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Wednesday, 20 May 2015

UWA’s campus has always been embedded in the community. Born of a collective desire by Western Australians for a university to call their own, UWA was widely embraced as a place where careers could be shaped and the impossible achieved. A century on, it remains a source of great community pride, in a setting and location that is unmatched. Building on these natural advantages and engaging the community in shaping the vision for the 21st century is the challenge for Professor Kent Anderson, UWA’s new Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Community and Engagement).


When Kent Anderson talks about his career, it’s easy to see this is a man who seizes the moment. To date, this momentum has taken him from America’s last ‘frontier’ state, Alaska (where he grew up), to studies in Law, Politics, Economics and Asian Studies in the US, the UK and Japan (where he married Hiroko), to working for an airline in Alaska, as a commercial lawyer in Hawaii (where son Ty was born), and as a law professor and university leader in Japan and Australia.


Each move has been impelled by an appetite for challenge and change, so when UWA Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson set before him the testing portfolio attached to a newly created UWA post it proved irresistible. And there were added attractions: a place in the sun — he never quite got over those -45C temperatures in Alaska — and the appealing WA parallels with his birth place: wide open spaces, fierce independence, deep indigenous knowledge and a resource-rich economy.


In fact Kent Anderson had started thinking seriously about Australia while coming to the end of a stint in Japan in 2000. “I’d been in snow-bound northern Japan and was debating my future, when a college friend described her family life in far north Queensland. Life in Australia sounded about as ‘free range’ as my boyhood in Alaska where, as a 12-year-old, I would take off on a bike with a mate for a week of climbing mountains, camping and fishing. It was appealing because the US has become very risk-averse and I wanted those sorts of experiences for my son who was about to start school. At the time I was considering three job offers in New York, Tokyo and Canberra, so I opted for Australia.”


The senior academic posts at the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide that followed saw him transition from academic to senior executive roles.


Then there was that conversation with UWA’s VC, and a subsequent conversation with Paul Holmes á Court (whose brother Peter had been a college mate in the US). When he asked the head of Heytesbury what the West had to offer him, Paul, like a true West Australian, turned the question around to query whether Kent Anderson had enough to offer the West. The former Alaskan instantly liked the chutzpah of a place that has always defined itself as Australia’s powerhouse frontier.


However, it was the UWA challenge that saw him persuading Hiroko and Ty to consider yet another move. In Australia, which he insists is the family’s ‘final stop’ rather than a staging post, Professor Anderson has already been a law professor, a Dean of the ANU Faculty of Asian Studies and Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of Adelaide.


“In transitioning from academic to executive roles, I discovered a different sort of job satisfaction from contributing to other people’s success. I love being able to create a platform from which people can jump higher than might otherwise be possible. So I said to myself: ‘OK let’s do it!’ I have a track record of going for the harder batting wickets — like the WACA pitch — and because I knew the UWA job was going to be challenging I went for it.


“The decider was talking to Paul Johnson about his team’s vision for UWA and where this broad new portfolio sat in terms of this University’s relationship with the wider community because there are such exciting opportunities to build on our already substantial successes – like UWA taking its place among the world’s top 50 universities.


“This newly-created job is all about asking questions about UWA’s place in the community. Whose university is it? It’s not the Vice- Chancellor’s. Not even the students’ or the researchers’. UWA belongs to the people of Western Australia and that’s reinforced whenever you talk to people about this place.


“People love the campus — and take look at it! It’s just ridiculously beautiful and the location is amazing. I live next door, so when I’m out running in the morning I have the choice of Kings Park, Riverside Drive and these National Estate registered grounds. Last weekend there were five wedding groups on campus and a week earlier I didn’t even attempt a run – there were thousands of people here on campus for the Perth Writers Festival.


“People see this as an important place that is significant to them.


“Another given is that people love the Perth International Arts Festival, the only festival of its kind in the world that was born on and is still run out of a university campus. If anyone suggested the festival should be held over for more prosperous times, they’d be run out of town, lynched on the way to the airport.


“Times are tight — and will continue to be throughout 2015 — so the festival staged The Giants, the only city in Australia to do so. That’s the sort of thinking that turned an adult education outreach initiative into the biggest city-based multi-arts festival in Australia.


“At UWA we know some of the things we do well, but we need to better leverage the uniqueness of this city, this State, this University, this festival, our campus concerts, theatres, art gallery, museums, public lectures – the full spectrum of what we offer.


“Then we need to ask the community what its priorities are, what it would like to see us offering.


Having that conversation with the community is my first job, which is why I’ve spent my first six months getting to know locals.


“I’m a good listener and have huge respect for the knowledge already here — in institutions, with our community partners and alumni and within this university. I am learning from all these sources, and I began that process meeting with Richard Walley on the banks of the Swan or Derbarl Yerrigan River and being accepted onto the land of the Whadjuk Boodjar people.”


Kent Anderson’s expertise is already being sought on boards beyond campus, such as the New Colombo Plan Advisory Board, along with a variety of academic and community boards including the International Education Association of Australia, Mongolia Institute, ANU’s Australian Centre on China in the World and the Languages and Culture Network for Australian Universities.


“When you talk to Western Australians about this University, you generally get agreement that we provide an excellent education and our research expertise has incredible impact – think of our Rock Art and Oceans Centres, the SKA and so much more,” says Professor Anderson. “However, universities have always had missions beyond those core roles and it’s the challenge of exploring those opportunities — that uncharted territory — that made me want to get on that plane and fly here.”

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