Avondale experience get’s AUQA stamp of approval

In the early stages of major transformation, the 112-year-old Avondale College is a small institution with big ambitions. A recent visit by the Australian Universities Quality Agency found that the Christian college was grappling with structural change, including improving its research profile, which ran the risk of undermining the very thing for which Avondale has gained a formidable reputation – its student experience. The panel found the institution, based at Cooranbong just south of Newcastle in NSW, had a well-deserved and widespread reputation for its holistic approach to education, “the respect and affection which students staff and community hold for the ‘Avondale experience’". Among the college's 11 commendations was also acknowledgement for its attention to the needs of individual students, the provision of alternate pathways and low staff to student ratios. It is these positive attributes, including a student to staff ratio of 13:1, that the college must actively protect while it undergoes a massive transformation as part of its bid for university status. That change process includes increasing its research profile, rationalising its courses and programs, and increasing its student population from 1250 to 3000 students. “The panel broadly affirms the directions and actions the college is undertaking. Importantly, the college acknowledges the need to reconcile and balance an emerging research agenda with the tradition of quality teaching and learning which underpins the Avondale experience,” the AUQA report said. As the college heads down this path, AUQA noted it must also pay due diligence to a range of issues including gender equity, the respective roles of council and management, academic governance, embedding innovative teaching practices, extending its use and analysis of staff and student evaluation and feedback, and furthering benchmarking activities. Overall Avondale received 11 commendations, five affirmations and 12 recommendations. Most of the recommendations revolved around the college’s strategic plan to increase its research profile and eventually achieve university status. Avondale president Ray Roennfeldt said the AUQA audit was extremely helpful to the college, which was established by the Seventh day Adventist Church in 1897, in achieving its mission of becoming a university college by 2011 and a university by 2016. “Research is where we have to go. It’s not that we currently don’t do any research, it’s that we want to up our game so eventually we can gain full university status,” Roennfeldt said. This entailed increasing the number of higher degree research students, although it currently offers a range of programs from bachelors to doctorates. “There is a certain energy and excitement among the many staff regarding the college’s commitment to the development of a research profile and an assertion that this is reinvigorating academic activity,” AUQA noted. “However, as might be expected, not all staff are comfortable with an increased emphasis on research. Much work still needs to be undertaken by the college in both articulating and implementing the agenda.” Roennfeldt agreed. “What we haven’t got across fully to staff is that we are not expecting everyone to research at the same level. If a staff member sees their contribution primarily in teaching and learning and not research, then they will be asked to give up those hours normally given to research and they will be allocated to someone who is research-active.” AUQA also noted that the rigour of the academic board needed strengthening, describing it more as an avenue for discussion than policymaking. It was also critical of the gender imbalance in the institution’s management and council. Although 60 per cent of Avondale’s students and 50 per cent of its staff are female, women in senior positions are thin on the ground - with the notable exception of a female vice-president. “We recognise we need to increase the number of women on our upper and middle levels of management. Sometimes it’s not easy because we want to make sure we get the right person but also be proactive in getting women into the positions,” Roennfeldt said. “We are discussing that and targeting staff members as far as succession planning is concerned.”