Recording: Engagement Endangered

VERITY FIRTH:  Hello, everyone, joining us today.  We're just going to wait for people to log on.  I can see our participants button going up, so we'll just wait about a minute to give people a chance to log on and then we'll start today's event.  Thanks for joining us. Just give it about another minute.

 

Well, I might kick off.  There may be more people joining us as we go along but we might as well start the event on time. Hello, everybody.  Thank you very much for joining us for today's event.  Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that wherever you are in Australia, you are on the traditional lands of First Nations peoples.  At UTS we're on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, so I want to pay respect to them, to their elders past, present and emerging, and particularly extend that respect because they are, of course, the traditional owners of knowledge for the land that this university is built on.

 

Everyone else, one of the nice things we have been doing in these sessions is typing into the chat where you are, whose land are you on, who is the First Nations peoples that you want to pay acknowledgment to today.  It's lovely to watch it all come up in the chat.

 

My name is Verity Firth.  I'm the Executive Director of Social Justice at UTS, where I lead the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion.  It's my real pleasure to be here today, joined by some very distinguished guests: Professor Attila Brungs, Angela Barney‑Leitch, Professor James Arvanitakis and Professor Stan Grant.  I will have an opportunity to introduce them all properly in a minute.  But a little housekeeping before we get started.

 

Now, the event is being live captioned. To view the captions, you can click on the link that is in the chat and you will find the chat at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom control panel.  The captions will then open in a separate window.

 

If you have any questions at all during today's event, please type them into the Q&A box, which you will also see in your Zoom panel.  You can then up‑vote questions that other people have asked, and we will have an opportunity for those questions to be asked of our panelists, so please do that.  It's an online event, which means things might not necessarily go perfectly.  We have had speakers just drop out in the past.  But bear with us.  We will do absolutely our best to reinstate them and just bear with us if anything does go wrong.

 

So today's event is the second in our webinar series around the future of education towards 2027. In this series, we are considering what universities can do to make access to education equitable in the near future, which of course is a future weighed down by financial unease, changing social conditions and unrest.

 

I don't need to tell people on this panel ‑ in this webinar that 2020 has been an extraordinary year.  We've experienced bushfires, floods, an increasingly desperate climate crisis, social and health issues have really come to the fore, including racial and income inequality, and of course all during a global pandemic.

 

So more than ever, I would argue, universities have a real role to play as we rebuild after COVID, but universities themselves have been facing a whole range of existential challenges since the beginning of the 21st century.  Global ranks, international student income have driven competition between universities and have shifted a lot of the political rhetoric around the purpose of higher education away from the delivery of broad social benefit and towards a much narrower definition of our purpose, the private benefit to individuals.

 

This rhetoric, this rhetorical shift fundamentally affects universities' relationships with civil society more broadly.  Now, many Australian universities have recognised this and we've seen ‑ and totally see that we need to maintain this focus on public benefit.  As public institutions funded with public money for the purpose of public good, we can build a trust relationship with citizens based on opening our knowledge infrastructure and making it accessible to all.

 

Universities must work with, not on behalf of, society.  This means building relationships with business, industry, government and not for profit organisations, and not seeking to have sole ownership of the knowledge that's created through those relationships.

 

Despite the continuing global focus of universities, we also need to support the local communities that are on our doorstep, which we also draw much benefit from.  So, in 2020 we've come to a turning point.  How can universities support communities and prioritise community needs in the face of the challenges that we now have? Poor old universities ‑ I love working in a university, but we're criticised from all sides of politics.  For many people, we remain institutions embodying past Imperial practices.  Across the political spectrum, universities are seen as aloof and elitist and disconnected from the real world.  But in so many ways, and in so much of the work that we do, we really are the very opposite of that.  Community‑engaged research, teaching and practice is based in reciprocity, meaning that both the university and its community, government and industry partners bring their knowledge and resources to the table.  They both contribute and learn from each other.

 

Responding to big issues or complex problems requires connecting people across sectors and disciplines, using the range of experience and expertise towards collective problem solving, and to do this, we need the strategic and intentional support of the whole of institution, of our academic and faculty and senior executive leadership.  Will we be able to maintain this focus on engagement, as universities come under unprecedented pressure? That's the focus of our conversation today, and I am looking really forward to the views and opinions of our distinguished panel.

 

So, to kick us all off, we have a key note.  It's our pleasure to welcome Professor Attila Brungs, UTS's Vice‑Chancellor and President.  Professor Brungs is a Rhodes Scholar with a Doctorate in Inorganic Chemistry from Oxford University and a University Medal in Industrial Chemistry from the University of New South Wales.  Some of Professor Brungs' present key appointments include the Australian Technology Network of Universities' Chair, the New South Wales Innovation and Productivity Council, the Committee for Sydney Board and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Fellow.  His experience includes many distinguished past board and committee memberships, including not‑for‑profit organisations, in addition to numerous state and Federal Government and institutional appointments, including the leadership of the National Priorities and Industry Linkage Fund.  Welcome, Attila and over to you. 

 

PROF ATTILA BRUNGS:  Thank you, Verity, and a very warm welcome to everybody joining us today.  Before I proceed, I would also like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.  It's on their ancestral lands that UTS stands.  We honour and recognise their place as part of the oldest continuing cultures in the world.  I acknowledge elders both past and present as the traditional custodians of the knowledge of this land, and at university, knowledge is the heart of what we do, how we try to engage with society, how we try to use that knowledge to progress society.

 

So UTS ‑ Verity mentioned, most of my speech is talking about UTS and universities exist solely for public good.  That's what the institution is for.  Not just for those who pass through our doors, not just those who teach, those who work there, but for all society.  This role, while critical at any time, is even more important when society faces great challenges.  That is an easy thing to say but it's very hard to do, and in a concrete fashion.  You can do things when times are good, but when times are challenging, when society needs us most, that is how we need to be most focused of how do we continue that role in an unabated fashion.

 

2020 has presented many challenges for all of us and for society, but I have been immensely proud of how UTS has stayed true to its purpose as an agent and institution for social progress.  It has transformed communities through our research, through our education and practice, and very importantly through the way that we engage, the way that we link‑up with broader community.  In the first week of the pandemic alone, we had over 50 academics from across the university volunteer their time to work with the state and Federal Governments and community groups to tackle the challenges of COVID.  Even now we have literally hundreds of academics working on programs to help the economy recover, to support the Government, to alleviate some of the economic and social impacts felt by members of the community and Australia more broadly, but often tackled some of the more insidious problems that happened.  For example, a wonderful group at UTS that have done the research and getting a policy response to already disadvantaged members of society who are increasingly disadvantaged in this post COVID world and are often invisible to policy makers.  As well as doing vaccines, it's those slow things about how we help disadvantaged sections of our society that cannot be forgotten.  Early on, UTS like most other universities ‑ I am proud of the whole sector on this ‑ put in place significant student support packages, including of course international students, who are particularly hard hit, and to support all of those hard hit in our community, that UTS and I know across many universities embedded in this package was not just money and hardship funds but a program where the university hired as many students to work in the community sector organisation and helping those who most needed assistance during the package.  The students targeted for the employment program were of course students who were in dire need of financial support and often again international students not eligible for government assistance.

 

This program has gone a long way to support students and the community but we acknowledge the incredible hardship that is continuing and will continue for a while.  For many universities our COVID response has been a great example of university engagement with government, industry and community.  As Verity said, however, universities are challenging ‑ facing very difficult financial impacts.  It would be easy and tempting to look inward, to become smaller, to try to cut what people regard as noncore, but for me, as I said, right at the beginning, core to a university is how we engage with the community.  Core to a university is how do we support society through tough times.  So now more than ever, it is critical for universities to recommit to this fundamental social purpose and connect and try to improve the way we connect with communities that we serve.

 

I think Verity mentioned amongst a lot of things that I am doing at the moment, recently the Government established the national priorities and industry linkage fund, worth about $900 million from 2020.  The aim is to help universities engage with industry to produce job ready graduates.  I am proud that right from the word go, the whole working group agreed to expand and ensure that the definition of industry included wider community groups, that partnerships universities have are a critical part of the work in that industry.

 

That reflects the core function of Australian universities at least, as Civic and community engagement, as part of what we call just broad industry engagement.  But for all of those who have done it before, engagement is challenging.  It is not easy. It is varied.  It is different.  It is more than just reaching out to different community groups.  It is more than just equipping our students with critical skills, and don't get me wrong, whenever I think about a university, the biggest impact we have in society often is the incredible students that we graduate every year who go and make the world a better place because of the skills they have learnt and the networks they have.

 

We have seen first‑hand there is a relationship of trust, so if we can continue to build better solutions, trying to tackle problems which the community and government regard as the most urgent, rather than sometimes when the universities get excited by esoteric problems, but work on what are the most important to our community, that's the way we can continue to improve our engagement. 

 

A small example ‑ our UTS recently on environmental flows in Australia.  Verity talked about the climate change we are facing.  It has exacerbated toxic algal blooms in rivers across Australia.  It sounds like a small thing but this is research that has been going on a while.  Some of the greatest insights was talking to the communities around these rivers.  This research has translated into real impact.  It was used for policy in the multibillion management plan for the Murray‑Darling Basin, which supplies water to 3 million people, to agriculture and a raft of significant wetlands.

 

Another example with UTS researchers is dealing with maternal and child health in Papua New Guinea where it is almost hard to believe just north of us, women are 30 times more likely to die in pregnancy than a woman literally ‑ and it's literally 50 kilometres south of them.  By placing midwives and obstetricians to work side by side with in country service providers, using evidence based resources, UTS with our partners helped to improve the quality of care for new mothers and for infants and perform essential surgeries.  We also helped to increase the registered midwifery force in Papua New Guinea from about 200 to almost 800.  You can imagine what a four‑fold increase would have.

