This month earthworks start on a major new building development at Massey University’s Albany campus. It also marks a year since Professor Jan Thomas took up the role as Massey University’s Vice-Chancellor. She outlines her thoughts on the place of Massey University in the community and the tertiary education landscape, and the opportunities offered at the Auckland campus.
Jan, who trained as a veterinary scientist in Australia, was most recently Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of Southern Queensland. She was initially attracted to the role at Massey because of its wonderful international reputation, but also because of the country. New Zealand, where she has now very firmly laid down roots, is a country she has great respect for. “If I’m going to work really hard as a true servant of the public, which I view the role of the Vice-Chancellor to be, I’m thrilled and privileged to do that in a country I really believe in.”
It’s been a great move personally and professionally and she’s loving the new challenges the role has offered.
While she’s working to develop a view of Massey as a single institution, spread over three New Zealand campuses (Auckland, Palmerston North and Wellington) with a significant distance learning cohort, each campus has its own personality. North Shore, she says, is centred in a rapidly developing part of Auckland, at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship. The campus and the area are home to “a lot of really energised and energetic people and organisations focusing in on what will make the North Shore world-class and future-focused”.
“We all know that the digital age is upon us, and education is smack-bang in the sweet spot of that: how we prepare the next generation of leaders; how we work hand-in-glove with businesses and NGOs and government to create ecosystems that lead to social and economic well-being. I think you’re seeing a lot of that proactively in this region.
“With good research, good communication, and good partnerships,” she adds, such as Massey has with Smales Farm, Grow North (a partnership between the university, ATEED and the BNZ managed by Massey University's Knowledge Exchange Hub) and The Wonder Room (a multi-disciplinary space where students solve challenges a community group or business is facing, or bring new ideas to reality), “you can come up with solutions that don’t just solve a problem but that actually take us to the next level.”
“There’s a lot of work going on across the university looking at academic programmes to see how these can be made contemporary and future-focussed so our graduates have that capability hard-wired into them.”
Jan is a real believer in the role of education in transforming lives and society. “The Auckland campus is a key strategic part contributing remarkable leadership at the cutting edge of collaboration between academia and community and industry.”
In this context, she adds, Massey’s leadership in the social sciences and humanities, under the leadership of Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, has seen the Bachelor of Arts reconceptualised to create graduates with widely transferable skills able to quickly adapt to new ways of thinking.
“I’m very proud of what humanities and social sciences are doing in that space; we work very hard to get cross-college influences; that collision is the future of education. There’s always a need for people with pure and deep knowledge but the success of people in the future will be their ability to work across disciplines, understanding different ways of knowing, problem-solving in groups that have multiple different backgrounds. That’s an important part of the Massey offer.”
She believes that in executing the university’s new strategic plan over the next four years, Massey will continue to enhance its reputation as a university where not only do you get a high quality education for a world of work that you don’t yet know, but where you also can develop entrepreneurial capability.
The new buildings planned for the Auckland campus are an innovation complex, and an addition to the Sir Neil Waters lecture theatre complex. But the growth and development of the Auckland campus as a future-focused hub, with strength across the social sciences and humanities, business, science, and health, is not just about new buildings. Jan is enthusiastic about Massey as a modern university campus driving innovation through “collision and collaboration between students and researchers across different disciplines”. By bringing “smart people together with creative ideas” you get an explosion of ideas, she believes, with students better prepared for jobs and a changing workplace that is unknowable in the present.
