Avondale farewells academic who helped it become a national leader in the private sector
The academic who helped Avondale become a leader in Australian private higher education is leaving to share with others her commitment to quality in the sector.
First as Vice-President (Learning and Teaching) and then Vice-President (Quality and Strategy), Professor Jane Fernandez led the university college’s milestone projects: a joint conferral awards scheme with Charles Sturt University and its applications for self-accrediting status and change of category status—to “Australian University College.”
“That’s a legacy that will be remembered and valued for a long time to come,” wrote the then Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Ray Roennfeldt in a March 23 email to staff members announcing Fernandez’s resignation. It is a legacy Fernandez shares with her colleagues and of which she is proud. Avondale is “a star in the constellation of the private sector,” she told staff members during a video conference meeting on March 30. “To see it celebrated across the sector and in government is my greatest joy.”
Fernandez is the new Head of Compliance for Australia and New Zealand at international education provider Study Group. The role builds on her work with the Higher Education Private Provider Quality Network (HEPP-QN), a collaboration of more than 50 member institutions which she founded in 2015 to improve the quality of private higher education across Australia. Fernandez refers to the network as a “community of practice bent on producing the best outcomes for our students. We are strongest when we lift others because we lift ourselves.” National regulator the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency now includes principles for academic leadership developed by HEPP-QN in its guidance notes.
Fernandez sees the fostering of collective goodwill through HEPP-QN as a practical extension of Avondale’s mission. It will continue to offer this leadership and service—“that is its calling”—and it will become a university, said Fernandez in her speech to staff members. A forever-friend of the university college, she hopes “we will continue to be inward focused but outward facing.”
Fernandez began her teaching career in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as principal at a school for underprivileged children. She had no formal training and decided she should change that. Impressed with Avondale’s Christian ethos, she enrolled in the Bachelor of Education and majored in English. After graduating in 1988, Fernandez completed a Bachelor of Arts with honours and a Doctor of Philosophy through Macquarie University before returning as a lecturer in 2001. She would serve almost 11 years in the classroom and more than eight in administration, the latter while completing a Master of Tertiary Education (Management) from The University of Melbourne.
Former president Dr John Cox, whom Fernandez replaced as lecturer in English when Cox became Vice-President (Academic), describes her teaching of literature as “warm-hearted and inspiring” and her scholarship as “impressive.” “She cared deeply for her students, who rose to her high expectations in academic achievement and in performances of Shakespeare and Milton which she ably directed. Her legacy lives on in her former students and those they teach.”
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