Great times

I have to apologise for not blogging – a very discreet reader has prompted me to get my act together and post. Indeed it’s been a while and admittedly I’ve been less than great when it comes to sitting down to write even though I am attached to two great devices: my iPad and iPhone…
Great as they are --- and they are --- I’m not convinced that I’m working any better. I’m doing things differently for sure. But better? The jury’s still out.
On a larger scale I’m struggling with that question on an organisational level as we progress through a Renewal Plan and make changes --- are we doing it better? Will the changes we’re making lead to ‘greatness’?
We’re seeing evidence of new ways of working together which has resulted in new programs in Law and Medical Science and so on; we’re employing different mechanisms to engage with our communities; we’re trying to be more consultative and transparent; and perhaps – most importantly – there’s a level of involvement from staff and stakeholders at CQUniversity that I have not experienced in other learning environments.
These, to me, seem to be great things. But I’m not the arbitrator of this. Our students, staff and partners are. They are the ones who will show us/me --- through enrolments and research activity, for example – if our rhetoric is matching up to what we are doing.
In 2011 the University will investigate improving, at all levels, the student learning experience. Our researchers, too, are taking on a challenge to develop new, talented, up-and-coming researchers and build on the quality and quantity of research output that already has CQUniversity operating – in terms of the global impact of our research – in the top 10% among all universities.
The sense I have is that greatness is coming. I am very pleased to be able to acknowledge known greatness later this month when the University presents awards in numerous categories to staff. I know, for a fact, we’re a better University because of their efforts and accomplishments.
Still, I admit that I remain challenged by the idea of defining and measuring greatness in ways that just don’t just tick boxes but are truly inclusive and reflective of other people’s perceptions of success and achievement, not just mine. I think I’ll add that my e-Task List --- in the meantime maybe someone out there can develop a simple Ap I could use?
Scott

Sharing our gratitude

Well I have been back in Australia for over two weeks. How soon you get over holidays. It has been a hectic couple of weeks. On Sunday Anita and I were invited to the Chinese Association Moon Festival on campus in Rocky. We had fun. Yes fun. We met up with all our Chinese staff, students and their families. Played games and ate Moon Cake - fun!

The first week back was spent on the road attending the Metropolitan Campus graduations. They were fantastic, as always. The best bit for me is meeting with the students and their parents after the graduation. We have so many proud parents traveling from across the globe. It really is quite humbling to meet these parents and hear how they have in many cases trusted us with their children and the future of their family.

Yesterday and today I am in Mackay, tomorrow in Rocky, Thursday in Gladstone and Friday back in Mackay. So hopefully I will be able to catch up with many of you.

Rockhampton graduation was also a great event - one that the Chancellor called the best Rockhampton graduation ever. I was particularly keen to see so many staff on stage and so many helping out in the centre. Well done to you all. We also have lots of back room people working to make the event a success such as the IT and security folk. They also did a great job.

And that brings me on to the point of this blog. We all love recognition. I am very lucky to have a boss - the Chancellor who is very generous with his praise. There is nothing better for me (well maybe one or two things!) than when he makes a positive comment about me or the University. I try and say thanks and well done as much as I can. I try and recognise a job well done or a person that goes beyond the call of duty. I know I don't do it was often as I should but I do.

I would ask you all to say well done to someone who has done a good job in the next week or so. Use the email to do it. Copy in their boss and copy in me. I want to hear about all the great work that is going on. I have heard it said in some parts of the University that we should not be doing this and it is only trying to seek praise. What utter rubbish. Let's all give praise where praise is due and let me know about it.

Let's make this CQUniversity recognition week!

Thoughts of home

Well it has been a hectic week. I am writing this sitting on a delayed airplane in Xian airport. We were told it had been delayed for an hour but there has just been an announcement that they do not know when it will take off. Oh well, no stress. We are in holiday mode.

A great day was had at the Forbidden City. There was more politics going on in pre-Revolutionary China than in modern day CQUniversity and that is saying something. One evening we went out to one of of Beijing's famous Peking Duck restaurants. We got a little carried away and ate ducks liver with scorpions. I have to say that for the past few days I have felt a little under the weather - I am not sure if this is due to the scorpions or not.

We travelled by China Eastern Airlines to Xian. Our main reason for the visit to this city was to see the Terracotta Warriors. These lived up to all the expectations. Our guide said that there were 8000 warriors that had been made by 720,000 slaves over 2000 years ago. I upset him a little when I pointed out that the slaves were not that productive - about ten thousand slaves to make each warrior!

Until visiting I had not realised that Xian was such an historic city in it's own right. It has an incredible city wall which encloses a fascinating Muslim area. There are enough replica terracotta warriors to form your own army.