 

University groups like the (inaudible) network champion the unique role universities have to address contemporary global challenges such as now the COVID through what we do best ‑ teaching, knowledge, learning and research partnerships.

 

The US based Carnegie Foundation has established a gold standard for this engagement.  I am so delighted to be part of this, and with the partner universities.  it is based on reciprocity between the universities and their partners.  I was in a meeting a minute ago talking with the university leaders across universities reminding everyone that communication is two ways.  It is not about what we tell people.  Communication is mostly about how we listen to people that we work with.  I think the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification now being piloted by nine university, led by UTS and Charles Sturt University, is greatly assisted by Engagement Australia. I thank Verity and her team very much for this webinar today.  Part of two day symposium hosted by these pilot universities.  Carnegie outlines ‑ that is why it is so excited ‑ I think the next stage for universities.  Trying to help us move away from an expert model ‑ and don't get me wrong, expert, expertise and rigour is absolutely critical ‑ but embracing this concept of a model that is outwardly focused, that Carnegie promotes partnerships of a generation of knowledge, and how does that knowledge and resources in the public and private sector are best brought to bear to address the really critical social issues and this broader contribution to public good?

 

At the moment, the Government is requesting advice on rewards and incentives in relation to university and industry linkages.  I think the Carnegie ‑ the Australian Carnegie pilot and the data they have been finished collating, will be really pivotal in helping the Government shape the next policies in what universities look like to make sure we are thinking broadly about this industry engagement.

 

With the challenges that 2020 has presented us, we are now at a crossroads.  In the post COVID world, we need all our resources ‑ by that I mean the incredible people resource we have right across this country ‑ working for our country's prosperity, and more broadly how we can affect the region and the world around us.  I come back again to the beginning.  UTS is a public institution existing solely for public and social good.  But how do we do it this in this post COVID world? COVID has been an accelerator of automation in business, remote working, ways of connecting people, which is all good but there's a lot of new rules being written.  How can we as a university, how can we engage with the community, have the right discussions to make sure these new ways of working, these new rules of society, these new changes, are done in a way that benefits the whole community, that doesn't exacerbate this advantage, that doesn't increase and perpetuate inequities?  All this is happening during a recession, when inequity is increasing.

 

So we have a great deal of knowledge in universities to help with the challenges but unless we properly listen to society, in ways perhaps universities have not listened in the past, and engage with them, we cannot use this to the greatest benefit.  But I am always an optimist, as Verity knows, and I have seen this shift and a willingness from universities right across the country to continue to evolve in the way that we engage, and reflect on and better enact the social contract that universities have had with society even since universities existed.  Because the needs of society will be radically different than before, so the solutions we need to approach this need to be radically different.

 

On that note, thank you very much, Verity, for enabling me to address the conference.  I am very excited by all the things you are doing.  Thank you kindly. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you very much.  Attila unfortunately has to run off, but we do thank you for the time you have given.  Feel free to log off when you are ready.  I am now going to turn across to the panel and introduce our panel, and as I said before, if you have a question, I have noticed some people are already posting some questions.  Just start to put them in the Q&A and we will ask them when the time comes.

 

Ms Angela Barney‑Leitch is the Pro Vice‑Chancellor of Indigenous Strategy at Queensland University of Technology.  She's responsible for providing leadership in the strategic direction of the university regarding indigenous Australian matters.  This includes institutional policies, strategy and advice in relation to all aspects of indigenous Australian higher education at QUT.  As the pro Vice‑Chancellor of Indigenous Strategy, Angela plays a critical role in engaging with the university and with external stakeholders and indigenous Australian communities to help to establish effective and productive relationships.  Angela also has significant experience in indigenous Australian education and strategic policy.  She was the Director of Indigenous Policy and Strategic Innovation for the Queensland Department of Education and, in that role, she was responsible for leading strategic development of education policy on indigenous issues within Queensland.  So welcome, Angela.  Thank you.

 

Professor James Arvanitakis is the Pro Vice‑Chancellor of Engagement at Western Sydney university.  He's also a lecturer in the Humanities and a member of the university's Institute For Culture and Society.  He recently spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fulbright Fellow.  That would have been interesting.  We might ask you a bit about that.  In 2015, James founded the award‑winning honours college The Academy at Western Sydney University.  In 2016 he established Western's Graduate Research School and was the Pro Vice‑Chancellor of Research and Graduate Studies from 2018 to 2020.  James is internationally recognised for his innovative teaching and researching.  He has over 100 publications and is a regular media commentator, often seen on The Drum and News24. Welcome, James.

 

And last but definitely not least ‑ he probably doesn't need much of an introduction ‑ Professor Stan Grant Jnr is the Vice‑Chancellor's Chair of Australian‑Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University, where in 2016 he was previously appointed as the Chair of Indigenous Affairs.  This new role continues his already strong association with the university.  Professor Grant is the son of Dr Uncle Stan Grant Sr, a Wiradjuri elder and coordinator of the university's Graduate Certificate in Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage, so he's also continuing his family's long and deep association with Charles Sturt University.  Professor Grant's role as Vice‑Chancellor's Chair of Australian‑Indigenous Belonging commenced in April 2020 and he brings decades of experience as an educator, journalist and film producer to explore and answer questions of belonging, home, history and identity.

 

Professor Grant engages students, faculty members and the media to explore issues of belonging and identity in an ever‑changing world, during this particularly critical time in national and global history.  Welcome, Stan.

 

Now, my first question is to you, Stan.  One of the things that I have always loved about Charles Sturt University is it's a really good example of an anchor institution, a regional university whose economic footprint is critical to the livelihood of many of the towns where it has campuses.  But, of course, universities have more than just an economic influence in the towns they're part of.  It is this question I want to explore with you in the context of your role as chair of Australian‑Indigenous Belonging.  So can you talk to us a little bit about your role and talk to us about how it leads to better university community engagement?

 

PROF STAN GRANT JR:  Thank you.  I also want to pay respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, on whose land I am meeting today from here in Sydney and also the nations that Charles Sturt University is based on as well, the Ngunnawal, Gundungurra, Ngiyeempaa and Biripai lands.  Part of the motto of Charles Sturt University is an idea that deeply embedded in Wiradjuri culture, my father's culture, which is this idea of Yindyamarra Winhanganha, to live with respect in a world worth living in.  That very much anchors the idea of the university, that it's a place of deep learning, a place of learning that stretches back many thousands of years, and committed to the idea of the world that we live in, that we are part of a particular community, we are part of various indigenous nations, but we are also part of a broader world, and that question of creating a world that not just one that we live in and exist in, but one that is fundamentally worth living in.

 

You talk there about community.  Obviously so much of this starts with where we are and the university is very heavily involved at a very local level in all of its communities.  Just by the by, I think we're probably the highest, if not one of the highest, rates of indigenous enrolment as well of any university in Australia.  But we're very heavily involved in local communities.  Very involved in COVID and the response to COVID at a local level.  There's a program called re‑boot, relaunch, which is about people in our communities who are looking at changing their lives, whether it's through redundancy, forced unemployment, change of careers, but how people particularly ‑ people who have been in the work force for some time and then find themselves at a crossroads, can be able to connect again and be able to build new futures.

 

Gen next is another program that I've been particularly involved in, which has been really useful over the period where we have been separated from each other, and isolated from each other, with COVID. Where we were able to use technology as we are using today to be able to reach out to students and teachers and do programs where people can ‑ like we're doing today.  People can join in and ask questions.  We have had some really useful conversations, I think, and especially conversations around the state of our world today, our responsibilities to each other, how we build that world worth living in.  From my own point of view, being a Wiradjuri, Dja Dja Wurrung person, being a person who has lived in the world, I spent two decades living outside of Australia, reporting primarily for CNN, based in UK, throughout Asia, throughout the Middle East, seeing sadly the worst of our world and how our world can tear us apart, from conflict right throughout the world to natural disaster, to revolution, and to see that the trajectory of our world, taking us to this point we're in right now, where I think we're at a bit of a hinge point of history.  There is a weakening of democracy around the world, set against the size of China, which is certainly remaking the world.  We have not seen the extent to which that will play out.  It's incumbent on us to think deeply about what it is to belong, what is an identity, where do we meet, where do we differ, how do we deal with the legacies of our history, how do we deal with questions of justice, how do we deal with the questions of justice in a polarised world, in a multicultural world, in a world where we know there is deep political division and a recession of democracy.

 

So all of those questions have been at the forefront of my mind.  It's been part of my work, but now working with the university, working through the media and in other ways, I am able to engage with those things and to try to create an environment where we can come together and discuss those issues and try to find a way through in a period that I think we have not seen probably since the 1930s, the same level of disorder, danger and instability and vulnerability in our world.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  I think that's ‑ thank you for that.  That's a great opening.  It harks back to what Attila was talking about too, in terms of new rules will be created and how do we actually influence those rules.  Thank you for that, Stan. James, Western Sydney is also an anchor institution but it's in an urban setting, and I wanted to talk ‑ you to talk a bit about the history of WSU and its community engagement, and where do you think more generally engagement is heading? 

