Multi-faceted career journey for Deputy Vice-Chancellor

Jacquelyn Curtis

Professor Bell said Australian universities are seeing a 'dynamic change' Photo: Catharine Verrills

12 December 2006: Appointed in May 2006, Deputy Vice Chancellor Sharon Bell used the Professorial Lecture Series to demonstrate the scope of her academic interests including filmmaking, anthropology and ethnographic research, tertiary teaching and administration.

Professor Bell described her career path as a  "potpourri of sources" - "geography as an undergraduate, anthropology and motherhood as a post-graduate, then a filmmaker in mid-life" - during which she held leadership positions at the University of Wollongong and Griffith University.

Professor Bell also shared her continuing research interest in Sri Lanka, the site of her post-doctoral fieldwork and earlier ethnographic studies.

"Since my first two year visit in 1976, I have lived a life of engagement with the country and found myself inextricably linked to it," Professor Bell said.

"Since then the nation has been through election violence, civil war and of course the tsunami.

"This experience has raised questions about my role as a foreign researcher, and provided a very real perspective for my work."

Professor Bell described how she has learnt from her research experiences in Sri Lanka and as a documentary filmmaker to gain insight into the current student experience of tertiary education.

"It is only very occasionally we get to glimpse the 'lived' student life and how students experience university," she said.

Acknowledging these 'glimpses' were provided mainly from creative works, Professor Bell cited Dead White Males by playwright David Williamson, The Student Chronicles by Alice Garner and the Australian film Love and Other Catastrophes, as examples of how current tertiary trends impact the student experience.

Socio-economic factors, increasing numbers of students in paid employment while studying and flexible modes of delivery are trends impacting the way students engage with the university.

"For instance flexible modes of delivery including electronic modes allow students to negotiate their level of engagement with campus," Professor Bell said.

"In Australia we're seeing a dynamic change, universities are losing their roles as the site for socialisation and politicisation."

Professor Bell drew upon her role as administrator in suggesting ways to enhance student engagement, proposing 'active transaction' and the 'opening up of different sorts of dialogue with students'.

"We need to look to the future, not to the past experience of students," she said. "Engagement has to be embedded in the learning and teaching."

In closing the lecture, Professor Bell said she hoped the audience had been 'challenged'.

"Here at the University of Canberra we have the capacity to take a leading role - to engage in education for individual and social transformation."