Seeding ideas and making connections
5 August 2021 | Prof Catharine Coleborne
Leading a multidisciplinary School inside a changing institution has required a constant attention to being ‘ready’ with ideas to take further writes OO client Catharine Coleborne.
Photo by Giulia May on Unsplash
Some of these have been instinctive for me, such as knowing we have potential in specific areas of the School and wanting to invest in these for wider impact and collective outcomes. Examples of these include our strength in creative writing, which sits as part of an English and Writing major in the BA degree, or our continual improvements to the Bachelor of Social Science and a greater engagement with its applied aspects and WIL (Work Integrated Learning). Another example is a strand of work that I have focused on from the beginning of my tenure at the University of Newcastle: growing the digital humanities.
Each of these areas and others have benefited from additional sounding-out conversations with Outside Opinion, as well as critical pieces of work we have engaged, such as post-external review implementation in the social sciences, and workshops dedicated to the formation of a digital humanities identity that links us to a range of potential partners. These pieces of work are ongoing and have been iterative, and benefit from the insightful eyes and expertise of Outside Opinion—in conversation, through targeted interventions, or desktop research.
A critical area for me as Head of School is our Bachelor of Social Work. As well as engaging our social sciences and humanities in thinking about models for WIL/industry engagement and partnership, we have a ready-made opportunity to transform a whole-of-School thinking around partnerships through our Social Work program. ‘Proof of concept’ ideas such as a city-based hub or shopfront for the program and partners have been meaningful.
Most recently I commissioned a report around humanities, creative industries, social science and social work as my own School is being merged with the School of Creative Industries. The work for the report was a collaborative effort between Dr Diana Newport-Peace and Prof Stuart Cunningham, with input from our academic staff through pieces of data and reports on student outcomes. The report, again cleverly pitched and managed by Diana – who has a truly excellent feel for this work – is doubling as an evidence-based approach designed to help me to speak publicly for the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (DASSH) in my role as the current President. In this way, we can take the work further, use the information for different audiences, making the most of the investment in the research and report outcomes.
What I’ve managed to do with and through working with Outside Opinion is to build on my instincts and receive better knowledge about specific interventions in the School I lead. These have been really interesting conversations about ideas, and about the nature of strategic and organisational change in different contexts. Having worked in the wider institution with different consultancies over time, I have come to appreciate and value my own inner voice and judgement, but also the ‘sense checking’ that can happen when we engage with an ‘outsider’ view, skillset, contacts and facilitation. These projects have been really helpful at times when my thinking needs to be grounded, situated and supported and those mechanisms have not always existed in-house.
Moving forward there’s inevitably new challenges and projects but my hybrid approach of DIY, my strong ideas, and regular check-ins with trusted advisers helps me to maintain perspective in the constantly evolving higher education sector we occupy.
Professor Catharine Coleborne is Head of School, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle. Professor Coleborne is an internationally recognised historian of health and medicine with an extensive portfolio of research, teaching, administration and academic leadership. Her research and publishing in the histories of mental health, families, illness, colonial worlds and medical institutions, as well as in law and history, has attracted world-wide attention.