 

PROF JAMES ARVANITAKIS:  Thank you.  I want to acknowledge the Burramattagal Darug people of the Eora Nation, where I am based on the Parramatta River. There was no real representation of higher education here and it's great now that you go to Parramatta and you see campuses from universities from all over the place, and the idea ‑ I suppose a university has changed dramatically as the Greater Western Sydney has changed.  It is now a region of over 2 million people.  If you take that section alone, it is I think the fourth largest economy of Australia, with so many languages spoken.  The way that the university I suppose has been at ‑ it's become, I suppose, a successful anchor institution is that it has developed and changed as the community has changed.  So we identified that there was a need for a medical school and we worked hard to establish a medical school because communities living in such high multicultural settings and complex cultural settings need to have their own medical challenges which is different that you get from inner city health challenges or from rural health.  That's one of the things, developing, I suppose, along with the aspirations of the community, establishing our honours college with The Academy, and our work in identifying that this is actually a hub for advanced manufacturing and innovation, and launching our Launch Pad program, which is an entrepreneurial program.  That program recognises that entrepreneurship isn't just a few hipsters sitting in a garage.  It's the hairdresser or the mechanic with ideas, which is not as sexy and exciting as the other part.  That is how we have been successful.

 

I want to pick up on a couple of things that Stan said, and also Attila, which I think are really important.  That is there is a great irony at the moment where we are in such a level of uncertainty and unease in the world, and it's now the universities are more important than ever.  I just remembered from that Fulbright, which you mentioned, and that is part of a cultural exchange, but it seems that at the same time, what we really need is that we are experiencing an anti intellectualism moment, where people are turning away from what universities have to offer.  I think part of that is needing to reflect on ourselves and needing to reflect on the errors we made.  One of the things that Attila said is that engaging is two way, conversations are two way, it's listening.

 

In some ways, while we have done that very successfully, there have been other times we have let our communities down. One of the reasons I went to Wyoming is because it's a deep, red, hyperconservative state, which got behind the Trump campaign.  A lot of the way that commentators and people have written about these communities is that they're essentially a bunch of red‑necked racists, anti immigration and so on.  There's no doubt there is an element of that, as there exists an element in all communities, but actually there's a lot more subtle things happening, a lot more complexities and layers happening.

 

For example, the green deal, it's a whole state based on extractive industries.  How do we take people with us as we transform to a greener economy? So they're the things that I think ‑ the future of engagement, I suppose, I think that's a really good question to ask ourselves, and the title of this panel being engagement endangered is really important because we need to recognise that what engagement was is not always the same thing.  It changes rapidly.  And the needs of our communities in the way we encourage with them has to change rapidly.  It is messy.  It's not always neat and it's not always easy.  And there is, as Attila said, a tendency when that happens for us to turn inside but it's now more than ever, when we are experiencing these kinds of anti intellectual moments or these kind of moments where the universities are challenged, that we really need to push outside.  I suppose I would like to say us continuing to push that, keep on pushing the boundaries.

 

I suppose the thing to say to finish off with ‑ I am looking forward to hearing Angela speak as well ‑ is to say that one of the challenges that we have is, as we get better at what we do, it is easier to get lazier at what we do, that we assume that we are rest on our reputations, and I think we will hopefully touch on rankings, university rankings, later on.  As you climb up the rankings ladder, there's always a danger you will see we're number six here, number four here, but really the question is the people that live around you and the various communities that we serve, their rankings may mean something to them but how we do improve their every day lives? That is something we should be grounded on.

 

Just to finally say that the part of the portfolio I am most proud of is our schools engagement unit, getting out to schools from the Fast Forward program, aimed at our First Nations students, so the path which is the Pacific Islander program where we talk about aspirations and goals and brings in culturally relevant materials.  That stuff up here, fantastic ‑ rankings, love them, but it's that really grassroots stuff to me that is what we also need to make sure we never forget. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That is excellent.  Thank you, James.  That is a good segue to the question I want to ask you, Angela.  In the Campus Morning Mail, you wrote that before starting your role as QUT, you met with a peak indigenous Australian organisation about what research the university could do to support them.  And they responded that no university had ever asked them that question.  And you write: "This led me to think about the role of universities in the lives of indigenous Australians.  In the era of reconciliation plans, key performance indicators and employment strategies, how and why are we still excluded? Why are we not part of the university knowledge knowers but objects to be known".  I thought that was just brilliant.  So is there still a big gap in the way universities approach community engagement? And I think there probably is in general, but indigenous community engagement in particular, and what do you think needs to change?

 

ANGELA BARNEY‑LEITCH:  There's chasms between community and universities.  It is interesting, I have been listening to people talk and writing down little notes over on the side here ‑ because engagement really hasn't happened in my meaningful way with the Aboriginal community yet.  So it's not endangered because it hasn't really started. So it's an interesting discussion on the panel.

 

I think we are historically ‑ we were just sources of information.  We didn't actually hold any knowledge, and people would come in and gather that kind of information and then leave.  Typically that is what a lot of academics continue to do today.  That really ignores the way ‑ the way Aboriginal culture is connected and our relationships are formed.  We have continued this give and take as a university through with the community, and I find it interesting hearing people who work in the university talk about the community because I only came here about 18 months ago and so I was kind of like on the outside looking in, and I am thinking "you didn't really have a relationship with us to lose". I actually worked 10 minutes from the university and never came here, never came and had a look.  So when the community organisations were saying no, you only ever come here because you want our data and you want us to talk, I am thinking: that was kind of my view of universities.

 

When we were talking before about local, what's interesting in the indigenous space sometimes is the local community tends to be ignored, particularly if it's an urban community.  There's a lot more funding for remote communities.  A lot more focus on remote communities.  And there are specific needs that need to be dealt with in the remote community. So we just can't lose focus on them.  But the urban community also has a lot of need and we tend to brush past our local communities and go to remote areas.

 

I think in some ways that goes back to ignoring our connections in Aboriginal communities.  I have had phone calls from remote communities, people ringing me up since I have come here, going, "This academic has shown up.  They want to do research with our community.  How good are they? What are they doing with your mob down there?". You have to have an answer to that and sometimes there just isn't one because those connections are not happening in your local area.  I think that academics don't understand that connection in the Aboriginal community.  I also don't think they understand the (inaudible).  I grew up in that area.  They don't really understand nonindigenous spaces.  I don't think they understand that they are viewed as external people coming in and I have heard academics talk and they worry about what the other academics think about them than what the community organisations are thinking about them.  So I think we need this fundamental shift about if we are for the public good, then we need to engage more with the public and have the public understand what we are doing.  We can't leave it up to individual researchers, and some have done fantastic jobs out there in the community, but that's not a systemic change, and that's not something that will be maintained because that academic will move on.  So we need to move past relying on the individuals but start looking at fundamental changes in the way we actually undertake research with community.  That will look at the type of training that we give academics, our promotion panels, that you're promoted based on your partnerships more so around grants, and looking at the grants that we give, is it about co‑led with the community, is it about working knowledge with the community, who will own the intellectual property at the end of this, which is a big issue in the indigenous community?

 

There's a couple of things I want to say.  We need to understand the system is not neutral.  The system in universities was built on non indigenous people and nonindigenous middle class people, so we can't just tinker around the edges of a system that's been built on something that's fundamentally different than Aboriginal people or others.  We have to make these big changes in the system to be able to connect.

 

I think that ‑ it might have been you, Verity ‑ someone mentioned about leadership.  During the Black Lives Matter campaign, we have had a real lack of leadership from the universities and universities coming out saying ‑ and supporting Aboriginal people and talking about black lives ‑ deaths in custody, which is a really important issue to Aboriginal communities.  There was silence from the universities.  There was probably ‑ maybe four or five in Australia that came out and said something and said something to their staff out of all of the universities.  I see that.  Aboriginal communities see that.  When those communities who won't stand up for us come to our community and want to engage with us, we know that, we see that, and we take that into consideration if we want to deal with them. I'll leave it at that. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That's a great challenge for the panel.  Stan, I'll go to you because one of my questions was going to be very much in alignment with what Angela was saying about universities are built on this expert model, that can often actually get completely in the way of collaboration.  Is what Angela is saying true? Are universities ever going to be able to collaborate as equals or are they always going to be so part of a tradition of academic expertise that it's a very difficult relationship? What do you think?

 

PROF STAN GRANT JR:  I think as Angela touched on there, the universities have an extension of a society that is built on a knowledge system that saw us as people fit to be massacred and poisoned and have our land taken and pushed out of society and segregated, and we are still living with the legacy of that.  The reality of that, more than the legacy of that ‑ the reality of that is people who die 10 years younger and a prison population where we're so ridiculously over‑represented.  Death s in custody. A whole range of socioeconomic inequalities that are real.  They are not historic.  They are here, they are now, and they are an extension of a knowledge system that saw us as less than human, certainly as something to be measured on some western scale of progress that posited European society at the apex of that.  I think universities are an extension of that.

 

One of the things I think we have really failed in recent times is this idea that you can measure things, tick boxes, say how many people are there, the closing the gap model, and we have fallen into this idea that if we can increase indigenous numbers at universities, then that somehow is redressing those fundamental imbalances and the fundamental philosophical world view that makes those places so alien to us.

 

Now, you may increase the numbers but that's not necessarily changing the way knowledge is imparted.  The value of knowledge, how we see indigenous students.  A simple thing ‑ my own culture, if we're talking about Wiradjuri culture and the whole idea of Yindyamarra that I was talking about before, knowledge is what you don't say, not what you say.  The ability to listen is more valued than the ability to speak, whereas, of course, we know in a western model ‑ and we're doing this today, and I've made a career out of it so I am not immune to it, but the ability to fill space with noise is something we measure as being a sign of knowledge and intellect, but it's not wisdom and it's certainly not how knowledge is valued in our own society.

