News Archive

UWA's new Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor says that in many spheres of 21st Century life, change has become a way of being. The fitness fanatic (she has run seven charity marathons) has clearly embraced change while scaling the heights of an impressive career.

Ask UWA's recently appointed Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dawn Freshwater, about the nature of leadership - whether it is packaged in genes or can it be nurtured or shaped by circumstance and challenge - and she takes you back to her early years and her rise from an undergraduate juggling family, work and study to being offered her first executive post at a university in the United Kingdom, a job she wasn't at all sure she would enjoy.

The high achiever sees being the eldest child in her family as a starting point: engendering responsibility for siblings, being a role model and pulling the family together.

"Then there was my training as a health professional," she says. "From the age of 18 you're making difficult decisions, coming up against life. Suffering, trauma, death - all are things most people don't encounter so early, and there's your role in a patient's comfort, dignity, quality of life. You quickly become responsible, accountable for your actions - and appreciate how important it is to have a team of good people working around you. Working across disciplines, working collaboratively - these were instilled in me very early.

"In my case there was also the fact that I always asked a lot of myself. When studying part-time as an undergraduate, I worked full-time as a health professional while raising my family. It was a tremendous balancing act. Then, during Honours, my supervisors suggested it would make a fantastic PhD study and that I should go on - so more balancing!

"Of course it's not enough for someone to encourage you to take that next step. You must be receptive, take a risk, put yourself out there. But along the way there are key people who teach you invaluable things, and people in leadership positions who see in you something that could be enlarged, enriched, nurtured.

"When I was enjoying being a professor, heading a research team known for its translational research, I was approached to take on a head of school role at the University of Leeds. My instinct was; ‘No, I am happy doing what I am doing!' because I liked where I was and wasn't sure I had the capabilities to lead and develop strategy.

"The curious thing was that as soon as I stepped into the role I realised that I was indeed a closet strategist! I went on to build a great team and to develop an
effective strategy for a school that would become top in its field. And being successful in that job led to being offered the role of Pro Vice-Chancellor for Organisational Effectiveness at Leeds."

It was while bringing about organisational change at the University of Leeds, advising the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and sitting on the Research Excellence Framework Panel for the UK's Higher Education Funding Council that the high-powered academic caught the eye of members of this University's executive (Leeds, like UWA, is part of the World University Network).

Professor Freshwater viewed accepting the senior appointment at UWA as an impossible-to-resist opportunity, despite it requiring her to move half-way across the world from much loved family, children, grandchildren - and a flock of Scottish sheep in her Yorkshire Dales home.

"It is exciting for me to work in an international context and, with our executive team, to take this University - that already has a reputation for academic excellence - to the next stage of International excellence," she says.

She is also upbeat about the multiple challenges facing leading international universities today: volatile economies, the pace of technological change, the highly competitive market and, in Australia, deregulation.

"UWA is not just about delivering a world-class education, it is creating innovative graduates who will thrive in an environment in which food security, security in general, the increased risk of pandemics and climate change, amongst others,
are major global challenges. We have to work together to address them from our University's specific areas of strength," she says.

Professor Freshwater believes that in academia internationally the ‘level playing field' is yet to come. She says the message that national productivity suffers when the full potential of 50 per cent of its population is not realised needs to reach secondary schools as well as tertiary institutions.

"Throughout my career I've been able to see opportunities and take them. When discussing leadership with women I talk about strategic manoeuvring - making sure that, while having a strategy, you're open to new opportunities. Your next leadership role might not be the one you planned; you might find yourself doing something you hadn't anticipated," says the new Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

"In my own career I've encountered prejudice, and I have had to work extremely hard to manage competing responsibilities," says Professor Freshwater. "But in addition to that, my expectations of myself were always huge. It was very difficult for me not to expect that I could do it all - juggle everything - and do it well!

"However, I also became very good at asking for help and seeking other people's input, appointing good colleagues and importantly entrusting them with the authority delegated to them. Good leaders have good teams around them."

Professor Freshwater says that industrial quantities of literature on change management models and theories are readily available. What is missing, in the context of how leaders facilitate inclusive change, is how to lead movement.

"If we talk of managing change - as if it was a project - we've missed the point. Change is a constant. We tend to forget that the ground beneath us is constantly moving. However, we have choices and we can direct that movement consciously and in a considered deliberate way. Change is a way of being."

How would she like potential students to view studying at UWA?

"As an opportunity to expand their horizons and engage with global thinkers, but also to focus very deeply on one specific area," says Professor Freshwater. "The trick is to find a balance between being focused and being expansive - to develop critical, analytic thinking that allows you to move between the universal and the particular. UWA wants graduates to go out into the world with finely tuned skills that lead to great employment opportunities - and to have fun acquiring those skills!"