Five resolutions for my next five years as Dean of Science
I recently signed up for another five years as Dean of Science at the University of Melbourne – a decision I found easy, though the journey here has not always been so. While celebrating this milestone, I have reflected on how my past journey illuminates the road ahead and renewed five key resolutions.
Professor Moira O'Bryan
1. Build on the burning lessons of COVID
Stepping into leadership of the Faculty of Science in 2020 was like walking into a house on fire. COVID lockdowns meant we had to deliver education online, access to laboratories was severely limited, many of our students and families were experiencing hardship, and mental health was in decline. Even so, our academics produced critical research that informed health measures and vaccine development and continued to publish exceptional work in all fields. Our teaching staff strove to connect with individual students by all available means.
The biggest lessons from that time are that human connection is essential, and all science, at its core, is experiential. These lessons have shaped our plans to develop the Science precinct on the University’s Parkville campus.
We have two overarching obligations to our students: providing the highest quality education and supporting their transition to independence. To meet these, we must create physical spaces that enhance learning – including of hands-on skills – and promote connection between students with diverse backgrounds and interests. Broad and deep education and friendships are lasting gifts that sustain our graduates’ success, and we are building more opportunities to confer these gifts into our campus and curriculum.
2. Axe assumptions and open doors
Demand for entry to our Bachelor of Science is strong and increasing. A premise behind the Melbourne curriculum is that we do not expect 17- and 18-year-olds to have a ten-year plan. Our enrolling students have phenomenal ability; they could all potentially complete any of our 42 majors. We open many doors and encourage them to test their assumptions about which disciplines they might be good at or enjoy.
Sadly, however, many still feel cultural and familial pressures to follow gender norms: in first year, women tend to select biomedical, psychological or life sciences, while male students gravitate to maths, physics, engineering, or information technology. I am pleased to see realignment of subject choices in second year, but society is still missing out by conditioning young people to self-limit.
We also miss out whenever hirers or managers make sexist assumptions about a job candidate’s capabilities without evidence – they deprive their organisation as well as the person subjected to the assumption. Ditch your assumptions, create equitable conditions, provide training early so more people could become ‘the ideal candidate’, let candidates make their own decisions about their private circumstances, and your organisation will prosper. Equity initiatives are about creating more opportunities and choice, not removing opportunities for select groups.
Our Faculty has attracted talented staff and students from more than 150 countries. Their manifold skills, experiences, perspectives and interests make our education excellent and our research robust. To advance our understanding of the world, solve ecological, social and technical problems, and ensure that solutions reach the people who need them, we must engage the best brains from every background.
In 2023, we celebrated the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Science. I am acutely aware that this is a tiny ‘blip’ relative to 65,000+ years of Indigenous custodianship. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are our first scientists, whose deep and abiding knowledge of Australian lands, waters, skies and lifeforms adds to our collective scientific understanding on an equal footing with other knowledge systems, including Western science.
Professor O'Bryan addressing members of the Faculty at the celebration of the 120th anniversary of its founding
3. Expand our expertise, partnerships and leadership
In 2022, we welcomed the Melbourne Veterinary School and the School of Agriculture and Food into our Faculty family, now comprising seven schools. We naturally experienced some growing pains, but the opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations far outweighed them.
Today, we are home to around 1,000 academics and roughly the same number of PhD researchers. Leading a large university faculty is different to leading most other organisations. While academia has an embedded culture of mentorship and teamwork, we train and select academics for independent thinking and initiative, making the Faculty more like a collective of sole traders than a corporation. But a huge advantage of working with scientists is that they follow data – good evidence will win their buy-in on a project or decision. They don’t expect consensus, but you must show your working.
Our Faculty also includes around 400 professional staff who are specialists in research commercialisation, government relations, international engagement, institutional governance, finance, operations, infrastructure, learning and teaching support, communications and marketing, Indigenous engagement, school outreach, alumni and donor relations, and more. I cannot overstate their positive impact on our students’ experience and our research impact.
The enduring purpose of our Faculty is to benefit society and the world around us through transformative education, research and engagement. To achieve this, we sustain more than 650 major partnerships with industries, governments and communities across Australia and internationally, as well as with hundreds of other research organisations. We publish around 3,000 peer-reviewed papers annually, describing new methodologies, discoveries, insights and technologies that enable progress in a huge range of fields.
As the Faculty and our opportunities expand, I need more excellent leaders leading with me to leverage such opportunities. Over the past five years, we have enhanced our programs to better identify and prepare early- and mid-career academics for leadership roles. Leading your own lab group to produce excellent science is a positive, but on its own does not develop the full set of skills required to lead a centre or school. Expecting someone to do this without leadership training is unkind.
4. Ensure that scientists are seen and heard
Only nine per cent of our federal parliamentarians have a science or engineering degree, so we must clearly convey the meaning of our research in non-specialist language for policymakers, to ensure Australia can reap the benefits. We must also combat the misinformation flooding the internet, improve scientific literacy, encourage young people to pursue careers in science, find research partners and end users, and advocate for discovery science as well as applied research.
The increasing push for research that we can swiftly apply to the world’s problems is understandable, but shortsighted. We must sustain the entire innovation pipeline from fundamental discovery to ‘real-world’ application. Today’s medicines, energy sources, agricultural productivity, advanced manufacturing techniques, and information and communication technology only exist thanks to curious scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries. For future generations to thrive, we must support exploratory research that will foster innovative solutions we can’t yet imagine.
So, we train our academics to boost their communication skills and confidence. We write for The Conversation and for Pursuit and reach out to other media so that our research outcomes and expert commentary make national and global news. We tell our research stories via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and the new STEM stream on TikTok. We deliver public lectures, school programs, a science festival, and other free events. I urge you to attend and join the discussion.
The audience at a recent Science at Melbourne public lecture
5. Remember why I love this job
As Dean, I wear a lab coat and many hats: research leader, government advisor, partnership and investment broker, innovation and education advocate, media spokesperson, and leadership mentor, to name a few. The fires of the pandemic forged confidence that I could handle anything this job might throw at me – fortunately, as the pace of change and challenge in the university sector has been relentless. With collective effort, adaptability and ingenuity, our Faculty has recovered lost ground, and I posit that we have thrived, recognising we are not yet at peak performance.
The engines that drive me through the toughest days are my abiding love of science and admiration for our people’s creative and lateral minds, their unusual and inspiring passions, their deep expertise, and their determination to do good. They will drive me through the next five years, and I look forward with excitement to the road ahead: onwards and upwards.