Sustainability, social justice and First Nations: Murdoch University’s pillars of impact

This time, we take you to the heart of Western Australia to explore how Murdoch University is redefining local and global engagement. Our guest is Susan Marie, the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Global Engagement at Murdoch University, who will share how the university is fostering innovative collaborations, championing sustainability, and working closely with Indigenous communities to create meaningful change.

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Transcript

Sarah Jaber:
I’m very much looking forward to today’s discussion with Susan Marie who is the Director of Strategic Partnerships and global engagement at Murdoch University.

So welcome, Susan. Really nice to have you.

Susan Marie:
Thank you, Sarah. My pleasure.

Sarah Jaber:
Maybe just to get started, Murdoch University is based in Western Australia, you have been working on a new strategy for global engagement and partnerships. Can you just tell us a little bit about Murdoch University, how that relates to partnerships and a little bit about the process that you are going through at the moment with regards to the strategy?

Susan Marie:
Murdoch has just turned 50 years old; we are a relatively new university. We have always been slightly different to all the others. We strongly encourage people who have never had an opportunity to go to university before. We are very focused on Indigenous engagement and sustainability.

So, we have always been that university. And as time has gone by, we have developed some really powerful strengths. That’s the sort of background we had a whole new executive come in and a new vice chancellor, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to really look at the next strategy.

And our next strategy is the called Building a Brighter Future, Together, Ngala Kwop Biddi, and it has this beautiful colour. I will send you the link later and it is absolutely fabulous because it’s one of those strategies that makes perfect sense because the work that we do at Murdoch sits on three strategic pillars: Sustainability, social justice and First Nations. When we teach, when we research, when we form partnerships, we have to make sure that they are underpinned by these strategies.

The other thing that is a little bit different is that we now have three major portfolios: Research, education, and global engagement, which is a relatively newish portfolio created about two years ago. I have been in this role as one of the three main groups within global engagement, which is transnational education, international, and strategic partnerships. So that’s us.

Sarah Jaber:
I said this to you when we met a few months ago, that it’s always really interesting to see engagement established as its own, whether it’s a portfolio or a pillar, and some organisations and you mentioned the three areas.

Can you tell us a bit more around the area that you look after, strategic partnerships, with what kinds of institutions, and maybe tell us a bit around the thinking behind that?

Susan Marie:
Just stepping back a second, transnational education (TNE) and international are very established groups. They are dealing with the international campuses, one group of them with all the transnational education, because we have got campuses in Singapore and Dubai, international are the students from in and out of the country, and partnerships with external.

My role sits between the two: I’m with strategic partnerships and what I like to think I do is bring these guys together and provide a cohesive way of putting partnerships and engagement front and centre for everyone. For example, my role is to build strategic partnerships within the university, and when people talk about engagement, it ranges from a school visit to major, big research partnerships. What we need to do is define it and work out how they fit, who needs support. There’s a whole lot of internal work that I have been doing.

There’s also importance of being perceived as a good corporate citizen, so lots of local engagement is done. And then there’s the national and the international, and each of them pulls things out of it. And once they are set up, I gently hand it to the next person to take and follow through.

Sarah Jaber:
Engagement can be very broad, which is something we actually see across many organisations, there isn’t this common understanding of what it means, or how do my activities that I do as a researcher or as a lecturer align with that definition in terms of bringing people together.

How has the work that you have been doing around developing the strategy gone? Can tell us a little bit about what you have done? How you have engaged with the internal stakeholders?

Susan Marie:
Let’s give you a tangible example of something that in fact, I’m currently working on right now. Australia has a very big sporting culture, as no doubt you know, and we have the West Australian Cricket Association (WACA). It is a very big deal to the Australian psyche, especially in Western Australia.

One of the things the WACA wanted to do was try and develop a diploma program to help a whole lot of school kids who are in that in-between kind of category where they don’t really want to go to university and they love sport and want to be involved in it, but they are not that great at sport.

They are in that age where they just need a little bit of time to mature a bit, work out what it is they want to do. And quite often what is available, the TAFE courses and the feeder classes and tippings, are not really in their area of interest.

So, with the executive of the WACA and with us, we started discussing of the perfect overlaps and one of the things we have come up with is a diploma of business within sports science. Working with our business school, we get a group of interested students and they spend three days at the WACA, where they are given a brief understanding of different types of components that make up running an organisation like that, from sports science, to nutrition, to health, to turf maintenance.

