Jon Stubbs is the first interview subject in the lead-up to the ATEM conference. Jon is the Conference Chair and Director of Student Services at UWA and was interviewed by the conference blogger on 25th March 09.
Before we talk about the conference, maybe you could tell us what you do in your ‘day job’?
My ‘day job’ has the title of ‘Director of Student Services at UWA’. It’s a nice short title for something that is rather broad and expansive. It runs from having overall responsibility for the university’s childcare services through to recruiting students to adminstering records, collecting fees, and enjoying graduations (graduation season right now). It includes the human services that we provide to our students like the Medical Centre, Counselling Services, the Transition programes, Learning Skills services and so on. You’ll be coming to the conclusion that I don’t do much of this myself – I sit in my ivory tower and supervise!
With the event kicking off in less than a month, how is the preparation going?
Other people have it all under control! I’ve been very pleased with the support from people around the country and across the ‘ditch’ in New Zealand. At last count we had 90+ registrations. We think we’ve got a very good line up of delegate-led presentations and we have our 5 keynote speakers – all of whom have jumped at the chance to speak at the conference.
The conference theme is “Changing Expectations”; what’s the reason for choosing that theme this year?
It’s the 4th conference in a series that was originally established to look at ways of delivering services to students so we tried to inject something new into the 2009 event. With the change in Government and the possibility of a significantly different Federal policy environment, it led naturally to the ‘Changing Expectations’ theme. Julia Gillard’s social inclusion agenda, the prospect (notwithstanding a GFC!) that there might be increased funding for university teaching and for research and a focus on diversity and broadening access – are all things that staff who attend the conference will be keenly interested in..
You mentioned that this is the 4th annual Student Services conference, what sort of people would be interested in attending?
We’re advertising the conference to staff in technical and further education institutions, to universities in Australia and New Zealand. We have two delegates who have managed to find their way to us from the UK – one from Queens University in Belfast and a second from a consultancy who works in the private sector. We think the conference would appeal to Faculty administrators who have students as their key focus, to staff in central administrations in univerisites who have the development of services to students as something within their portfolio.
Something new for the 2009 event is having a conference liveblogger? How do you think it will add to the conference experience?
I’m not sure I can predict the outcome – it’ll depend on the personality of the blogger, whether she can reveal the inner story of the conference!
(Jon joked that I might be a ’deadblogger’ by the end of the event – I won’t repeat exactly what he said!).
Is there anything in particular you’re lokng forward to at ATEM-SSCC-09?
I’m really pleased that the keynote speakers are so prominent in Higher Education. Obviously one would expect VCs and DVCs to be vitally interested in ‘Changing Expectations’ but we also have Fred Chaney as one of our keynote speakers who is an architect who has done a lot of work in Higher Education. His firm, Cox Howlett and Bailey Woodland are the contracted architects for redevelopments in student spaces at the University of Melbourne. Another keynote speaker, Robyn Reilly, is a consultant who has worked extensively with universites in improving their customer service. So the keynotes are entirely appropriate people, they’re already respected within the sector. We have high expectations of them and I’m sure they’ll deliver! I’m also looking forward to the delegate-led presentations. There are several in the list that interest me personally. For example the paper from the University of Melbourne will hopefully cover some of the changes they’re going through as they apply the ‘Melbourne model’. I’m sure delegates from a wide variety of backgrounds will find several things in the program that will be of great use to them. And then of course the real reason anyone goes to a conference – the networking opportunities and we’ve built in plenty of socialising into the program!
Thanks Jon – next interview coming soon!
