become and indeed to be a university. I think a number of other regional institutions and this is no criticism of them have had a different history if you like and that has perhaps created different aspirations, but that different history often is associated with a theme teaching institution first of all and then looking to graft on research afterwards and I think some of them have really done it quite successfully. But our beginning our very core was around research activity and that is how it continues today. Robyn Williams: How will that be affected by the new kind of rationalism where some people have got to sacrifice traditions - well famously I think the departments of geology around Australia have been halved in their number over the last few years. Will you have to cut back in certain areas as well? Sandra Harding: Yes part of the challenge for us is as we know with funding that universities receive is that we do need to ensure that that funding base grows and universities have a responsibility there too, I mean we need to look for external sources of income from people who benefit from the work that we do. And in addition of course we are looking to the various reviews that are going on to potentially provide additional funding for us. At the moment most of our income that is discretionary income if you like to a certain extent comes of our teaching program. So the extent to which students don´t choose to study particular areas it becomes very difficult for us to offer those areas. You mention geology, earth sciences is an area that James Cook University is very well known for too and given that we are again at the centre of a resources and mining boom up here this is a very important area for us and I´m really pleased to say that we have a wonderful and very vibrant relationships and sponsorships from the major assets in the region such as BHP Biliton assets and there´s Strata and others as well which is terrific. So I´m feeling quite good about that particular area that you raise, I think what we need to do is ensure that we are working harder to make a case for the humanities and social science because we cannot be a university of the type that I want us to be unless we have vibrancy there too. So for us we have to think about our tropical ambition and think about then how that plays through into the humanities and social science. Robyn Williams: Yes, going back to geology I was at a major conference last week in Perth and they were just deploring the fact that they found it so damned difficult to get students despite the fact that there´s a boom, despite the fact that there were jobs all over the place and many of them terribly well paid. I mean it´s such a paradox isn´t it? Sandra Harding: It is a paradox and I think the IT industry would make the same argument, have the same lament perhaps. Part of the challenge for us here is to encourage students to make an active choice for some of these professions, not just because there´s money in it which there will be where there´s a labour shortage, but because it´s worthy and because it´s well worth while considering the a career in these areas. Unfortunately if you are waiting until the students are in Year 11 and 12 it´s just too late and in fact we are beginning to think we have to get to primary schools and indeed certainly the middle school years in order to encourage students to take the right subjects that are going to lead them through to the sciences in particular, science and technology in particular. We certainly have as all universities do various bridging programs to try and help students who want to make a different choice that they perhaps on the surface are ill prepared for so we try to assist those students but at the end of the day we´ve got to go back I think in educational years to really encourage students to think hard about careers in science and technology. Robyn Williams: Yes, what do you do to attract students to James Cook University from Australia, what do you really tell them about their prospects if you like in jobs or whatever, especially in tropical pursuits? Sandra Harding: We have of course a range of marketing platforms all universities do which encourage people to come here. I guess it is our flavour, so for students who are interested in issues associated with the tropical world whether they are biological sciences, physical sciences or social sciences I think that this of itself would be encouraging to students. We do try to ensure that students are aware that you can have a broad range of study in a really terrific location I must say too, but part of what we hang our hat on as well is we are a medium sized university, our classes are very small and it´s often interesting that students who transfer from larger metropolitan universities, and I had a conversation with one the other day and he said that they´d never met their head of school and wouldn´t even have a clue who that person is. When they had a bit of a drama about a piece of assessment they immediately were in touch with that person, that person personally helped them and there´s a friendliness and a personal touch if you like, a high touch here that perhaps isn´t always possible in the larger universities. So that´s part of the story too. Robyn Williams: And what about overseas, I´ve just done an interview with somebody from Brazil who is a young woman, brilliant of course, came here when she was 17 which is rather astonishing and is so committed that she is actually becoming an Australian citizen. I wonder how far afield your remit is for where a number of students come from - all over the world? Sandra Harding: They do come from all over the world but we are markedly different than any other Australian university in that the majority of our international students are coming from the United States, North America. Most universities of course the dominant student cohorts are from China, or India, or southeast Asia. In fact we need to do a little bit better there I think in order to add to some cultural richness of our campus, we certainly have people from all over the world coming from those countries too. But it is interesting that people choose to come here particularly from North America and South America as you found and a lot of those people of curse are interested in issues associated with the tropics and tropical science and tropical medicine. That´s what they are really very keen on doing and of course to come