Our 2022 Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Excellence recipients
Living our values
| Mary Gilroy | Academic Services and Support |
| This award acknowledges the demonstrated outstanding commitment to the living values of the University. Mary is dedicated to the University and exemplifies value and commitment in her role to ensure quality in every task she undertakes. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary personally undertook the mask fit testing for Mt Helen students to ensure they were still able to attend placement in clinical environments, and has a student-centred focus within the Institute of Health and Wellbeing which holds her in high regards throughout the area. |
Leadership and transformational change
| Helen Ryan | Academic Services and Support |
| This award recognises a valuable contribution in transformational leadership, showing values of inspiration and empowerment. Helen's commitment to the restructure of staff from schools to institutes has demonstrated her commitment to the University, and she has fostered continuous improvement among her staff, providing various opportunities to upskill.
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Leadership and transformational change
| Liam Sloan, Darren Gray and Christine Brown | TAFE Executive Team |
| This award recognises a valuable contribution in transformational leadership. The teams’ impact in terms of financial stability, restructure alignment towards the Victorian Skills Plan, and the design and implementation of Performance Panels was consistent with the purpose of demonstrating values in action.
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Excellence in innovation
Melinda Stewart, Tom Ash, Jean-Claude Nou,
Belinda Allwood, Dale James, Jeremy Egan, Kate Allen | ITS CRM Project |
| This award recognises innovation and entrepreneurialism through innovative practice. The ITS team were able to develop an ‘off the shelf’ product into a contextualised solution for students. This had a significant impact on efficiencies within the business and reporting in respect to Lead qualifications to ensure other areas such Marketing could properly target those students who were still in the decision-making phase of their journey with Federation University. |
Excellence in community engagement and impact
| Commercial Services Team | Technology Park and Commercial Services |
| This award acknowledges exceptional performance in innovative work linked to sustainability and community engagement. The team played a key role in large-scale events, as well as providing exemplary service to stakeholders through conference bookings and community members utilising their services. The team have introduced local indigenous naming for many of their spaces and are also sustainable in reducing waste through donation services to charities. |
Excellence in research partnerships and impact
| Dr Fiona Hogan | Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability |
| This award recognises a valuable contribution in the importance of developing, enhancing and managing research partnerships. Dr Hogan created and fostered partnerships with many local councils, government departments and foundations. Federation University has been the beneficiary of over $1M in research funding grants due to Dr Hogan’s committed work in the wildlife protection and conservation fields.
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Excellence in industry engagement and impact (higher education)
Dr Taiwo Oseni, Professor Shyh Wei Teng and
Bill Mundy | Safesforce |
| This award acknowledges and recognises the diverse contributions of the University and cloud-based software company, Salesforce to design, develop and deliver training courses for upskilling the digital capabilities of the workforce. The partnership was successful in having their ‘Customer Relationship Management using Salesforce’ course proposition selected for inclusion into the Digital Jobs Training course initiated by the Victorian Government Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions. |
Excellence in industry engagement and impact (VET)
| Claire Stacpoole, Lee Wheeler and Claire Sladdin (East Grampians Health) | Federation TAFE and East Grampians Health |
| This award acknowledges and recognises the diverse contributions of the University and East Grampians Health who together identified a workforce deficit in aged and community health workers and strived to find a way to reduce that gap. The team initiated a connected pathway between the VETDSS Certificate II in Health Support Services and the Diploma of Nursing, fostering students to continue and to take the next step in their nursing career. |
Enhancing the student experience
| Jason Slater and Tayla Banham | University Basketball League |
| This award acknowledges the valuable contribution of Jason and Tayla in enhancing the student experience through developing connections with students and stakeholders by bringing together student athletes and providing opportunities to others through internships, placements, and volunteering.
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Excellence in cross-university collaboration
Emma Price, Anthea Groessler, Tiffany Winchester,
Ben Cushing, Erin Penny, Amit Suyan, Dean Sutton,
Steve Dahmes, Andrew Segrott, Bradley McLindon | Connected Classrooms Initiative |
| This award acknowledges a valuable contribution to a high level of collaboration across the University, particularly the areas of the Centre for Academic Development, Information Technology Services, Property and Infrastructure and Academic Services and Support. The team successfully implemented an innovative and inclusive teaching space for academics and staff to deliver learning sessions where students can collaborate either in person or by joining remotely. |
Research excellence
| Dr Savin Chand | Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability |
This award recognises a valuable contribution in exceptional and sustained research contributions.
Dr Chand has consistently maintained excellent research achievements through publication in high impact journals and short- and long-term grants to assist in his environmental research. He challenged conventional thinking which received extensive media coverage and gave Federation University national and international recognition in Climate Extremes Research.
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Research excellence (early career researcher)
| Dr Amin Soltani | Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability |
| This award recognises a valuable contribution in research through exceptional and sustained contributions. Dr Soltani has demonstrated a high level of sustained research success over many years. Dr Soltani’s research in geotechnics and geoengineering has produced groundbreaking results and gained significant media attention. |
Vocational teaching excellence
| John English | Skills and Education Delivery |
| This award celebrates the diverse and outstanding contribution to vocational teaching. John has shown a strong example of excellence in teaching. The support that he provided to students within his area were easily linked to the University’s values. He was able to enhance the student experience and success by putting the student first and consistently providing support when required, and successfully led his teachers in developing short video tutorials to act as a quick reference for students. John also established links within the Ballarat building industry community to develop learning and training solutions for project managers and site supervisors.
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Special Commendation recipients
Excellence in innovation
| Matthew Dent | Property and Infrastructure |
| This award recognises innovation and entrepreneurialism by working in a highly-complex environment, by being innovative in the face of change, and the ability to adapt quickly and efficiently is highly commended. Matthew was successful in creating the Co-operative Centre for Excellence, implementing the IBM emerging technologies centre, the Ararat Jobs and Technology Precinct and the Ballarat University Town program. |
Excellence in innovation
Professor Gabriele Suder, Jayne Gurton, Filip Janda and
Catherine Overliese | New Business Accelerator |
| This award recognises innovation and entrepreneurialism through innovative practice. The New Business Accelerator led and managed the launch of Federation Online by creating a new system in partnership with Online Education Services. |
Enhancing the student experience
| Kellie Bray, Kim Ferguson, and Michelle Trethowan | Learner Support Team |
| This award acknowledges the valuable contribution of Kellie, Kim and Michelle in providing exemplary customer service which has enhanced the quality of the student experience implementing a number of successful engagement activities including the Student Support Services Expo and the TAFE Library Tours. |
Vocational teaching excellence
| Paul Street and Rachael Barclay | Cert IV Training and Assessment Team |
| This award celebrates the diverse and outstanding contribution to vocational teaching. Paul and Rachael were able to demonstrate the embracing of new technology in conjunction with training teachers within their area. They have shown a commitment to adopt flexible delivery modes, increase accessibility and deliver quality training to TAFE teacher. Their commitment, high standard of work, strong links with industry and professional community and enhancing student engagement should be celebrated. |
View the 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence presentation slides (pdf, 2.3MB).