February 2025

While some colleagues have returned to campus more recently, others have been working hard since the beginning of the year to help produce an excellent outcome for La Trobe in the VTAC offer rounds. We increased our number of VTAC offers for a third consecutive year and have also made a significant number of direct offers. I am so grateful to everyone that has worked so hard to produce these fantastic results, especially the teams in Recruitment; Admissions; Customer Care; Academic Services; Market Strategy and Insights; Marketing, Creative and Production; Web and Digital; Social Media; and Information Services. Thanks to your efforts, we are in a good position to meet our 2025 enrolment targets.

There are many reasons to feel positive about the year ahead. Later this month, we’ll celebrate the official opening of our renovated and extended Shepparton campus, which we will showcase at our first ‘In Conversation’ all-staff webinar for the year that will be broadcast from Shepparton on Wednesday 19 March.

During 2025, we will continue with implementation of our Health Portfolio Innovation program through further investment in new clinical teaching facilities; and we will advance our education innovation to support a national rollout of our programs in initial teacher education and the science of learning.

Health and education innovation are two of the priority initiatives identified in the draft Strategic Plan 2025-2030 that I shared with staff last week. As I said in my message introducing the draft, our people are what makes La Trobe special and are pivotal to our future success. Please take time to read the draft strategy and send your feedback on our proposals to build on La Trobe’s foundations through innovation, accelerated growth, maximising our impact, and embracing the future.

In the meantime, I’d like to share a few recent achievements and activities from across the University.

India visit

I have just returned from a trip to India with our DVC Future Growth, Stacey Farraway, and Amit Malhotra, our Regional Director for South Asia and Africa. There are so many opportunities to expand our presence and activity in India. The Indian Government’s National Education Policy provides settings that can support deeper collaboration and partnerships between Australian and Indian institutions, including programs based in-country to deliver research collaboration and industry engagement. We also held discussions with potential new partners during our trip and hope to announce new collaborations soon.

We have very strong foundations on which to build – we held a wonderful celebration at Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College in Delhi last week to mark the 30th anniversary of our successful student mobility partnership with LSR, an elite all-female college of Delhi University.

In addition to generating fantastic learning experiences for La Trobe and LSR students, our partnership has resulted in some enduring relationships – Dr Meenakshi Gopinath, who was LSR’s principal when our partnership began 30 years ago, continues her association with La Trobe today as a member of the La Trobe Asia Advisory Board.

On this trip, I joined fellow vice-chancellors and senior leaders from Australian, New Zealand, UK, and Indian universities for discussion on two conference panels, at the QS India Summit in Goa and the Professionals in International Education India Summit in Delhi.

It was a timely opportunity to discuss how universities are becoming more resilient in the face of global challenges such as geopolitical unrest and climate change, and addressing developments like AI, machine learning, and the changing world of work. All universities are dealing with these issues, so it was interesting to hear about the approaches being taken by colleagues around the world to build resilience at their institutions.

Health innovation

It was pleasing to see La Trobe’s expertise in health-related programs recognised in the latest Times Higher Education subject rankings, with Medical and Health rated as our highest-ranked subject area and placed in the world’s top 175.

We also improved our position in the 2024 Shanghai Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments, with La Trobe placed 8th in the world and 3rd in Australia. It’s not surprising that we are rated so highly under this ranking: La Trobe’s Department of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences is well known for preparing students for careers in food, nutrition, dietetics, sport, and human performance, and the La Trobe Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre is home to some of the world’s leading sport science and injury prevention researchers.

Recently, La Trobe researchers have also won some significant funding for health-related projects.

Our Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) has been awarded $2 million in Federal Government funding to conduct Australia’s largest surveys into the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ people. ARCSHS will conduct two surveys as part of the Commonwealth’s National Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ People, which will inform development and delivery of policies, programs, and services.

Some major grants were also announced in December last year. Seven La Trobe projects were awarded $11.4 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas Grant program; and Kylie Lee from La Trobe’s Centre for Alcohol Policy Research (CAPR) is also a chief investigator on a project being done with the Menzies School of Health Research to address road safety in the Northern Territory, which received $1.4 million from the Federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.

Congratulations to these researchers on winning such competitive grants.

Leading lights

It was fantastic to see three La Trobe women recognised recently for their expertise and leadership.

La Trobe Asia’s Director, Bec Strating, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. Fulbright Scholars take part in academic and cultural exchange in the United States, bringing back knowledge and experience to share with their communities. Bec will be hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

Our Professor of Political Communication, Andrea Carson, has been elected President of the Australian Political Studies Association, the leading professional association for people teaching and researching in Politics and International Relations in Australia, which also publishes the Australian Journal of Political Science.

And La Trobe Distinguished Alum Marnie Baker, who retired last year after a long career at the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, has been appointed to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s new Monetary Policy Board, one of the nation’s most prominent financial advisory positions.

Warm congratulations to Bec, Andrea, and Marnie on these notable appointments.

Upcoming events and publications

I’m looking forward to joining Bec Strating and La Trobe Distinguished Alum and former Australian Ambassador to China, Dr Geoff Raby AO, to discuss the forces shaping Asia's future at the La Trobe Asia webinar Great Game On: The Contest for Supremacy in Global Politics on Wednesday 12 February. You can register here.

La Trobe Art Institute (LAI) has announced the first exhibitions in its 2025 program.

Much like cooking a meal, the LAI’s biannual façade commission by Renee Cosgrave and Merryn Lloyd, opened on 22 January and will be on view until 20 July. The work emerged from collaborative practice between the artists, particularly their current creative routine that situates studio practice alongside and enmeshed in their responsibilities as mothers.

Storytelling Liberation, a video installation by Australian artist Alex Martinis Roe that shares tools for telling stories about social justice movements, opens on 19 February and runs until 11 May.

And Jaren | جڑیں | Roots | جذور, a collaboration between the Islamic Museum of Australia, La Trobe University, and Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, will be showing at our Borchardt Library in Bundoora from tomorrow until 11 July. The exhibition brings works from the collections of each organisation into dialogue, focussing on artists who express cultural heritage and practices from Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Image: Cigdem Aydemir, Whirl, 2015. Digital video. Courtesy of the artist. From the Jaren | جڑیں | Roots | جذور, collaborative exhibition.

Finally, the first La Trobe University Press book for 2025 will be published next week. In Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son, scholars Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex, an honorary fellow at La Trobe, tell the incredible story of Australia's first female crime writer and her son, a convicted thief and bank robber.

In closing

Thanks again to colleagues who have worked over summer to manage offers and admissions, as well as those hard at work preparing for Orientation. I am excited about the coming year at La Trobe and look forward to welcoming our newest students later this month.

Best wishes,
Theo