here where your location is your laboratory how wonderful is that and you´ve got a cattle property at Fletcher View, and we´ve got Orpheus Island a research station at Orpheus Island as well as campuses spread throughout the tropics. It´s a terrific place for international students to come. We don´t usually have to work too hard on international students, Europeans, a lot of Europeans are here too. Robyn Williams: What about members of faculty or lecturers and your professors, do you have to put a bomb under them to make them come here? Sandra Harding: Well again for those for whom this is location integral to their work no, not at all. People who understand the significance of the work that´s done here in those areas and so forth are very pleased to be here. To be fair though for some other people we have to encourage from within Australia in probably a much more focused way than people internationally because sometimes I guess folk from down south or from the west have a particular view of what northern Queensland might be like and almost without exception that view would be 20 years old or more. And therefore it doesn´t represent the sort of vibrancy I guess, the social and economic vibrancy that visitors to the region find these days. So we always do encourage people to come and have a look, we are always mindful of partners and to look after those people very well so they can make an informed judgement about joining us. Robyn Williams: Just two more questions - the first is when it comes to research maybe you´re not any longer in the abattoir but are you keeping your hand in some aspect of research in business or whatever? Sandra Harding: I do try to be, a few years ago I was involved in a very large Australian Research Council project called the Australian National Organisational Study which is on my website and we´ve done a second wave in the last year or so of this particular organisational survey and I´ve got fantastic colleagues in the University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill, NC State and UMAS Amherst with whom I work with in particular so they really do the work and they allow me to play - they are very kind a wonderful colleagues. Robyn Williams: Yes you keep a blog don´t you? Sandra Harding: Yes I do, I keep a blog and that can be accessed on the front page of the university. Robyn Williams: How interesting. And finally, what is the association of this James Cook University with the royal family in England? Sandra Harding: Well this is an interesting story. In 1970 James Cook University was signed into being by Queen Elizabeth II, she was here of course for the Bicentenary and the royal yacht Britannia as I understand was moored off Magnetic Island and on the appropriate day Prince Phillip and the Queen and Princess Anne came on campus and signed the university into being. Just recently I had the architect who was responsible for a number of the buildings at the time here, he´s in his 80s now, Jim Birrell and Jim was telling me do you know Sandra that there are only three universities in the English speaking world where a monarch has personally signed the university into being. And I said oh, tell me, and he said yes, Oxford, Cambridge and James Cook University. Robyn Williams: So there´s a special claim to fame, Professor Sandra Harding, Vice Chancellor of James Cook University in Townsville and her career from abattoir to business, from parasites to running a huge enterprise reminded me of another great Australia woman Dame Brigid Ogilvie recently elected a special fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Once she was head of the immensely wealthy Wellcome Trust. Brigid Ogilvie: I was born in Glen Innes on a sheep farm, I was lucky enough to have a father who was a very unusual sheep farmer in that he believed in educating his daughters. I went to the University of New England where I did the course rural science, which the science is underlying animal production and I was, in fact, the first graduate. Came to England in 1960 as a PhD student and went to the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge where I did a PhD on the immune response to helminth parasites of the gut. Robyn Williams: What was it like for a young woman from country NSW in Cambridge then? Brigid Ogilvie: Well I had a very good time, I must say I had a particularly good time socially and I managed to do my PhD without too much difficulty. Robyn Williams: You didn´t play up much? Brigid Ogilvie: I played up a lot, I gave the college I was attached to hell, Girton College, I was not used to being treated as a mildly intellectually deficient 13 year old after my years at Armidale where I was in charge of a Hall of Residence which was theoretically female but in fact was bisexual. Robyn Williams: Do you know most young people when cast adrift like that, being told here´s a bench, here´s a problem, go and solve it and come back in three years would panic. Why didn´t you? Brigid Ogilvie: I think it was because growing up on a farm and being heavily involved in a farm I learnt to be responsible with the freedom that goes with life on a farm at a very early age. And I think my whole course of life has been related to that experience in my early childhood, I´ve always been very independent and done things my way. Robyn Williams: You´ve been with the Welcome Trust now for some years, how did you come to be from this practical person from the Australian bush who liked doing practical work in laboratories to being an administrator and a leader? Brigid Ogilvie: Yes many people found it very strange that somebody who was so enthusiastic about research should make such a career more at the time I did. I actually got restless after 17 years, 17 wonderful years at Mill Hill and the reason I got restless was I´d got to a point in my career where I got more fun out seeing the young people I was responsible for get turned on by scientific research than doing it myself. It´s the teacher in all of us I guess. Robyn Williams: Dame Brigid Ogilvie now living back in Australia some of the time. Well next week I shall be In Conversation with Julie Horsefield, another remarkable woman in science in NZ this time. Coming up on Catalyst in a couple of minutes on ABC TV the Eureka Prizes and I´ll take you on a tour of the Shine Dome at the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. Production by Nicky Phillips and Charlie McKune. I´m Robyn Williams. read less