Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2007

News

Appointment of Deputy Vice-Chancellors

La Trobe University has appointed two Deputy V ice-Chancellors.

They are Professor Tim Brown, currently Dean of the College of Science at the AN U, who will become Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), and Professor Belinda Probert, former Dean of Arts at the University of Melbourne, who will take up the post of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic).

Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson said he was delighted that two people with such strong credentials in academic, research and higher education policy and planning have accepted offers to join the University. They will take up their appointments in the near future.

The appointments come as La Trobe University is finalising its ten-year strategic plan for implementation from the start of next year. Professor Johnson said the context in which the University will operate during the next decade will be different.

‘The new appointments are part of a process to ensure that La Trobe University will be in a strong position to respond to changes in the higher education environment which benefit our research, teaching and learning activities.’

Professor Belinda Probert has previously held positions as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Western Australia. Professor Probert’s teaching and research expertise has been built in the disciplines of politics and sociology, where she has worked on employment policy, gender equity, and work and welfare reform.

A leading sociologist, she is widely recognised for her research on the changing nature of work and employment, new patterns of inequality, and social policy and women’s work.

From 1997 to 2003 Professor Probert served on the Australian Research Council’s Research Training and Careers Committee and was a member of the Social Behavioural and Economic Sciences Expert Advisory Panel. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a founding director and member of the Board of the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, established by the Commonwealth Government to promote and advance tertiary teaching and learning in Australia.

Professor Tim Brown is currently Dean of the College of Science at the Australian National University, prior to which he was Professor of Statistics and Head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Brown is recognised as one of Australia’s top statisticians and has an extensive record in consulting and applied research over a wide variety of areas of science and management with clients from private industry, government and the university sector.

His primary applied research and consulting in the last ten years has been in education, tertiary selection and the effects on society. The latter has led to major changes in the Victorian Certificate of Education, in the reporting of results in schools and in tertiary selection in Victoria and Australia.