School Directors - Professor John Ramsland, the University of Newcastle, Australia

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"Diverse areas of research

The Council of the University has appointed Directors of the five new schools which will administer the allocation of resources within the University.

The Directors of the Schools (Humanities, Economic and Information Sciences, Engineering and Architecture, Medicine, and Science and Mathematics) took up their positions on January 1 and will each serve a term of three years.

In this edition of UNINEWS we profile the School of Humanities.

Research areas diverse as developing a system of map reading for blind people, the effects of glaciation, computer analysis of literature, Australian military and church history, Tibetan folk music, the quality of school life, community theatre, 17th century philosophy, and exploring the problems of dyslexia can all be found within the new School of Humanities at the University of Newcastle which comprises the Faculties of Arts and Education.

The School’s Director, Associate Professor John Ramsland, sees diversity of research and Faculties retaining their academic identity as essential features of the School.

‘While I believe the academic decisions reside within the Faculties and the financial matters rest with the School there obviously has to be an interconnection for the two to work successfully, to better mesh together,’ he said.

‘The whole budget for the Schools had been worked out late last year, including allocation to each Department within the School, and since taking on Directorship in January 1 have been visiting Departments, following up on matters related to the budget, and trying to sort out and difficulties or problems that have arisen since the beginning of the new academic year.’

‘I am concerned with dispensing the funds as equitably as possible in all Departments with the understanding that various disciplines are taught in different ways. This is a difficult but fundamental issue that I will continue to deal with this year in consultation with Heads of Departments and a small elected committee. I wish to avoid, however, setting up a bureaucracy that slows down decision-making.

‘For future budgetary planning purposes I intend to get Heads of Departments together and formulate with them a series of sound academic principles that would underpin budgetary decisions.’

‘There are certain things within the budget that are tied – such as full-time academic and secretarial staff salaries. So it’s really the area of part-time teaching and recurrent funding where we need to establish a series of principles.

‘The research output of each Department has to be considered. For example, there may be some way of rewarding or compensating people who are doing a lot of research by giving them a small amount of extra funding for part-time teaching.’

‘There is a wide spectrum of acknowledged research and there are some very fine achievements in that research within the School,’ Professor Ramsland said.

‘This sort of research improves the quality of teaching within the Faculties, or it should, because there is a link between teaching and research that is basic to the University way of life.’

‘AS a student comes in contact with an academic at the cutting face of research the direct and indirect communication that occurs between the two is of extreme importance.’

Professor Ramsland sees the Bachelor of Arts degree as enormously flexible.

When people say you can not go into a particular profession with a BA he answers simply that with a BA you can go into a wide range of professional areas.

‘The general nature of the degree has a validity in the industrial world more indirectly and subtly than a specialised professional degree and this means the student who completes a BA degree has a certain degree of flexibility as well as challenge,’ Professor Ramsland said.

‘There appears to be quite a lot of evidence to indicate that such students can be and are employed in a number of interesting and important areas including university administration.’

Professor Ramsland believes today’s BA students within the environment of the new two semester calendar year, will be able to put together a much more varied range of subjects.

‘They will be able to develop what they choose around particular themes that have to do with career interests and career prospects as well as their scholarly interests,’ he said.

‘Today BA students are going into occupations that he did not exist 20 or 30 years ago.

‘Subjects like Geography have taken on some new meanings in terms of positions available. A good example is at the local council level as environmental officers.’

Professor Ramsland considers the BA from the University of Newcastle to be as good as one from any other Australian university.

‘We have a very strong Faculties of Arts and Education staffed by people who have a wide range of sound research interests, he said.

‘I believe our strength lies in the intimate relationship staff have with students because of reasonably smaller class sizes, especially in subjects at the second year undergraduate level and beyond and at the postgraduate coursework Masters level as well.

‘A survey completed several years ago of all Australian universities revealed the level of student satisfaction about the BA course here was quite high. I don’t think that has diminished over the years. A more recent survey has indicated that the University’s Faculty of Education is rated the best in Australia in four out of six dimensions and is in the top five overall.’

As for the future of the School of Humanities, Professor Ramsland sees his task as Director to go forward and ensure the School as a whole gets a budget that allows it to cope with day-to-day tasks and, more importantly, allows it to develop in new and vital directions.

‘If there is a lot of productivity and achievement in research then the quality of teaching is developing and one would like to see that reflected in the budget,’ he said.

‘I basically see my role as a problem-solver. The kind of decision making the Director has to make about certain details means that these matters can be cleared up more quickly than in the past when you had to wait for a committee to meet or a senior executive to find time to address the problem.

‘What might be a minor problem to the University as a whole could be a major matter to a particular Department.’

This is part of the streamlining process being introduced by the University. But it is a streamlining process that, according to Professor Ramsland, has to be done in a humane and responsible manner.

‘The best interests of students, teaching and research should be foremost in any decision-making,’ he said.

‘Decisions should be made as far as possible with the two factors of student needs and academic standards firmly in mind.’"

This image was scanned from a photograph in the University's historical photographic collection held by Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

If you have any information about this photograph, or would like a higher resolution copy, please contact us or leave a comment.

This image was scanned from a photograph in the University's historical photographic collection held by Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

If you have any information about this photograph, or would like a higher resolution copy, please contact us or leave a comment.