Only a couple of days left and then back to work. I am on the road next week traveling to graduations around the country. I do enjoy the international graduations. I love meeting our graduates from overseas and their parents. Many of these graduates want to return to their own country and who can blame them when you look at the economic growth rates in China and India.

Just as many want to stay and make a life for themselves in Australia. What a fantastic resource they are for our country. At the moment we seem to make it very hard for people to come and join us in Australia. I truly believe that in the future with an ageing population countries will be competing to bring young talented people to their shores. If we get it wrong now we are going to find it very hard to compete in the future.

I hear people say that Australia cannot support many more people. Get real - there are cities in China that have more people than the population of Australia. What is driving economic growth in China and India is a large domestic population. I believe that we need to grow the population of Australia. What better way to do this than to bring in clever young people who are willing to pay for their own education, teach them in English and then keep then here to have a great life and to contribute towards Australia and help support it's ageing population?

International education has got a bit of bad name in recent years. To some extent criticism has been focused on the VET sector. I have heard a lot of scorn poured on back street colleges that have set up to train hair dressers and commercial cooks. This has culminated in these disciplines being taken off the migration list. But go to any tourist area or mining town in Australia and you will find a massive shortage of - you have guessed it cooks. I think that regional universities and TAFEs (or a dual sector university!) could play a very productive role in this area. Why not keep commercial cookery and the like on the migration list for students that had trained in regional universities or TAFEs and then require graduates from such programs to have to work in their discipline area for two or three years.

We have got to stop seeing international education and international students as some kind of threat. It is a sector that should be supported and international students should be encouraged to join us as Australians.

Some would argue that that it makes more sense to recruit people from overseas who have already qualified in their own country. But is this morally sustainable. By doing this we are taking talent away from some of the poorest countries in the world after their countries have invested scarce resources in them. With our migration points system we tend to take young people who have not had a chance to give any kind of return on the investment that has been made in them. This may be attractive to us - but does it make us good global citizens?

I guess I have some personal experience in all of this. I came to Australia for a better life about twelve years ago. I do sometimes feel uncomfortable that the UK invested in my education and I then left. I did leave after 15 years of service to the UK health and education sectors - that makes me feel better. I now feel more Australian than British in everything, with the possible exception of cricket!

So over the next week I look forward to meeting all our graduating international students and reflecting on how they will contribute to their own or our country.

We are now off to Shanghai where Anita is threatening to go into a shopping frenzy. I am looking forward to getting back home. I will be really interested to see if we have a government. Strange times!

Off the wall

We have just got back from the Great Wall of China. Truly awesome. It is one of those places that lives up to all expectations. How could human beings build it? The term wall does not do it justice - it is a series of forts linked by the steepest set of stairs you can imagine.

The experience got me reflecting on walls and CQUniversity. I know I am really very sad and I should not be doing this on holiday - but I can't help it. I think we can truly claim to be a University without walls. We are the most accessible University in Australia.

I am confident that we can become one of Australia's great Universities. We are going to do this through engagement. We are also going to do this through expanding our program offerings. In doing so we will provide some of the more popular programs. Some would call them elite programs. In doing so we are going to have to take care that we do not start to build walls around these programs and hence our University. That is not what we are about. It might be quite appropriate for some universities to have walls - but not ours. I think this is going to be another challenge for us as we move forward. It maybe that we have higher entry requirements for some of our programs but we still need to give people pathways to meet these requirements.

Like most walls the Great Wall was build to keep people out - that is the last thing we want to do.

Tomorrow we are off the the Forbidden City. I have not seen it yet but already it sounds like a few universities that I can all think of!

China on track

Iam writing this blog on a train somewhere between Shanghai and Beijing after an interesting night on the train. I mentioned in my last blog that half the population of China were at the world expo yesterday. Well, last evening I found out where the other half were. They were at the Shanghai train station waiting for the T104 to Beijing. And that's a lot of people! You will see from the picture that the waiting room was "quite" full.

We seem to be the only non Chinese people on the train. People here are very friendly -- always ready with a kind smile and help when the silly Australians do something else stupid or don't understand some simple request.

We had sleepers in a compartment made up of two triple bunks. I had the top bunk and Anita the bottom one. The middle one was taken by a Father and his rather large son. Anita was the only female in our compartment of seven. She did not seem to mind too much.

My top bunk was interesting. It was about 60cm wide, which would have been good except that I am about 62cm wide. I had another 60cm of head room. That put my ears about 20cm from the speaker which came on full volume at exactly 7am with the sounds of some demented birds singing. This was followed by light classics and the Carpenters. The music was interspersed with a very nice sounding young woman chatting away in Mandarin. I am fairly confident that she was wishing me the best for the day ahead.