Then we overlay it with a business lens to say: “Okay, you are doing X with these. How are you going to set up a process where you monitor, you manage, you work out how the costing is?” When it’s related to something that people are interested in, spreadsheets aren’t such a problem anymore. When you are trying to teach a 16-year-old that it’s really important to get their ducks lined up, it’s almost impossible. We have been building this course with the business school, the staff, they are really excited. We have had to modify the partnership, we have got a fantastic agreement lined up and we are going to get our first intake of students next year. There’s a local partnership.

Sarah Jaber:
Really exciting. And as you said, very I think very relevant for Australia around cricket and getting people excited about these kinds of initiatives.

To build on that, when it comes to starting new collaborations or developing partnerships. Do you have an approach as a university or is it more responding to needs as they arise?

Susan Marie:
Like a lot of places, Perth is effectively a small town. Even though there’s a lot of people here, you end up getting a feel for things. The person who would like to put up a smorgasbord of opportunities and see what comes my way, or if you are tracking something you are really interested in.

You need to be able to show that, as a university, you can provide to them significantly more than they can provide back to you. They need to see the value of understanding why they want to collaborate with a university.

Most of my collaborations aren’t university to university. I look at business, community, industry, I do look at some major big international partnerships. We have got a lot of work that where we have in the pipeline with the Philippines, which is a pretty close neighbour of ours, but locally, and this is something that’s extremely close to our heart, we are looking to do more work with Indigenous groups, Indigenous communities and Indigenous business.

Western Australia in particular has a very powerful Indigenous presence and community and caring for our country is really important. Also, formidably wealthy in minerals and resources, which means large machines are constantly digging things up the ground. So there needs to be some kind of balance and circularity where a lot of the Indigenous communities have often been sidelined or isolated sometimes. Now, this has been turned around and industry and business is obviously trying to do the right thing, one because they have to, and two because it’s the right thing to do.

We have a very powerful marine research group, and I invited someone to speak at a conference as a keynote, and he just turned out to be this young man who had an Indigenous business in Shark Bay. The more we met and the more we talked, I realised that what he was doing was the tip of the iceberg and he had this massive plan to protect and basically turn an extractive economy in Shark Bay to a circular economy.

This is absolutely up our alley and as soon as you spot that kind of spark or that amazing creativity, you want to pursue it and follow it. And so effectively, it’s a lot of conversations, it’s a lot about building trust, and then you start finding where the research components can fit into it and how they will support this particular activity.

That, to me, is one of my absolute pride and joy, this particular project, because it instantiates all our values of sustainability, First Nations, and social justice.

Sarah Jaber:
From what I have heard, at least from other Australian universities, sometimes there is this maybe missed opportunity or untapped potential to engage with Indigenous communities and to use the knowledge that they have to and think about how it can contribute to the research that’s happening or the education programs.

Maybe because of where Murdoch is and where you sit in, it seems that you are very much focused on that.

Susan Marie:
This particular gentleman, Michael said to me: “We get researchers coming up all the time, and they are on his boat and they want to go and look at things. The interesting thing about non-Indigenous people when they are in the water and they are looking at sea turtles, all they do is they look at sea turtles. They don’t look to the left, they don’t look to the right. If you put a Saltwater person in the water, they are looking at everything. They notice that certain plants are not looking so healthy and they are wondering why. They see x, they see y, they look at the entire circular picture. They tell quite quickly when something is going to go wrong. Most of the People do that because they have always looked at the environment as a whole. They never isolate bits of it”.

There is one project that we would like to do with this particular group, which, fingers crossed, it comes together. We have a lot of marine researchers, and he said that they would like to train his team to be able to understand the sorts of things that the non-Indigenous scientists are looking for, so they can collect data in a way that is acceptable by Western science, so that they can understand that and then balance it with their traditional knowledge. That way, they get a really comprehensive picture, which means that we could have joint research from traditional and non-traditional people looking at a problem with two completely different eyes. They will also have as much sovereignty over the research because there’s a habit in a lot of places where researchers come in, suck a local community drive of knowledge and information, and then go away and publish, which isn’t really how the world should work in a better place.

To me, this is pretty groundbreaking and the thing that I really love about this project, it’s one of those things which is replicable. There’s nothing that we are doing that can’t be picked up from Shark Bay in Western Australia and taken to any other country with a coastal community and an Indigenous community that has been caring for their country for a long time.

Sarah Jaber:
That sounds really interesting and look forward to seeing how that develops. In this example, you talked about balancing Western science with Indigenous knowledge and ways of doing things. Before, you talked about how in Western Australia you have the minerals and the mining companies. It’s a very big industry and, at the same time, very local Indigenous communities.

