The new head of Charles Sturt University’s Albury-Wodonga campus has used her promotion to call for courses to be tailored towards specific requirements and needs of the Border region.
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Dr Jennifer Munday, whose academic background is in teaching and theatre, told The Border Mail a key challenge for the university would be balancing the needs of its on-campus students and those studying online.
“We really have to balance that out, and make sure that the ones we have here on campus feel highly valued, and that we gear their education to what the region needs,” she said.
“So that we’re not just training, say in my case, future teachers to be global teachers, but specifically for our local region as well.”
Dr Munday spent her early career teaching in Melbourne primary and secondary schools before relocating to Wagga in 1988 to take up an academic position with the Riverina Murray Institute of Higher Education, which a year later combined with the Mitchell College of Advanced Education to form CSU.
She then settled on the Border with her family in 1996, lecturing in arts and technology education.
Dr Munday’s appointment comes at a time of change in Victoria’s education system, with the Andrews government recently announcing it would ramp up the minimum ATAR requirement to enter teaching courses to 70 by 2019.
This would impact on CSU’s undergraduate teaching courses as about half of its students at the Thurgoona campus come from Victoria, Dr Munday said.
Asked if academic performance alone constituted a good teacher, Dr Munday said it was a political question given the recent emphasis on testing for additional non-academic skills.
“We have to really pay attention to what the Victorian government and (Victorian) Department of Education say, it’s another balancing act we do here,” she said.
“We have things in place to help students understand what those non-academic skills are, and are looking for students to have strengths in their academic work and their non-academic skills as well.”
As for her head of campus role, Dr Munday said her brief was wide. “It’s about keeping an oversight on what happens here on the campus,” she said.
“The bigger picture (pertaining to) the environment, the buildings and who uses them, and the kind of culture that we have.”
She stressed that Border schools, businesses and the wider community must feel welcome to engage with the university and to visit it.
“I come in a long line of very effective heads of school,” she said.
“I just hope I can live up to that standard. They’ve all impressed me.”