 

Can I also just pull the lens back a bit.  I think it's really useful ‑ and this is the world that I have lived in so it's useful to be able to apply a global perspective to this as well, and I think one of the consequences of the rise of China or the return of China, as they would see it, because China traditionally throughout the bulk of history, was the dominant power in the world.  They see themselves as the middle kingdom, the centre of the universe, but part of the consequence of the renewal of Chinese power, China becoming the biggest economy in the world, expressing itself, demanding its place in the world, is that it's challenging the ideas of how we value knowledge, how we value culture, the idea that western values of progress and knowledge are prioritised and seen as more worthwhile than others.  I think China is really at the vanguard of challenging a lot of those assumptions.  As we move into what's been called a post American world, and we see a more diffuse global order, I think those things are going to become evermore apparent, and we fit into that.  Universities here are part of that.  How we ‑ the place of indigenous people in our knowledge institutions in our society is part of that.  It's part of that reckoning.  As James touched on before, if you're in Wisconsin, if you're in the States, as Hillary Clinton would have called them, the deplorables states, they are part of that too.  The assumptions of meritocracy that don't value the worth of other people.  I think all of that is part of this moment of deep inflection and reflection that the world is going through, and Angela has touched on that, James has touched on that, and I think that is where the COVID moment has delivered us.  It has accelerated a lot of those things and it has revealed a lot of those things as well.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  Now, I have a question now from David Peacock.  I'm going to give it to you, James, first because I think it's a nice link to what Stan has just said.  David says: COVID will probably mean a globalism and internationalisation agenda for universities and a return to an emphasis upon more local, national use of public good.  Unis are positioned differently here.  But the question I have for you, is the discourse of community engagement actually more suited to this context? Is place‑based engagement going to have a Renaissance of sorts?

 

PROF JAMES ARVANITAKIS:  That is a great question.  Look, I think ‑ I suppose place‑based engagement should have never really left.  Picking up on Angela's point, Western Sydney has the greatest number of I think Aboriginal population across Australia, like concentrated, and it is easy to ‑ I am often shocked about that sense of ‑ picking up on what Stan said about knowledge, there's a tendency to want to be exotic and go to remote communities, which sometimes captures an 1880s perspective of engagement because you want to go somewhere far away to do your research, not be willing to be place based.  I think that tendency to want to move away and do something radically different is definitely something that has crept into universities.  I think that demand for more place‑based to understand the localised challenges that our communities face.

 

Given the contemporary context of the contemporary technologies, place based has shifted.  We can't just sit there and say it's only where you can visit.  Again, if I go back to our schools engagement program, we're now delivering a bunch of stuff online that we were delivering face to face.  Schools now further and further away from us are reaching out and saying can you deliver this content? So in a way ‑ I don't necessarily think it's a renaissance of just place based.  I think it's more than there is a recognition that we need to re‑embrace it and also, no matter where you are travelling or reaching out for engagement, it needs to be based on a contextualised moment.  So it's that moment of listening.  I think if you have an engagement strategy that is not based on listening, that is not based on understanding the context of the people you are working with, then that that has to be a community engagement strategy that fails dramatically.

 

So I suppose maybe less of a Renaissance and more of a reminder about how important that is, but it doesn't necessarily have to be local, if that makes sense. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Sorry, I just muted myself.  The top question, the question that has won the most votes so far in the Q&A is from Joanna Winchester.  She's asking, I'll put this to you, Angela, how can universities be places where the community feels empowered to approach us for projects, assistance and expertise, rather than the universities predominantly being the first to approach communities? How can we make ourselves better, Angela?

 

ANGELA BARNEY‑LEITCH:  With a lot of hard work, Verity.  But I think one of the things ‑ and it does come back to engagement because you have to build a relationship first so that people feel that they can come and ask you these questions. So you need to be able to bring people on to campus for other things, so that they can come and go this is what a university looks like.  You might say this is some of the work we have done with other communities.  So you are kind of putting it out there that you want people on campus, you want to talk to them about the research that you have done in the past, and you want to put it out to them about what research they can do.

 

One of the things we did with a health organisation here is we said: what research do you want? They said, "We'll think about it".  So they went away.  They came back and they said, "We want you to do this research", and so we're now doing that for them, but we never would have asked them for that type of research, and it was good that the relationship we had with them, we built up first.  Then they could feel that they can go away and come back to us with research.

 

But one of the great things I saw ‑ and I can't remember university was doing it ‑ but people from the community could put in areas that they wanted to get researched and people would get back to them about whether that was possible or what they could do elsewhere.  So I think ‑ initially people are not going to come to us.  We need to put it out to them and say, "We are open to doing community research.  We want to hear your ideas" and working with people so they do come and tell us that.  If we opened the door tomorrow and said come on in, no‑one would probably walk in.  But if we actually went out and said come and engage with us and this is what we are doing, and once people get that relationship, then they'll ask those questions and ask for that research. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  On that point, I will do a plug for the second half of this symposium.  After 1 o'clock, we're actually looking at case studies of community engagement done by universities during COVID, and they're really good examples of the universities being proactive and creating those relationships or at least building on established relationships to actually do things that are genuine collaborations.

 

Stan, on Angela's point, I was thinking as Angela was talking about your dad and the role he played in the setting up of the cause of knowledge around Wiradjuri and language and culture.  That's a good example, isn't it, of a way to make sure that local people are feeling welcomed, accepted, a big part of the university? Can you talk a bit about that maybe?

 

PROF STAN GRANT JR:  Yes.  It certainly has been. But it's not to say that that was easy, and it was something that was driven by the community and it's something that they very passionately believed in and held on to.  They were able to bring their own knowledge systems, culture, protocols into that university space.  But there was 20 years of work that went ahead of that before the university was able to embrace it.  So a lot of the work was already done.  Frankly, that work was survival.  That was keeping us alive, keeping a language alive to say that our people are here.  This is the language of this land.  But a lot of that work was done ‑ I want to pay credit to Charles Sturt University obviously for the work that it does in supporting that and growing that, but that came from us.  That came from my dad and our elders and people who brought that.  There was 20 years of work before the university came on board.  It would still be going, whether the university was supportive of it or not, but there was a happy coincidence there.  They were able to bring those interests together and be mutually supportive.  And it's become embedded in the university's philosophy too.  It's helped to form ‑ I think some of the questions ‑ the issues that Angela raised about creating a space that values that knowledge and doesn't seek to assimilate that into a broader western framework of knowledge, it's genuinely been embraced and it's become a genuine space for sharing knowledge as well, which has been an important part of the project.

 

I would also just point out too ‑ I think obviously we're focussing on universities here, but part of the neoliberal experiment has been to elevate the role of knowledge industries and universities above other work, that head work is more important than hand work, and that's reflected in the growing inequalities of our society and how dispensable so many other people have become as their industries have dried up and their factories have closed down and the sort of contemptuous way that they were spoken to, that all they really needed to do was go to university and become computer programs and get with the system.  The arrogance of that I think has contributed to some of the populace backlash that we have seen in parts of the United States, where James was, and if you want to understand the Trump phenomenon and the Brexit phenomenon and the rise of the riot in Europe, if you want to understand it rather than just dismiss it or bemoan it, part of that sits in the assumptions that came hand in hand with a neoliberal approach to society and economy that elevated economy above community, that elevated that above society, and valued knowledge industries above other industries, and reflected that in those growing inequalities and that pent‑up anger and frustration that's helped fuel this political populism.  I think a bit of humility and intro spec shun is to look at our role, but to also see that as part of a society where that knowledge is not privileged above others. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  I think you are spot‑on, Stan.  It's really interesting because ‑ I will give a bit of a plug to the Carnegie framework, which we're meeting about in a symposium on the side of this, because at the heart of what the Carnegie community engagement framework talks about is that for a partnership to be a true partnership, it has to be reciprocal and mutually beneficial. It cannot be, as Angela was saying, just a whole lot of academics getting the data they need for their research projects and it has to be genuinely humble, in your words, Stan, in that the knowledge that academics bring to the table is of absolute equal value, not greater, not less, but equal value to the knowledge and wisdom that is brought to the table by the community partners.  I think that is something that is particularly challenging for academics.  I think that's the cultural ‑‑

 

PROF STAN GRANT JR:  Verity, sometimes not even equal because quite frankly, I have had greater use of a plumber in my life than an academic.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That is true, and try to get the academics ‑ anyway, so that's the point.  That is the point.  How do you respect academic knowledge but it's just one form of knowledge.  How do you have that in a whole system of different forms of knowledge that are equally respectable because until you really get that working, you're not going to get the interesting solutions, the genuinely creative solutions to the problems we face.

 

Now, we're dead on time, which I feel sorry because James is owed a bit of a comment ‑ James, do you want a closing comment?

