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Shaking up the old patterns

18 March 2019 -

Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Jane den Hollander reflects on academic leadership, the university student experience and what she learnt at Wits

When you’re a proud Witsie, it feels good to point to other Witsies’ achievements. That’s why Dawn Joseph, who teaches music at Deakin University in Australia, alerted Alumni Relations to the inspiring career story of (formerly Carragher), saying she “has made a huge impact and difference to the university during her term of office”.

is a Witsie trained in zoology, specifically cell biology (BSc 1975, BSc Hons 1976, MSc 1977).  She obtained her PhD from the University of Wales in Cardiff with assistance from the Wits Fantham Memorial Scholarship, and was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at Curtin University in Western Australia before joining Deakin. Having served two terms as Vice-Chancellor of Deakin, starting in July 2010, she is due to retire in June 2019.

Deakin University credits den Hollander with leadership in “harnessing the power, opportunity and reach of new and emerging technologies” in higher education. In 2017 she received an Order of Australia for her distinguished service to tertiary education.

Leadership achievements

During her time at Deakin, the university has improved its rankings in the AWRU system to 211th in the world and has been number one for graduate learning satisfaction in Victoria for eight successive years, a rare accolade. The University has excelled at the digital frontier, with its growing Cloud campus now attracting 25% of its 60 000 students.  The Australia Export Award in 2018 (unusual for a university to win) recognised Deakin’s international partnerships and the university’s innovation in digital learning technologies has attracted numerous national and global awards. Deakin has prospered over the past decade.

Professor den Hollander told one interviewer that a highlight of her career had been “the privilege of working with clever, focused people who work with good intent to make a difference in whatever they do”. One of the things she had learned as a leader was that “your demeanour is as important as what you say or write. Being optimistic, interested and accessible are also essential.”

Her advice to her younger self would be: “Stress less and don’t waste time worrying what everyone else thinks about you. Do not hesitate to grab the opportunities when the chance presents itself. Always remember where you came from and what you stand for—so be humble and grateful and get that education under your belt.”

Early days

Prof den Hollander was born in Zambia. Her father was a gold miner and her family was living in Carletonville when she became the first of them to enrol at university.  She says she had few ambitions other than to get away from Carletonville and see the world. “Wits became that world for a formative part of my life.”

“I went into the great all-girls residence called Sunnyside (in the days before the grand  expansion).  There were lots of fabulous students, some very wealthy, who were privately educated, people who would have come from very different backgrounds to my own,” she told International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education in an interview. “Of course, it was quite fabulous getting into the social life of Jo’burg, the time of my life, as it is for most young students who leave home, go to the city and meet people who have different views from their own. But I was as poor as a church mouse. … My first semester was a real challenge, just getting to understand what a university was about, not having any familiarity and knowing absolutely no-one.”

After a “blur” of a first year at Wits, she said, early in her second year she encountered a study unit (cell physiology) which she suddenly understood, thanks to her favourite teacher of all time, Professor Emeritus Barry Fabian, who showed her what might be possible. “He represented the best of education and what I learnt there I have used all my life: pay attention to detail, ask questions and have fun while you are doing it. He was the mentor to generations of biologists. I was fortunate to learn from him.”

Yet she is hesitant to draw on her own first-year experience too much now. “What you can draw on is, I think, the experience of the unknown, of how one deals with the unknown, and making sure that we start to diminish ignorance or explain those parts of the university that might be foreign or different to other people.”

“I was at Wits during the peak of the apartheid era and that experience and dark shadow has informed who I am to this day. I believe in democracy, in access and inclusion and in the right of everyone to participate and be heard. I learnt from my experiences at Wits and now am intolerant of exclusion. As a consequence I have pretty much altered the student experience at Deakin so that our students are ‘true north’. All Deakin staff understand that educating the next generation is our core purpose, and they do it brilliantly – number one for learning satisfaction in our State for the last eight years so far is the badge of honour for the work we have done.”

Owning your idea

Reflecting on what she has learnt in her career, she recommends that you “own your idea and speak up for it”.  “Try to be inclusive and not to judge others too much. You never know where the best idea is going to come from. Always work in teams. And everybody should fail at something at least once. Learn from it and move on.”

You don’t have to learn everything you need in a hurry at a young age, especially as people are living longer now. “I wonder why we rush everything so much. We need to be more flexible about how people leave and continuously come back to their learning and how we make it accessible to people at different stages of their own life as we go forward. I think universities will be very different places in another generation and that’s a good thing.”

Still plenty to do

These days, she says, “my major interests are all about disruption and ensuring diversity and advantage for everyone. How do we educate students in a digital, hyper-connected world of artificial intelligence and smart machines? Can we use data analytics and smart personalisation techniques to enable better targeted learning, ‘just for you and what you need’? Universities are no longer the owners of knowledge and Google is now the routine go-to for every question, so the value that universities add to the world must be reconsidered and delivered differently.

“My other interest is to look at research translation, most particularly in the advanced manufacturing and health spaces.

“These are the things, alongside the , that I will focus on when I retire later this year.

“I reflect now that Wits was a glorious moment in time for me as a young, curious woman in a divided country. I left with a broadened view of the world and a well trained mind. That is what universities do and I hope we continue to do that for generations to come.”

��һ�Թ��� Dawn Joseph:

Dawn Joseph (HDE 1987, BMus 1989, BEd 1991, MEd 1995) is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. She also has a PhD from the University of Pretoria. She taught music at Roedean and St John’s schools and moved to Australia in 2000. “On my first day I found work looking through a newspaper” – teaching keyboard at five schools for a term. She then started at Deakin as a music lecturer and has worked her way up the academic ladder at the university.

“It is strange how the mind works,” writes Dawn. “Sometimes I slip up and say I am off to Wits when I mean Deakin! I guess I spent many years there; my dad did his BEd at Wits; my uncle studied for a BA in the early 60s at Wits before he moved to the UK to do Dentistry; my brothers also started their studies at Wits and so did my cousin Joanne Joseph (a journalist). So, Wits for me has been and will always be a great institution. It gave me a solid higher education grounding and opened my mind’s eye. I had outstanding lecturers (music and education).”

Clarke, John. (2011). Interview with Jane den Hollander, Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education. 2. 10.5204/intjfyhe.v2i1.70.