Guys come along the train every few minutes offering all manner of food. If I wanted snake chow main for breakfast - no problem. About an hour ago we saw a man with coffee. Anita almost fell out of her bunk trying to catch him but alas she let him get away. Since then we have not seen the coffee man. Obviously the sight of the Westerner crawling after him down the train scared him off. If he comes back we are both going to jump on him.

So we are traveling rather than being transported. Cecilia from CMS helped us to book our travel and accommodation in China. What a star she is. She was, however, worried when we said we wanted to travel on trains rather than fly within China. She really should not have worried. Anita and I have backpacked all over the world. To be honest the trains in China are comfortable and very clean. We have always been of the opinion that we are happy to be transported for work but for pleasure you need to travel.

Travelling in China

I am away from CQUniversity at the moment on holiday in China. I travelled to China a lot when I was a DVC International but I have never been here on holiday. When you travel with work you tend to see the airport, the hotel and maybe one or two Universities. Anita has never been to China so it is great to be here doing all the touristy "stuff" with her.

We have had a good look round Shanghai which must be one of the most futuristic cities in the world. It is like a scene out of one of those old sci-fi movies from the sixties. On the other hand there are still some very traditional sights. There still seems to be many bicycles on the road. The city is very safe and very clean. Yesterday we walked for miles around Shanghai. This was a bit much even for someone of my extreme fitness.

Today we went to the world expo (pictured). Not the greatest experience of my life. Don't get me wrong the national buildings were nothing short of spectacular. However half of the Chinese population decided to turn up there today - and that's a lot of people. Most of them joined queues for the pavilions we wanted to see. The queue for the China pavilion was 7 hours! It was 6 hours for the German one!

We walked for miles around the site. During this time I was yet again left to reflect on the fact that women seem to buy shoes for what they look like rather than for comfort. Anita's feet got covered in blisters - I rather graciously let her have my socks which helped. This is maybe the first time in recorded history that a pair of my worn socks had been good for anything. When we got back to the hotel however, I found it is almost impossible to remove a pair of RM Williams boots which have been walked in for hours in 45 degrees of heat when you have not worn socks. I now have a pair of boots lined with human skin.

I am writing this in a hotel lobby drinking coke which is about 10 times the cost of the same drink in the local shop across the road. The price is however worth it to sit in the air conditioning. It really is very hot and humid here.

We are catching a train this evening which will take us to Beijing. This will be a 15 hour trip. We have a sleeper so that should be fun. We will get a chance to see a bit of the countryside tomorrow morning before we arrive in the capital at about mid day.

This is an interesting time to be away from the University. When I booked the time off in the new year it looked like a two week window when there wouldn't be much going on. As it turns out we have the dual sector negotiations with the State Government, the compact documentation to write for the federal government, the AUQA visit to prepare for and the SAF bid to write. I know that Professor Kyd will be doing a great job as acting VC but it is a difficult time to be away (or on reflection a good time!). As you can imagine I am checking emails each day.

It is also an interesting time politically in Oz and I am a little sorry to be missing out on the "goings on" back home. This is an important time for us at the moment so I hope we get a government that understands the importance of Regional Universities and CQUniversity in particular. I am keeping up to date on the TV and web.

China is a great country to visit. I would recommend it to everyone. The people are friendly and there is so much history and culture learn about. With that in mind I think I will order a Chinese beer.

The Senior Leadership Conference -- Day 1

We – about 25 staff and I – rode the bus this morning at 630 from Rockhampton to Gladstone, perhaps a little sleepy-eyed but that wore off quickly as the sky grew brighter and the coffee kicked in. We met up with some 60 of our colleagues at CQUniversity Gladstone for our 2nd Annual Leadership Conference which began with a series of conversations and workshops about our relationships with each other and our stakeholders. They involved participation from ‘outsiders’ as well as those of us inside CQUniversity. Perhaps more than anything, can I say how impressed I was with a very articulate Bachelor of Learning Management student and a local school representative, both of whom made very constructive and thought provoking contributions to our exchange on the ‘student life experience’. I was equally impressed with the response and interaction they generated among staff. We learned a fair amount about what ‘s driving school leavers to University and other education providers, and how we as an organisation, need to respond to the pace at which our communities expect , in fact demand, change. In areas of program development and service provision, time and time again the messages – from our external stakeholders and from our 80 CQUni leaders -- were you (CQUni) have great people working here but you have to listen better and follow up with specific actions. No big decisions were made today, but I can say that I feel very strongly – even only after a few hours into the day --- that CQUni is not a uni that will succeed based on the action of the 80 or 90 people drawn together here in Gladstone for a 48 hour conference. We will succeed because we are --- or will be --- an organisation of 1000 leaders or more. We will reach that point when each of us acknowledge, believe and understand the role each of us have, indeed, in the success of our students.

Scott