 

PROF JAMES ARVANITAKIS:  Very quickly.  The idea of respecting knowledge is so important.  I want to echo that.  You mentioned some of the awards I have won as an academic.  When a student enters, I never assume I am not the smartest person in the room.  I may have more theoretical knowledge, but every person in there ‑ I may not have experienced what some of the girls in the classroom have experienced.  First Nations students, I haven't experienced what they have experienced.  When you enter a classroom, like an engagement relationship, you never assume you're the smartest person in the room.  You assume you will learn as much as you share.  If you enter any relationship with that, then the chances are you are going to have a much, much more deeper and longstanding relationship, and that is built on trust.  If you can get that ‑ that is what I try to get out of my students, and that's definitely how ‑ that's why we try to get out of our engagement programs.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  I think that's great.  Thank you so much.  You have been a wonderful panel.  I have really enjoyed this conversation.  So ‑‑

 

ANGELA BARNEY‑LEITCH:  Can I say one thing? This is not a bash at academics.  Academics and researchers are very, very useful and needed in our community, and they have a great set of skills and knowledge, and sometimes it's about not what you are doing but what you can do and academics can do more if we work better with the community who has another great set of skills and knowledge.  So I think that it's not about bashing them because they do a great job and have made a big difference to the community, but it's only one part of the puzzle in working out what needs to happen in society and making this country the country we all want to live in. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That is a perfect way to end.  Thank you, Angela.  Absolutely perfect.  Thank you to all our panelists.  You can now leave, panelists, but we are going to continue our session.  We're going to hear about how universities have responded to the challenges thrown up by COVID, and pivoted their engagement efforts to ensure that communities are still being supported.  So particularly if you're at a university, stay for this session because it's really interesting.  So we have four case studies from excellent universities who have done really great community engagement work.

 

So I would like to welcome newcomers because I know we have had a couple of people join us just for this session, and I am really delighted to have you all join us in discussion on how universities have responded to COVID 19.

 

For those who are new, I would also like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.  That's where UTS stands.  I want to acknowledge indigenous elders past, present and emerging and please, if you're a new participant, put into the chat the indigenous owners of the land upon which you are meeting.

 

It's my pleasure to be joined by representatives from four Australian universities who have each pivoted their community engagement programs to better respond to community need during this time of unrest and uncertainty.  Dr Valentine Mukuria from Western Sydney University, Kate Wood‑Foye from Charles Sturt University, Matthew Pink from the Australian Catholic University, and Mitra Gusheh from the University of Technology Sydney will give short presentations and there will also be an opportunity for a Q&A.

 

Before they begin, I want to welcome to the stage Professor Jim Nyland.  Jim is the Chair of Engagement Australia.  I can see you, Jim.  That's excellent.  I just wanted him to quickly talk ‑ because Engagement Australia is the peak body of universities committed to engagement.  So Jim's the chair of this body and I want him just to tell us a bit about how to advance engagement in higher education in Australian and New Zealand universities and some of the work that Engagement Australia does.  Over to you, Jim. 

 

PROF JIM NYLAND:  Thank you, Verity, and thank you, everybody, involved in these wonderful day's activity.  I have been very fortunate for chair of Engagement Australia for the last two years.  I have worked I guess over the course of my career in the area of engagement, for the last 25 years ‑ 15 years here in Australia, 10 years in the UK, and the thing that gives me great heart, I think, that engagement is not an endangered species in Australia is of the wonderful work, the brilliant ideas and the really fantastic personalities, as exemplified by your panel here today, that are driving forward a new model of engagement here in Australia.  It really is some of the very best around the world.

 

So you are quite right: Engagement Australia is the peak alliance of higher education institutions committed to engagement.  We have come of age this year.  We have been around for about 18 years.  It emerged out of a single university, Western Sydney University.  Stan spoke about the importance of being an anchor institution.  WSU have always been anchored I think very deeply with their communities.  Professor John Reid, who was then Vice‑Chancellor, at the turn of the Chancellor, realised that they wanted an organisation to represent the entire sector, not just those who were leading the way in terms of engagement, and that led to the creation of Engagement Australia as a not for profit organisation that was approved by the association of Vice‑Chancellors at that time.  That was the forerunner, of course, to Universities Australia.

 

So our mission very much is to showcase the brilliant work that is taking place.  We provide and inspire engaged leadership across the sector.  We enable peer to peer and certainly practitioner engagement and we provide, importantly, a platform for those conversations and that exchange of knowledge to take place.  So we run and have run successfully for 18 years now a national conference, a national symposium.  This year, our leadership forum, which is part of UA, focused on the impact of bushfires on Australia, picking up on what Stan commented about the importance of different knowledge and different senses of wisdom.  We have made sure that was included, about how universities needed to do things differently in managing those challenges, and then we linked in with some international speakers.  In this case, with the ranking list.  That was important for us as well.  So we have a rich history.  We have collated a lot of rich resources over the course of that history.  We have an engagement journal that is purposely very readable.  It does have strong academic articles capturing the latest ideas, thinking, grounded in the rich literature worldwide, but, importantly, we have viewpoints.  We have case studies and many of them just to capture the rich learning that is taken place in engagement right across Australia.

 

There are two reasons why I think I have great hope with regard to how we are advancing in terms of engagement here in the higher education sector.  I am delighted to say, from my point of view, that there's definitely a longing for community amongst our sector.  So Engagement Australia now represents the majority of universities in Australia from across all of the subgroups, be they research intensives, technology universities, innovative research universities or the regionals.  They are represented in this one body.  That is important, I think, because our sector is incredibly diverse and we have to find some sense of unity in that diversity, so we can speak as one voice to government and to other entities.

 

One of the great advantages in Australia is that engagement hasn't been imposed from above.  Rather, it has emerged from within the universities, which is why we see some of the world's best practice here.  But that also gives us a real challenge in the sense that most of the people beaming in today will have perhaps 10, 15, 20 universities within their particular state or territory.  But if you walk into any two universities, the likelihood is you will not see the same definition of engagement practised.  That is an issue.

 

One of the reasons that gives me great hope for the future of driving engagement forward in Australia is the Australian Carnegie pilot, Verity, that you have led so well and Professor Brungs rightly highlighted in his presentation.  There we have a quarter of the sector, all Engagement Australia members, driving forward a common definition, a common understanding of what engagement is, and based upon an international gold standard, and Australianising that particular definition.

 

That is a really important piece of work because, without that, we will never have a common understanding or a common definition within Australia.  So that is really exciting for our future.  The second exciting thing from my point of view is this year we launched our new engagement excellence awards.  I had the great privilege of working with James only last week on the engagement awards for ATEN, and we both were just blown away with the excellent engagement practices taking place.

 

We have had 125 applications from 35 universities for the engagement excellence awards that will be awarded later this year.  So there is a longing for community, even in these testing times for engagement amongst our university colleagues, and there is truly amazing work taking place right across our sector.  It is world‑class.  We will see some examples of that in the case studies that we will hear from our EA members in a short moment.  Thank you, Verity.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Sorry, I was muted.  Classic mistake.  Thank you for that, Jim.  That was perfect.  So our first ‑ so this is case studies of excellent community engaged practice in response to COVID.  Same system, if you were here earlier.  You can ask questions by typing them into the Q&A box, which you will also find in your Zoom control panel and you can also up‑vote questions, so there will be an opportunity to ask questions.  Our first presenter is Kate Wood‑Foye.  She's the Director of External Engagement for Charles Sturt University at Port Macquarie.  Kate Wood‑Foye is part of the multicampus leadership team responsible for advancing and enriching the university's community engagement and collaborative impact in the region by connecting, building and strengthening key regional relationships, identifying new opportunities and developing confidence and outcomes to support the university's objective, which is to create a world worth living in.

 

So Kate, can I hand over to you.

 

KATE WOOD‑FOYE:  Thank you, Verity, and thank you, Jim.  It's lovely to see you all this morning, or this afternoon now.  I would also like to acknowledge the people where I am today, the elders past, present and emerging.  Fiona, if you could just go to the slides, that would be wonderful.  Thank you for asking us to share our case study, a our community of learning to lead change, which is our Charles Sturt University mid‑north coast leadership and resilience network.

 

Using our micro credentials we have been able to connect our community and local government and drive recovery in our COVID shaped world.  As we all know, the series of concurrent disasters revealed that mid‑north coast community members for us, leaders and local government may not necessarily possess the necessary skills to respond to these significant challenges which we are all going through.

 

So the team at Charles Sturt University addressed this need by offering components of our graduate certificate in community resilience and leadership through our micro credentials, specifically two subjects ‑ leading change and building community resilience.  And that was offered to our mid‑north coast joint organisation of councils, their communities in Bellingen, Kempsey and Port Macquarie.

 

Just a little bit of history.  In 2018, the Graduate Certificate in Community Leadership and Resilience was developed by our amazing team.  We have Amber Marks, Julie Newham and Jenny Camp who developed that over three years through co‑creation workshops in true consultation with our community and industry.  That was done across all of our campus footprints and the regions they sit in.  So Port Macquarie, Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo and Albury.  What was born out of that was our micro offering, a fantastic suite that we can mix and match that develop key skills, knowledge and attitudes, and they're all stackable, which is fantastic.  There is a component of face to face and online work and of course it's true co creation working hand in hand with industry and community.  So that was already in existence.

 

The important thing to note is that no previous qualification was required to enrol in the course, so if you didn't have a tertiary degree, you could jump into that space and be a part of it and up skill.

 

As we moved forward in the leadership process, we realised that there were three core themes emerging under leadership, and that was to build communities, build relationships and build capable leaders.  If you could just move to the next slide, Fiona, thank you.

 

Basically, what we wanted to do was build strong communities, make them more connected and create passionate and capable leaders.  We know there are so many people in our communities that have got those skills.  They might not be formal leaders but they may be leaders in their voluntary organisations or community networks, so we wanted to up skill them so they can survive, recover and thrive through times of disruption.

 

So fast forward to March 2020, COVID has hit and we're coming off the back of drought, bushfire and flood in our region, which is pretty full on for the mid‑north coast I have to admit.  Many people lost their homes and it was a pretty awful time, and still is for many.  So constant disruption is the norm and change continues to challenge our community resilience and our recovery.

