Industry Engagement

I have just got back from a couple of days at our Gladstone campus. I am very pleased to report that the campus is going from strength to strength under the leadership of Professor Chad Hewitt (picture below). As with all other parts of the university our challenges in Gladstone are challenges of success. We have have seen record student enrollments on the Gladstone campus along with our highest levels of research activity. All this means that we have many more staff based in Gladstone. This in turn means that office space is just about fully occupied. With the industry boom in Gladstone our students and staff are having problems finding accommodation in the town. These are problems that we are going to have to address over the next few months if we are going to make the most of all the opportunities that Gladstone offers. You can hear Chad talking about Gladstone click here.



There is an interesting story in The Australian today about me and the University. It goes over the past quite a bit but does give a good overview of the potential for the region and how we are moving the University forward.

While in Gladstone I also took the opportunity to tour some of the industries based there. Gladstone has $72 billion worth of projects planed over the next few years - yes billion! I understand there is a similar magnitude of projects planned for Mackay!

CQUniversity really is in the right place at the right time. But to make the most of all of this opportunity we will need to engage more fully with industry. Yes I know we are doing a heck of a lot as evidenced by the CQUniversity News page. But we need to do even more.

This is the reason why I have made industry engagement my number one VC priority for 2012. We will be doing a lot more over the next year to partner with industries to help them meet their aspirations. In doing so we will move closer to our goal of being Australia's most engaged university. It will also contribute to building our region - our home.



The Pro Vice Chancellor Engagement Pierre Viljoen (pictured above) has developed one of the most sophisticated models for university/community engagement in Australia. We are also about to start using a great data base to record our community engagement activity - EDNA. All of this will help us to engage with our industry community. Take a look at what we are doing in the
engagement space.


Becoming a dual sector university will also contribute immeasurably to our goal of better industry engagement. Nik Babovik our Deputy Vice Chancellor (Industry and VET) and the pathways team are already spending a lot of time with industry looking for better ways to work with them.

We all have a part to play in making ours the most engaged university in Australia. To this end I hope all of the CQUniversity team will work with me to make industry engagement a top priority.


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