HE Staff Welcome of the month / year comes from Curtain University’s Mollie Dollinger, ushering in Andrew Komoder as a new Faculty Senior Educational Designer via an unignorable LinkedIn post.
This is a whole new look for HE. Sure there have been guitar-tragic VCs and a phenomenal array of closet karaoke fans in the sector but the impact of placing the serious welcome pic alongside the wildman guitar portrait of Mr Komoder really breaks down the stuffy stereotypes and more importantly makes a connection to our shared humanity.
How would this fly if Andrew was stepping in as Dean or VC – would the same degree of accessibility and normality be allowed? Is a devotion to conferred gravitas from HE job titles getting in the way of community connection, and making our people fade into the corporate wallpaper of the nation? Or is a culture of respect for a distant, revered and heavily curated leader critical to the functioning of institutions that are reluctant to step away from traditional rigid hierarchies?
What should a HE staff member look like in 2026? And why should they be presented that way?
At a time of massive change for the sector, it's obvious that orthodox approaches in the attraction, engagement, management and motivation of people need to be re-thought.
These are topics we are having a lot of discussions about within FC at the moment – and have shaped preparations for the HE People & Performance conference on 22-23 June.
We have an extraordinary array of speaking talent for the event, which will be hosted by RMIT University in the heart of Melbourne.
Anyone interested in new ways to support, manage and enable the sector’s most important asset into the future will not want to miss it.