 

That is when I was invited to be a part, representing the university of course, be a part of the Port Macquarie Hastings council COVID recovery group, and for the first time in the history of this community, and I have lived here for 20 years, 60 leaders came together on a daily basis.  We had a portfolio ‑ six portfolios where we worked together like many communities did, but what I was struck by was all these amazing people that had never come together before, have come together in this space, and I thought the university can actually step in here.  We can actually add value and support and continue this process, build on it and take it on through to get us to the other side of COVID.  So that was done through our micro subjects and the addition to that was actually approaching each of those GMs and the councils and saying let's create an ongoing supportive community network and let's create scholarships around this so we can connect community and leaders and informal leaders in that pro set.

 

Basically it was about connecting and enabling those communities, as I said.  It was collaboration because what I saw during those crazy weeks of COVID and everyone trying to figure out what was going on, everyone just wanted the best.  Everyone wanted to do the best.  I think they just maybe needed a little bit of help to formulate ideas, to put ideas forward promptly, and then they might actually be put into action.

 

We set out to support and connect individuals in diverse leadership roles as we came from drought, bushfire, floods and COVID and the leadership network was born. There are 68 individuals it consists of.  It's a diverse group.  We have all come together to share ideas and solve problems not just in the community of learning but outside that.  That's the thing.  Initially it started as quite an informal network but it is evolving.  Our area spa spans from Bellingen, to Coffs Harbour, to Kempsey and Port Macquarie.  We had people from outside in the area trying to apply for the scholarships.

 

So it basically was quite unique because it had people that might be retirees but who are highly educated and highly motivated to help their communities, joining with the Mayor, joining with CEOs, all different people coming together.  It was interactive online workshop delivery.  Normally it would have a bit of an on location component but because of COVID, it couldn't happen.  But obviously that was done online, and it was all about developing a community and supporting that community culture in an ongoing way and team building.  Of course, the bonus was at the end they would also have some credentials that might move them towards a qualification.

 

So, the network itself: we decided in June that that is what we were going to do: start this network and get all these wonderful people into the courses.  We picked two subjects.  The first subject was to start two weeks later, so the councils and the university came together and we put out a scholarship round.  We were hoping ‑ we had no idea really.  We thought we might get 20 to 30 applications.  We had 90 scholarship applications flood in over the weekend.  It was a four‑day window, and we also were flooded with professional development applications from the councils, which was wonderful.

 

The thing that really struck me when we were going through the scholarship applications were the demographics were so diverse.  We had people applying who were 20, people who were 73, and they were all from very different backgrounds and varied levels of tertiary and lived experience.  Some of the people we had on board human service professionals, CEO, social workers, firefighters of course, marketing and comms people, an astronomer, local council staff, councillors and our university team, and very happily some resilience team members joined that group and are supporting up, which is wonderful.

 

So it's a geographically diverse group, as we said.  We have just finished the first subject, leading change. We set out to fill 59 spots.  We got 69 straight off the bat.  We are just about to head into our next subject, which starts on 19 October.  We're all having a bit of a well‑earned break from referencing and academic writing in between.

 

But we certainly are ‑ I wanted to jump to that next slide, Fiona ‑ we're an evolving network.  Because we started to quickly in response to the COVID situation, we are definitely evolving and learning from each other as we go.  One of the most exciting things ‑ and I have discussed this with Dr Jayman Fords, who leads our engagement team ‑ the first subject asked each of the participants to outline a project that they would like to lead change in the community.  We have now 65 ‑ a couple were duplicated ‑ but 65 projects that have been identified, pre‑scoped, communicated beautifully and they have had collaborative input and discussion through that learning process from community, other community members, council staff and councillors, and they are primed for potential funding now, collaboration and activation, which I think is wonderful.

 

The other hugely important component is that individual LGAs have created networks and they're all meeting together but we are hosting that larger combined network and we're there to support each other and share best practice. So what started as online Zoom study meetings has transitioned into group emails, personal emails.  We are now hosting a closed Facebook group to share other things, and the most exciting thing, a few weeks ago we had our first COVID safe face to face meeting up in the hills in Bellingen which was amazing.  We had our lecturer on screen.  She was based in Wagga but we had her on our laptop and she was part of the celebration too.  She didn't get a scone but she was there with us.  So it's been very exciting.

 

Overall, for us, it's been about connection and capability.  Individuals that would never have come together before are now talking to each other.  Mayors are chatting with retirees.  They're sharing ideas and supporting each other.  It is all supported by the uni, council and resilience teams in each location.  We're all working together to create a world worth living in, and ultimately that lies in building community, building relationship and building capable leaders.  So thank you so much, Verity, and thank you Jim and very excited to be on the panel today. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Hey, that was wonderful.  I am so excited about that. 

 

KATE WOOD‑FOYE:  I get a bit excited and I talk fast, so I am hoping that everyone got all of that. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, that was absolutely wonderful.  Thank you.  So I am just reminding people if they do have any questions, put it in the Q&A because there will be an opportunity.  If you have questions for Kate, stick it in the Q&A and we can ask them a bit later. 

 

Our next presenter is Dr Valentine Mukuria. Dr Valentine Mukuria is the Engagement Facilitator in the Office of Engagement and Adjunct Fellow at the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative at Western Sydney University.  Valentine holds a Doctorate in Educational Policy and Leadership from the Ohio State University, with a dissertation titled Civic Engagement in Kenya, developing student leadership through service learning.  Valentine held a visiting academic appointment at Green Templeton College, Oxford University, where she was encouraged and inspired by Sir David Watson to pursue and implement frameworks for university‑community engagement.  You're undertaking a second Doctorate, Valentine, a Doctor of Social Science at the University of Sydney.  Unbelievable.  I am so impressed. Valentine, your time.  Second Doctorate!  And can't wait to hear from you. 

 

DR VALENTINE MUKURIA:  Thank you very much, Verity.  I hope you can all hear me clearly. So, yes, the second Doctorate is an act of madness so ask me five years down the line, I might have an answer as to why it is happening in the first place.

 

So today I was just going to talk about our project that we had with our community partners, Western Sydney community forum.  Next slide please, Fiona.  Thank you for that.  This was an existing ‑ is an existing relationship that we have had with Western Sydney community, so in many senses it did not have to be there, but there were different ways in which we engaged this time around than we did previously.  Western Sydney community forum is a peak body for the not for profit bodies with a region of I institutions and individuals who form part of the membership of the forum and they play a large advocacy role for the not for profit sector specifically.

 

For this relationship, we had the Chancellor Professor Peter Shergold, an ambassador for the Zest awards, celebrating the achievements of community both organisations as well as individuals, seeing up to 500 people all attending in one big space, lots of music and everything else, and within the Zest awards, the university presents the unsung heroes awards, presented to a student for their contributions to different aspects of community engagement, and what was interesting with the way the relationship was catalysed actually by COVID was that we were bracing ourselves to celebrate the 10th Zest awards and it was literally one week away when the Government decided no gatherings of more than 100, and of course this one was 500 and there went the Zest awards.  I think in the frenzy of trying to see how we still celebrate this, now that COVID has been thrown into the works, what did that mean? So there was a lot of reinventing how we interact and what we do with that sort of space, and so what we found quite interesting was that, I think, that particular confusion and ‑ it was actually a catalyst to be able to identify how else this relationship can progress in this environment.  So we ended up looking at it as almost a count down, so the count down to what COVID had brought our way.

 

So what happened in this particular case study was we had to quickly determine the different things that we wanted to come out of the relationship that we already had since both institutions are looking at how to deal with COVID, deal with COVID, so at least COVID was an equaliser in many ways, so it's one issue we are all having to address inevitably in different shapes and form.  So I think there was that sense of almost comradery in the process of the impact of COVID, we are actually experiencing this together in the first place, so it's not their issue, it's not our issue; it's just an issue we are all experiencing.

 

So we began to look at ways in which we could work closely and we started with a conversation of what is of interest to you, what do you need to know, what do you want done and how can we work together? So Western Sydney community forum wanted to investigate the impact COVID was having on the different organisations that they work with and for us as a university, because we are in community or with community, we are community in that sense, whatever affected the not for profit sector and the clientele that they usually represent inevitably it would affect us in one shape or form, so it was not an issue that they had to do deal with but an issue we had to deal with.  We also recognised that from the university's end of it, we were dealing with the complexities around placements, face‑to‑face placements, and the ways we have always done our community engagements, this was brought to an abrupt end because we had to use a technology intervention.  All the face‑to‑face projects or students are going to do in hospital, in community, came to an abrupt end.  There was that gap in terms of our student experience, how do we fill that gap.

 

So then we quickly realised in the process of our initial discussions that we do both have something to get out of it but what do we have to bring into it? So I am very pleased to say that as a model, it worked very well without needing external funding.  No injection of new funds.  So it is possible that money does not make the world go around, especially when you look at the capacities you both bring to the table, but that is not to say that money is not needed.  So please, whoever has the money to put into this, do not take it that I said we don't need the money.  Just throw it at us while you're at it.  But it was the identification that when we are valuing our strength and our inputs, we are both bringing in different forms of value into this relationship.  Whoever has the money, can bring in the money.  Whoever has the expertise, please bring that in.  With Western Sydney community forum, the university has the able to conduct this research.  A lot of the staff did the initial interviews with the clients and trying to implement the (inaudible).  As we all know, the pace at which the university reacts to something even as simple as an ethics process, COVID did not give us any time to deal with any of this process.  So we quickly run into designing the questionnaires and designing the sorts of ways, who would do what part and bring everything to the table.  As a model, that initial and open discussion as to what each of us can contribute into this collaboration was what actually took us way further in terms of making sure it got implemented and it got accomplished towards that end.