Would you say Murdoch has taken on this role of maybe being the, I don’t want to say mediator, but more like the navigator or kind of that in-between to balance both sides?

Susan Marie:
Interestingly, before I took on this role as Strategic Partnerships, I worked for a research institute called the Harry Butler Institute. Harry Butler is a very famous Western Australian environmentalist, most people know it was like the “Crocodile Dundee of Western Australia”, to put it in film terms.

He was brought up in a very rural part of Western Australia. He did a lot of traveling, he lived with an Indigenous community for a long time, and he was one of the reasons most non-Aboriginal people realised the value and the beauty of the landscape. He had a whole bunch of TV shows, like “Into the Wild with Harry Burtler”, and a lot of young children, including my boss, who watched this when he was a kid, set up the Harry Butler Institute.

Harry always said: “Industry is here to stay. We can’t pretend it’s not happening. What you need to do is work with industry so that you are fixing the problem before it becomes a problem, and you are working inside out”. I think he has a quote where he said: “I get a great deal more done talking in a boardroom rather than lying in front of a bulldozer”.

He was big on saving environments, because if you save the environment, you save biodiversity. All the researchers in the Harry Butler Institute work with industry and tend to see a problem before it happens, try to fix it, work solutions. It’s the perfect way of basically balancing the industry, the research, and the conservation of land.

Sarah Jaber:
You talked about the importance of building trust, and fostering those relationships by being open and looking for ways to understand the different perspectives is really key.

Susan Marie:
I think so. The other thing which I have never been able to understand is why people don’t make business personal. Everything is personal. It’s all very well to have this hard line of following strategies and doctrines. But the reality is, it’s the people-to-people interaction that matter the most.

I am never going to work with someone if I think you are keeping something for me, I can sense that there is no trust. Huge amount of the initial work is to be honest, to be frank and say: This is what I’m trying to achieve. These are the research groups I’m trying to support. And I’m trying to look for ways that there isn’t overlap where what we do is what you do and vice versa”.

You are not going to get anywhere without that kind of human touch, so let’s stop being so scared of being personal and be vulnerable!

Sarah Jaber:
I agree, and that’s why I really like the approach that you have been talking about around how it’s really focused on where Murdoch sits. For what I understood, and correct me if I’m wrong, you are not saying: “We want to be the global leader in this I don’t know, globally recognised for this”. It’s around: “We want to serve the communities where we sit and we want to be that education pathway research provider for the local communities, and especially the Indigenous communities”.

Susan Marie:
And being a good corporate citizen, universities are underwritten by tax dollars, and we need to be able to show that the work we are doing is not appearing in some unread scientific journal. It is all very important, I totally understand, and forgive me all the academics who are now screaming at me, but the reality is that people want to be able to see impact. People want to see that all that work they have done ads up to something.

If you fix one small community problem, it has a massive impact on that community. If you can get rid of a toxic weed that’s choking a lake that all the children love, that will make a massive impact on the community.

Those sorts of things should never be underestimated when one is setting up a partnership.

Sarah Jaber:
I completely agree. To build on that, I did want to ask you about how does Murdoch University assess the success of its engagement initiatives? How do you balance that need or that desire for wanting to do good and impact the communities with, let’s say, funding requirements and trying to convince boards to invest in certain areas or to pursue specific partnerships.

Susan Marie:
I have just told you about all the nice stuff I do, which is talk to people and think of wonderful things to do, but most of my job is actually pursuing significant research funds and grants and ways of underwriting a whole lot of the work that we do.

When we are talking about measures of success we make sure that the partnerships align with the strategic goals because everyone’s got passion projects that they are interested in, but if they don’t align with the strategic goals, I gently put them to the side and explain to whoever comes running up to me with this great idea that perhaps that’s not really going to fly at the moment.

I obviously, look for student opportunities. Things that are miserable when I can get research students into an organisation or have some kind of research linkage that happens, we set up memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with key partners. I know that often MOUs aren’t on the paper they are written on, but they are an important starting point to show trust and build upon them. You have to be really careful when you decide which bit of the MOU you think: “Okay, this is what is really going to fly between us”, and then you develop that new pursue.

There’s income generated by grants; I spend a ridiculous amount of time writing grants to all kinds of things to fund small groups. Money is very important, we are a university, we have to cover our costs. I work with a commercialisation team and look at ways of getting consulting revenue and, to be perfectly honest, brand enhancement and positive media articles are really good for us because it helps with student registration.

