New VC Selected (1 Viewer)

[Azure]

Just received the following email:

Dear student,

I am pleased to announce that Professor S. Bruce Dowton has been appointed the next Vice-Chancellor and President of Macquarie University.

Professor Dowton is currently Clinical Professor in Paediatrics at Harvard Medical School and was, until recently, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Partners Harvard Medical International.

He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales where he was Dean of the School of Medicine between 1998 and 2005. During that time, he was a member of the Board of St. Vincent's and Mater Health Sydney, Chair of the Deans of Australian Medical Schools, and Chair of the Medical Training and Education Council of New South Wales.

He was chosen from an exceptionally strong field of applicants for his capacity to continue our University's rise. He will build upon a successful strategy of leveraging our significant land holdings in order to invest heavily in research; learning and teaching; new facilities and developing mutually beneficial relationships with industry.

He will take over from Professor Steven Schwartz who, after more than six years at the helm, will be leaving us in excellent shape, both academically and financially. We are now one of the world's great universities.

Professor Dowton has a stellar international reputation. In the past few years he has led or overseen project teams in more than 30 countries, advising on diverse aspects of healthcare and higher education.

His academic and professional appointments and work have spanned the globe, including Australia, USA, Norway, China, Scotland, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, Oman, Kazakhstan, Greece, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

He is a passionate and visionary leader, committed to "the pursuit of knowledge and learning as a key to improving the human condition."

Professor Dowton's CV is available for download: http://www.announcements.mq.edu.au/documents/SBD_resume_1.pdf

I look forward to welcoming Professor Dowton when he takes up his position later this year, as the fifth Vice-Chancellor in our 48-year history.


Regards,
Michael Egan
Chancellor, Macquarie University

Thoughts?

 

[converge]

I reckon it's a good choice. This should help in making the university more recognisable on the world stage.

 

[mirakon]

azure for vice chancellor

computers will not be faulty

 

[soloooooo]

He got his Bachelors in 1980, PHD in 1994 and then was Dean of Medicine in 1998 at one of the top universities in the country? That is certainly impressive.

 

[-may-cat-]

Well, he can't possibly fuck the place up anymore than Schwartz right? ... right?!

 

[mirakon]

does this mean that macquarie is gonna make an undergrad med programme soon? Considering the vice-chancellor was so involved in the field.

 

[soloooooo]

I remember where I had heard his name before. He was in charge during the scandal in the early 2000s over the UNSW medicine research (a professor I think from memory) scandal where research results were falsified.

 

[MrBean1561]

His resume is certainly impressive. I hope he's better than Schwartz.

 

[AsyLum]

 

[harrisony]

what was so bad about Schwartz?

 

[MrBean1561]

what was so bad about Schwartz?

He fucked up a lot of things.

 

[Flying]

He fucked up a lot of things.

How so? I'm only first year

 

[MrBean1561]

How so? I'm only first year

-Abolished Honours program for most degrees.
-Budget cuts
-The whole issue with staff pay
-Dropping the Uni's ranking in such a short time

Other members will know more information about this.

 

[Azure]

I'm not so sure on the whole honours issue, although I don't appreciate the way it was handled (for example there was a disturbing element of secrecy at one point). I think it's great that we're leading the way in terms of the transition towards the bologna model, but I honestly don't see why honours for most degrees needed to be scrapped. Surely we could have had the best of both worlds.

 

[AsyLum]

I'm not so sure on the whole honours issue, although I don't appreciate the way it was handled (for example there was a disturbing element of secrecy at one point). I think it's great that we're leading the way in terms of the transition towards the bologna model, but I honestly don't see why honours for most degrees needed to be scrapped. Surely we could have had the best of both worlds.

Honours is really useless outside of this country, it's painful but thats the truth, its a step in the right direction. The way it was handled wasn't very helpful though, it should've been one based on educating students as to why this system is being implemented and why its a better one. They kind of missed the boat here, partly because of a leak and partly because of their own fault.

Budget cuts/staff pay remains and always will be present as an issue in the running of an institution that is mid-tier at best, its just the reality of it, plus there are enough incumbents in jobs that are getting paid peanuts that I don't know if its an entirely bad thing to shake things up. Again it would've been much better if it was communicated in a transparent way but what can you do.

The drop in rankings was going to happen regardless of what Schwartz did, it just became more accentuated.

I'm not trying to defend him but it is handy to remind ourselves that the university is more than one man and that a lot of things that have happened have occurred as the result of a lot of other factors.

One thing he didn't do well was leadership and communication, his messages were often mixed or missing and there was a lack of transparency on several issues that probably weren't as bad as they were made out to be. The fact he didn't really engage with the rest of the university is another aspect I disliked, all these focus groups and whatnot that were being run and no one really had a direct way of communicating with him outside of his blog. He needed to be more involved, understand the culture and then make decisions based on that seeing as he started losing his focus halfway through his reign.

 

[kkmok]

I just hope the timetable can be fix>.>

 

[AsyLum]

I just hope the timetable can be fix>.>

lol whats wrong with the timetable ?

 

[DavDav]

Great appointment.

Like someone said this change will definitely make MQ more recognisable to the outside world (hopefully not anymore to Asia I think we got more than enough of Asian internationals in terms of student quota wise). I'm Asian as well and would like to see a greater balance and variety in terms of exchange students. More Europeans lol.

Jokes aside hopefully due to his medical background he might expand the current hospital and postgraduate programs so that MQ might join USYD and UNSW as a facility that is able to offer an undergraduate medical program? I'm sure this would increase our reputability and prestige as we are still a young university.

Still didn't see this appointment coming nor did I ever see Schwartz doing anything useful either. Hahaha.

 

[AsyLum]

We actually have a fairly high american/european international student cohort, its just they're less concentrated.

It'll be a long time before an undergraduate medical program is set up I would think, first he's got to figure out how to keep the hospital from leaking money, and sure up the existing science-related ventures on campus (ie, hospital, cochlear/hearing hub, physio and chiro).

 

[xeuyrawp]

I'm glad they actually hired someone successful. Not sure how MQ can have the highest-paid (when factoring in bonuses, eg having IT Support maintain your mansion's internet??) VC in Australia, yet hire a person with such a terrible track record like Schwartz. It's pretty clear that all positive changes to MQ under recent times - eg the abolition of honours, attempting to streamline faculties, overhaul of curriculum - can be attributed to Sachs, while everything shit to Schwartz.

He is just a terrible, terrible blogger-- I mean, VC.