 

Initially, we intended to just include one student because, again, the centrality of the student experience is integral to what we do as a university, nonetheless.  From where we sit in the office of engagement, we're not an academic or research unit.  We're an outward facing, but thankfully because within the institution, engagement is everybody's business.  We found our niche in that space and we were able to offer an opportunity where we did want to include students so they that they can experience the whole process, understand what is going on in community, and while we initially were hoping to get one student, that would have been great for us, we ended up having four.  So the four, the more the merrier, and interestingly, they came from a variety of disciplines ‑ one in occupational therapy, one from Bachelor of Sciences, one from computer data and mathematical science, and another doing advanced forensic chemistry.  Go figure when we're trying to figure out what the impact is of COVID on the community, but again what this model showed us is when you start with a capacity base as the building block, you would be very amazed at how much the whole two plus two is equals to five synergy approach takes you because the students brought a wealth of experience not just in understanding of community issues but even just on technical matters, the data analysis, the system restructures and that sort of thing.  It was a big contribution they brought into this project, which was a big eye opener for us in terms of when and how the student experience happens.

 

So from the photo, we realised quite quickly, I saw that sometimes confusion is a good thing.  To anyone who is not confused is pretty much not experiencing COVID.  What made the difference is what you do with the confusion.  It is new to everybody.  Nobody has dealt with it before so clearly there is no expert in this particular space.  COVID has never affected anyone else before.  So however, we bring in our expertise in the sorts of ways and traditions in which we have worked and how that builds into the spaces we are in.  So a lot of questions, a lot of ways of looking at it, were quite new in many shapes and forms.  I think that was a really good levelling of the playing field, using the capacity framework as a building block for how to navigate this space.  We had to think laterally about this.  I think the beauty was the fact we didn't sit in what we generally can see within our institutions as the silos between your schools, your research institutes, between divisions that do X, Y and Z.  So from we sat, we actually had that as an advantage that we could actually cut across a different intraorganisational silos to be able to say this contribution can make a big difference in the co curricular space in looking at what are the pockets where the student experience can actually happen and how do we leverage off that.  We also looked at this as a platform for creating learning platforms.  So the reason I put it in brackets as new is because there's nothing new under the sun, and we find that a lot of this work, our colleagues are doing it in other areas which are not necessarily sitting traditionally within the curriculum or within the schools or within the institutes.  So we found, completion, that a lot of student leadership programs, like the Lead program, all of them working with students with that community connection but because they're not embedded within the curriculum, they almost seem to be operating in a parallel university and I think what this showed us was that we need to have really broad conversations as to how we bring all this back together, so that we are no longer all talking ‑ having competing interests and particularly when we know that resources are going to be even tighter, how do we leverage of what we are all doing well that can take us steps ahead.  We also looked at just transcending these silos, forms of knowledge, from the four students we had, it showed how we use this knowledge, experience, for those particular social issues, we found that this particular project really did amplify the transformative experience for all partners involved, so the experience as it was for the students and staff was from the university as well as from the community forum, as well as just even for the clients who the community forum serves.  It almost just triggered one big chain reaction as to what we can learn through the process.  The actual findings from the research itself were quite staggering in terms of our understanding of the depth of the impact of COVID on vulnerable communities or not for profit sector organisations, particularly the small and medium ones who did not have the funding base that is necessary to navigate this space but, at the same time, we also discovered that a lot of them implemented a lot of novel approaches that are very community specific that help them deal with COVID in many shapes and forms, so there's a lot to learn from that space in terms of how to deal with COVID particularly with what's happening at the grassroots levels.

 

We generally came up with the equation that civil mindedness plus ill structured problems equals student leadership.  One of the students helped with the quote up there.  It gave her a chance to reflect on how we function as a society and how we can improve for vulnerable communities.  I felt my contribution to this project mattered on a larger scale.  What I found particularly insightful is the student did identify herself as being part of this broader community, so not just a student studying occupational therapy but a student who, in her professional capacity, once she's completed her studies, is part of this community, is part of the improvement of vulnerable ‑ services to vulnerable communities, and I think just that understanding of I am because we are, that principle has a lot of foundations in this work and I think it's something that we need to explicitly support and encourage and push for because we are not silos as universities and within universities we should not be silos in trying to drive what the work of engagement should be.

 

This being the final slide ‑ I kind of quite like the connotation it captures.  We always have this light at the end of the tunnel but it seems to be getting turned off.  So what this actually spells out is, yes, we are in a very tablet time and tablet environment, but engagement, in my view, has been the one way of operating that universities have had since time immemorial that has stood the test of time.  I think we are in the space where we can actually advocate much more strongly for the need to support the work of engagement.  I think we almost come to a point where we generally almost agree that the first chopping boards of any budget discussion will be community engagement because we can't measure it or speak about it, but I am glad to hear a lot of the conversations that are talking about the language at which we will push this engagement agenda across because of the understanding of what it actually means, not just to the universities but to the communities that we serve in general, the communities in which we are.  So I think with that I would like to leave it with the principle of Ubuntu, which reminds us all that we are definitely in this space.  Universities, as the communities that we serve, the rhetoric that we had earlier in the public panel discussion ‑ I am because we are.  If the community is not at its best, the university is not going to be at its best, and I think it highlights that who we are, who we are and who we will be, has to be a journey that we all take together.  And, yes, money needs to be put in this.  It's not one of those things that magically does itself.  We do need to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to support the worth of engagement going forward.  I hope I didn't go over time.  I am done, I think. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you, Valentine.  That was excellent.  Remember, if you have a question for Valentine, please put it in the Q&A.

 

The next speaker is Dr Matthew Pink, National Community Engagement Manager at the Australian Catholic University.  His research areas of interest include the transformational processes of university‑community engagement, sport for positive youth development in developing and developed nations, and elite athlete welfare and development.  He is passionate about harnessing the power of universities and communities to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.  Over to you, Matthew.

 

DR MATTHEW PINK:  Thank you.  I just needed to find my unmute button once I had the Powerpoint up.  That was an interesting experience.  Technology always has a surprise for you here and there.  Great to be here virtually today and also I wanted to start by recognising the land that I currently sit on.

 

So just a little bit of scope for today.  Today's presentation will focus on the COVID 19 specific adaptations that we made in the curriculum.  Of course, there were other responses at ACU out in the community, but for a variety of presentations we particularly wanted to focus on the curricular response at ACU.

 

Just a little bit of background on ACU to provide context.  We have eight campuses across Australia, and also a campus located in Rome.  We have more than 34,000 students and 2,000 staff.  In fact, nudging up towards 2,500.  It's important to note that community engagement is critical and central to ACU's mission.  I won't read out the mission statement in full but some three key points there are we are committed to pursuit of knowledge, the dignity of the human person and all people as being equal in their worth and also the pursuit of the common good, and the common good for all and not just a few.

 

When it comes to the equal worth of all human beings, that also means prioritising work with those groups who experience the most disadvantage and marginalisation.  Not only that, it's key and central to our graduate attributes.  I just wanted to highlight a couple, not all nine, that we expect when students graduate that they are ethically informed and able to demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity, to recognise their responsibility to the common good environment and society and also to apply ethical perspectives and informed decision making, and to do this through thinking critically and reflectively.

 

So community engagement is something that, without it, ACU is not ACU anymore.  I know we're in a turbulent time but I think that's key to our argument, that it's actually central to our identity.

 

One of the key ways that this manifests is through ACU's core curriculum, which is comprised of three units.  The first two are the core curriculum units that all students at ACU undertake in their undergraduate programs which focus on issues of Social Justice, both locally and globally, through the prism of the principles of Catholic social thought.  Valentine, you would be very happy to hear that Ubuntu features heavily in the core curriculum as well because we actually love that concept.

 

There's also a cap stone core curriculum community engagement unit that involves community engagement placement hours where they go out there and how we like to say, live the core in action.

 

So this translates to 18 units with community engagement placements involved in them, and nearly 3,3500 students that completed community engagement each year.  Quite a significant undertaking across ACU nationally.

 

However, of course, enter COVID 19.  As was mentioned before, similarly disruptive for us.  Nearly all placement opportunities were suspended, and then we started to ask some serious questions.  Well, how could our students progress through their units when these units relied on a placement experience? There's a disruption and problem.  At the same time, how could we be agile within such an elaborate institutional structure.  Remember, this is rolled out nationally, and it's important to mention that we do have AC engagement, the division I work for, which functions to support the staff and the wider culture in this space.  This is something our team was wrestling with, as well as the lectures in charge of these units.

 

I will go through three key ways we pivoted or responded.  The first one is fairly obvious.  It is moving things online wherever it was possible.  Some examples of this included some of our placement opportunities, the autism inclusion program, which is peer to peer mentoring for students who are autistic, and that made quite a seamless transition online, and the feedback was quite positive.

 

Another example, and this is not an exhaustive list, is our international English.  Language student peer support programs.  Common theme there.  Translated very well to moving online.  Again, feedback has been that there's been those same mutual benefits and learnings through it being an online experience.

 

However, for many partnerships, moving online just wasn't possible.  Now, this shift to online has opened our minds a lot with respect to different opportunities that may exist, but for some, this just couldn't happen.  So we also went about sourcing as many online opportunities that we could, that we still think reached our definition of what is appropriate community engagement, but, of course, when we start shifting opportunities online, it opens up a lot of other issues to think about.  Can it remain mutually beneficial? What about online safety? What about training and debriefing for students? How does that remain appropriate and what do you do when there are incidents? I guess that was step one, seeing if we can solve part of the problem by shifting things online.