A lot of kids around here are very focused on the environment. It’s hard not to notice it at the moment. When you have got a university standing up waving a flag saying: “This is what we are trying to fix”, it really attracts them. Those are the measures of success, I would say, in strategic partnerships.

Sarah Jaber:
It’s a good balance between the boxes you have to tick or the requirements you have to meet and what you want to do. As you said, you need funding. We can’t say: “Oh, we don’t care about bringing in money”. It’s about balancing it with more of the actual impact and the qualitative

Susan Marie:
Absolutely. Now I was just going to say that a lot of big industries and companies are looking for a way to give back, and if you can give them something that you know, and it’s not that hard to do. You look at the company’s strategy online and you see what they are interested in. It’s always sustainability and it’s carbon capture and it’s this and it’s that.

So, you give them projects or education, rural upskilling and things like that. And if you give them projects that match with it, it’s easy to get funding.

You have to understand what other people want before you offer it to them, and just not offer people things that you want money for, because you are never going to get it that way.

Sarah Jaber:
It’s actually a great segue to my next question, you have talked a lot about engaging with Indigenous communities and different types of stakeholders. I just wanted to ask if you had any advice or recommendations for, let’s say, another university in Australia who’s looking to start to do more with their Indigenous communities. It doesn’t have to be Australia, but other regions that have that connection or want to build that connection to better service and understand their Indigenous communities.

Susan Marie:
I don’t think there’s any university anywhere that’s not working with the Indigenous communities around it. It would be almost impossible to find a group that isn’t, so I wouldn’t presume to advise on what they do, but the reality is you look around and you see who the leaders in the different groups are, who the people who are getting in trouble all the time are because they are sticking their head above the parapet. They are talking about change, and they are talking about building up their community, and you want to look at what they have achieved.

The focus has been clear and true because a lot of rural places and Indigenous communities – and I’m not just talking about Western Australia, I’m talking about wider than that. It’s easy for big companies to come in and say: “Let me give you some money and you can help me subsidise my negative impact stories by the good news stories”.

And quite often, unless there is understanding of what you are trying to achieve from this, a lot of the small Indigenous communities get gobbled up by these sorts of things, so you want to look and see who’s got the right intent, and what’s the impact they are doing for their community and for their environment and just go start talking to them.

Sarah Jaber:
That’s actually a really good point not doing it just because “I have to do something to make my company look good” but really finding the purpose.

Susan, we are reaching the end of our discussion. You shared this really interesting example of the work from the marine research that you are doing and looking to bring that to fruition, but if there’s one transformative outcome that you would love to see through Murdoch University’s engagement initiatives, what would that be?

Susan Marie:
Work in Asia. We are surrounded by… We are in Asia, let’s face it. We are doing a lot of hopefully really good work in the Philippines, we are looking at biosecurity, and major big protocols, and we are working with government organisations. But for me, if I want to create something transformative and bring it back to home, and I look at the communities around us who have suffered.

A lot of the Indigenous communities have suffered really badly over the years. Conquering nations are never kind. But there has to be a way of enabling that community to achieve their own empowerment, where we are walking alongside them, rather than saying: “Let me throw you this bone” or “let me tell you how it should be done”.

Those sorts of transformative things are absolutely amazing. When I was talking to this particular Indigenous gentleman I’m working with, someone asked him the question: “What would be a win for you?” And he said: “I would like my people to have a mortgage, if that’s what they want. Mortgages are not something Indigenous people often have. It’s something that says I have got a full-time job. I’m committed, I have family, I have stability. I just want to build a middle class for my people”. So, there you go. That’s transformative to me.

Sarah Jaber:
That definitely is. And that’s actually a very positive note to end this really interesting discussion we have been having on. Susan, I’d like to thank you very much for joining us today and for sharing your perspectives, your thoughts, and the really great work that that you are doing at Murdoch University. Thank you very much for joining us. And I hope to continue to see what What happens and how things develop.

Susan Marie:
Thank you so much, Sarah, and thank you for asking me to speak with you today.

Sarah Jaber:
Of course. It’s a pleasure. Goodbye.

Ready for more?

If you are interested in the topic of cultural change at universities, in our report brief, Fostering engaged and entrepreneurial culture at universities, we explore the findings and recommendations from our research that focus on fostering a culture of engagement and entrepreneurship within Higher Education Institutions.

During the 2023 UIIN Conference in Budapest, we spoke with Monroe France, Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice at Tufts University, about how to champion the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across all levels of an institution, including in strategic partnerships approaches. You can hear about it at our episode Towards a more diverse, equitable and inclusive university.

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