Professor Colin Stirling, President and Vice-Chancellor, Flinders University

So you've worked in very old universities like Edinburgh, old ones like Manchester, prestigious ones like UC Berkeley.

How have they shaped you in terms of how you see leadership, but also how you see the role of universities in society?

Oh, I mean, the role in society, profoundly important.

I'm not sure that I knew it at the time.

Certainly as an undergraduate student, I had no idea.

As a postgraduate student, I did my PhD.

You know, I was doing my thing.

I mean, it was an extraordinary experience, you know, but I didn't have that, you know, the broader, if you like, concept, you know, of actually what was going on around me.

I think, you know, one thing I would say that I was... you know, hugely fortunate at Berkeley.

And after my PhD in Glasgow, I won a scholarship, a fellowship, a NATO fellowship, and that was to go to the US.

And I'd, you know, I got to go to a lab at UC Berkeley and run by someone called Randy Sheckman.

And interestingly, you know, probably, I don't know, it was, what would it be, 10, 15 years later or so, you know, he won a Nobel Prize, right? You know, so...

I you know that one really shaped me because I was actually in a lab you know with lots of things going on but every group meeting every group meeting was like going to an international conference you know because one of my lab mates would be talking about something that they were working on and it was just you know mind-blowing so you know I really really there I really got to see you know, how science, you know, really could be done.

You know, that was kind of, that was, that was really eye-opening.

Funnily enough, at Manchester, so I arrived at Manchester, I was, so I came from Berkeley, went to Manchester, young academic, you know, had a lectureship there and set up my lab.

And to be honest with you, if you'd have asked me who the vice-chancellor was, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.

You know, and so, you know, part of me knows that, you know, in leadership, you know, it's not about, you know, one has to create an environment for people.

and to thrive in.

But it's not, you know, it's not, you know, you know, one doesn't, one shouldn't get carried away with, you know, the esteem of the position in any sense, because that's not important.

It's not actually important to the people who work in the university,

right?

What's important is the environment that they have to do the job and to establish their own careers.

And, you know, that's what I think that, You know, that's what I've taken from my leadership journey around, you know, what's important.

What's the important work of a leader in an institution? But your broader point? I think that universities are getting a bit of a tough time in Australia at the minute.

There's a lot of criticism from all quarters.