 

However, you would have seen before that 3,500 students a year is a lot to cater for, and we simply weren't going to be able to find enough opportunities that met our definition, that were appropriate with the community and hit that 3,500 mark.  So what we had to do, as ACU engagement in collaboration with the lecturers in charge around the university, was develop alternative assessments.  There were a couple that we did.  They were based around a prospective alternative assessment.  If you could have gone and completed a community engagement, where would you have done it and what kind of approaches you would have taken in line with the five principles of community engagement but also best practice as far as the literature suggests?

 

We had also to produce them in a way that they met different hour requirements.  We had situations where some students had partially completed their placements and others had not even started.  So different length assessments.  One example there is for 15 hours, and then another one took up what we believe was 35 hours as an opportunity, where students could access these based upon their needs to meet the requirements of their units.  But we also wrote these assignments in such a general way that the individual lecturers in charge from their disciplines could use them as a common minimum standard template but then adjust these and extrapolate to suit their own individual units, things like add case studies that were relevant to their discipline or however they needed to adjust it.

 

The third part I got particularly excited about.  Many of us know the high quality community engagement and service learning units really have to have opportunities for critical reflection and reflective learning built into those units.  If we think about all the different models of experiential learning, they will mandate that has to happen too.  But we had a problem.  The vast majority of students were not going to have a concrete experience out there in the field that they could critically reflect on.  So the big pivot for us came: hang on a second, COVID 19 is pretty common to everyone at the moment.  How about we flip this and COVID 19 becomes the teaching moment? Through the work of our wonderful team of community engagement officers, both a recorded and live online debriefing class for these units was developed where COVID 19 became the subject.

 

So using Gibbs reflective cycle and ACU's CE principles, and using COVID 19 as the subject of exploring how this has impacted the learning experiences of students.  Just about everybody has been impacted by COVID 19 in some way, so we thought that was a good starting group.  Impacted groups experiencing disadvantage and marginalisation, but importantly created newly vulnerable groups.  We have seen the impact on Australian students Australia‑wide and ACU had responses on that as well, but also the newly unemployed people, how it's exposed the problems with insecure work in Australia, which many people were already starting to make noise about but it's really brought it to the fore, but this gave an opportunity for the depth and level of critical reflection that we would hope students could demonstrate by the end of these units.  It worked really well.

 

We also were able to see some students feedback on some of our adjustments during semester 1, and this was conducted by Dr Azordegan, and the reference there makes reference to the case study in the latest issue of Transform, which I encourage all attendees to engage with.  This was on a sample of 119 occupational therapy students, and it was interesting that 92% of the students who could not attend a placement felt that the alternative task led to at least a moderate increase in their understanding of community engagement.

 

Now, I don't believe that anything virtual ever quite matched going and doing it in person, but in some cases, we don't have a choice and we want to get as close as we can.  65% rated this increase as a lot or a great deal.  And when we asked how this experience could have been improved, many said: virtual placements, 35%.  But interestingly, 32% talked about guest speakers, and those instances where the units could have a guest speaker from a partner organisation, that certainly enriched students' learning.

 

The last slide to finish off, what did we learn? Well, several things.  The first is that deep, established and institutionally embedded CE can be a platform for curricular agility during a time of crisis.  We believe having a central unit focused on community engagement provided the level of crisis support when needed.

 

Also, we have learnt about ‑ we have come to develop a greater but cautious openness to on line CE opportunities.  Even before COVID, there were some students for whom a face to face placement is untenable for a whole host of reasons.

 

Thank you for the time.  It has been a real privilege to present. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you, Matthew.  Once again, that's another excellent case study.  I really appreciate you taking the time to present.  Our last but not least case study is Mitra Gusheh.  Mitra is a social impact practitioner with 20 years of experience across the higher education and social sectors.  As part of her role as the executive manager of social impact at the University of technology Sydney, at the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion, she has been responsible for developing the institution's social impact framework.  She also leads our social impact program, which seeks to scale and enhance the university's contribution to public good.  Over to you, Mitra.

 

MITRA GUSHEH:  Thank you, Verity.  Thank you, Matthew, for highlighting how to unmute yourself because I just did what you did before.  Thank you for that.

 

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land that I am on, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to elders past and present.  I would also like to extend my acknowledgment and my thanks to all of the people who have participated in this initiative, our partners, our community members, who came together and helped us find a solution at the time of crisis in a university.  I am here to speak to you about listening.  I think it's a thematic area that has come up a little bit through the various different speakers today. The importance of that at a time of crisis because when an emergency hits, we're prone to react and respond, and draw on the knowledge that we have, and to pause for a moment and take a step back and listen is a critical factor.

 

When COVID hit, every university pretty much ‑ and this is something that we're all very proud of ‑ stepped up to take up the public purpose role within the space.  At UTS, the thing that helped us pivot is that act of listening and different forms of engagement and conversation, where we not only decided how to shape our response by our expertise and by our knowledge and by past experiences, but brought into the fold the knowledge and experience of people who are experiencing the impact of COVID in different ways.

 

We do that in multiple ways.  As part of our engagement with our local community, we have over a number of years now been implementing an appreciative inquiry model of working where we not only talk about what people want to focus on in terms of solving problems but where the assets of the community are, where the aspirations for the community are, and what people's dreams for the future are and also what problems they want to address.

 

Different forms of engagement also bring into the fold deeper conversations through focus groups or co design of various different processes where we engage directly with community, and we also reach out to our service providers in terms of trying to build on their knowledge and their understanding of what the main issues are, on what the concerns are, and whether the assets of the community are.

 

During COVID it was really interesting for us because we had to really up our engagement in that space.  We usually are involved in monthly conversations with our community partners and during COVID, that increased to a weekly session where people were rapidly responding to what was emerging during that time.

 

Of course, we have a moment in time kind of response as well, when COVID hit, we also were considering perhaps our knowledge being limited in terms of what the experience for our students are.  So we began undertaking a survey with 70 students and particularly targeting people who were likely to be more impacted by COVID.

 

What that allows us to do, all of those conversations that build over time, allow us to move from a directional response, which is often what we quickly jump to, where we think about this is the university and this is the role of the university to this community and to that community to a model that is more relational, connected and asset based and considers not only what people's needs are but what people's assets are.  We heard about the fact that our internal community, particularly the students experiencing hardship as a result of COVID, were experiencing financial hardship.  They were experiencing social isolation, but, at the same time, we were talking to our external communities.  We could hear that they were having diminishing level of volunteers at a time when the demand for the services were in fact going up because people were worried about the act of volunteering for those services.

 

We also in the conversations with the community themselves heard about the social isolation, the digital disconnect, which is really, really critical in terms of our digital divide, at a time when COVID pushes us all on line.  We also knew about the assets of the community and both internal and external.  Our students, despite the fact impacted by COVID, have amazing resources to contribute both in terms of the human resources and the knowledge space they hold, our external communities offered meaningful work and an opportunity to engage and so bringing all of this together, we developed the community ambassador program, which essentially took that pool of funds that our universities had committed to supporting our communities in terms of the impact of COVID and funneled $500,000 of that towards employing students who were experiencing financial hardship as a result of COVID to then redirect their efforts towards the community needs that were being identified by our partner organisations and by community members alone.

 

This is still ongoing but at the end of August, we had 75 students engaged in this way who had contributed 5,000 hours of their work.

 

Listening makes you realise that there is no one model that works effectively, so I am sharing with you three examples but there are others of how this work got articulated, and the first of that is around a partnership with community organisations that are our partners.  So students working with ‑ directly with our partner organisations and getting placed as part of communities who are delivering services to marginalised and vulnerable communities, so with Food Bank, Oz Harvest, Glebe Youth Service, who was delivering food to our community services.

 

The second was through a partnership program that we implemented alongside, hand in hand, with our community partners.  So in listening to all the community organisations that we worked with but also with people ‑ the community members that we had engaged in dialogue around the inquiry sessions, we knew about the digital divide and so we put together a digital mentoring program that offers ‑ allows our students to work with people in the ageing population to support the development of digital skills.

 

This allowed our students to obviously ‑ beyond the financial support, to actually develop skills and be able to practise their skills but also it brought incredible impact for the local community.  So a project that began over a 10‑week period ‑ let me show you here is where the text app is to: hey, this is how you actually can use the health app, and so it related in a mentee walking more, so he can track his walking distance, it adds to physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing, and at the moment, last week, they are looking at the tele health app so he can make his own appointments with a local doctor, which is exciting.

 

The last example I am sharing with you is using our community to actually develop a response internally within our own boundary as well.  So as a result of the survey we did, we know the welcoming and belonging was an issue identified by the students at a time when COVID hit.  People are feeling isolated and not part of the organisation, so we're working with a number of students hand in hand with our staff to co design what wellbeing might look like, what a caring university might look like, and how can we actually strengthen what we have.

 

I am just going to stop there.  And hand back to you.  Thank you. 

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That was fantastic.  I hope you have enjoyed ‑ I know I have, those case studies of really interesting, innovative practice during times of COVID.  I particularly like ‑ yes, I just really liked the capacity to be so agile and innovative in times of also decreasing resources so congratulations to all of you.

 

Now, we have unfortunately run to time, but what I have said to our eager questioners in the Q&A, if the panelists could just stay back a little bit longer and just answer those questions in the Q&A.  You can just type in your answers.  That will enable everybody else to leave the call at this time.

 

So thank you very much to everybody.  Thank you for all of those who joined us today.  It's been a really wonderful session and we look forward to seeing you soon.  If you want to wait for your answer to be typed in, just stay online for a little bit and our panel will deal with you.  Thank you very much, everyone.