Cairns business: Outgoing JCU vice-chancellor says studying the tropical world is critical
She has been the longest-standing vice-chancellor at a single Australian university - and as she steps down, Professor Sandra Harding’s passion for life in the tropics is unabated.
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AFTER 15 years leading world-renowned James Cook University, vivacious vice-chancellor Professor Sandra Harding is stepping back – but she remains passionate about the Far North and the global tropics.
Professor Harding has had the longest tenure of any vice-chancellor at an Australian university, having held the position since 2007, creating huge strides forward with initiatives such as the purchase of land in the city for the Cairns JCU University Hospital.
JCU’s annual revenue has doubled to more than $550m a year.
Professor Harding oversaw a nearly fourfold increase in the size of the JCU Singapore campus, which now has more than 3700 students and has earned Singapore’s highest level of quality assurance.
The university has also more deeply recognised First Nations people by adopting a reconciliation statement.
In 2019, Professor Harding was appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia for her distinguished service to education at the national and international level, and to the community of Queensland.
“It has been a fairly long haul, and one I have absolutely relished and enjoyed every day,” Professor Harding said.
She is looking forward to long walks from her property near Malanda with her husband, Kevin Harding, and a long-planned overseas ski trip that was skittled by the Covid pandemic.
“We just love it up there, there’s no way we’re going anywhere else – the environment is exquisite, Cairns is a city big enough to be interesting without being too busy or anonymous; there’s terrific airlinks. I have no ambition to live in a major city again,” she said.
The energetic academic has been looking through memories as she packs personal papers.
“It is a very strange place to inhabit, and part of the reason for that is as you are going through lots of papers, the things you keep, it tracks all the highs and lows of living a professional life intensely, and it’s really interesting to look back on all those things,” she said.
Professor Harding is looking forward to “down time” with her extended family.
“I’m involved in a few boards and will continue some of that. I’m certainly not looking for another CEO role – that is done; maybe I will reacquaint myself with my own academic area and have more time to read the terrific work by international colleagues.”
An economic sociologist by training, her areas of interest include work, organisation and markets and how they work, and she also has an interest in public policy, the global tropics, northern Australia and economic development.
“There’ve been many highlights, and a lot of that is the fantastic work people do every day at uni, truly marvellous work,” she said.
Professor Harding was responsible for acquiring billions of dollars worth of contracts, including a $96m Technology Innovation Complex which will deliver leading-edge STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) innovation, research and educational facilities for northern Queensland.
A particularly important feat was producing a paper on the State of the Tropics, which resulted in the United Nations resolving to recognise June 29 as the International Day of the Tropics, something Professor Harding had campaigned for since 2010.
“One thing I was personally quite involved in was leading an international consortium on the State of the Tropics report – that was a landmark report aimed at looking at the tropics worldwide, economy and environment.”
It was launched by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
“It was answering a very simple question: is life in the tropics, between Cancer and Capricorn, getting better?” Professor Harding said.
She said it led to ongoing UN talks on the nations of the tropical world and to the State of the Tropics Alliance.
She said recognising the tropics as an important zone of the world was vital and the project combined efforts of 11 global research institutions, “revealing a world that has been largely overlooked, yet is essential to understanding the trajectory of the world”.
Professor Harding said moving forward on the JCU University Hospital for Cairns was critical.
“I looked at the Texas Medical Centre – university research, hospitals, hotels, a huge precinct, and the uni hospital in Townsville is adjacent to the uni, a full medical school with clinicians and academics back and forth between the two campuses, serving a major tertiary hospital,” she said.
“Why not Cairns, I always thought, with the attractiveness of the city, people want to be there and it is well placed with international airport services to service the need of the Pacific.
“With this precinct, we can provide such an exciting opportunity for our city and express true excellence in Tropical Health in the broader Pacific.”
She said JCU sought a commitment ahead of the federal election for extra medical school places so all six years of study could be completed in Cairns, leading to clinical placement across the Far North.
“If we can grow them here, they get excited about rural, regional and remote and Pacific areas, and that is the way to get dedicated people, not just people who come in for a couple of years and go back to Sydney,” Professor Harding said.
“There is no reason why we can’t achieve that. We are well on our way – we have state government support, and we will do our part, that’s for sure, and I know we’ll get other interested parties.”
Demolition works started in November at the site of the first $60m stage of the Cairns University Hospital upgrade.
JCU caused a stir last year when it caught the Queensland government by surprise and used federal funding to buy the land required for the entire university hospital project.
JCU is believed to have brokered a deal of up to $25m to buy 12,331sq m of property bounded by Sheridan, Digger and Charles streets in Cairns North.
The masterplan is yet to be finalised.
Professor Harding faced intense public scrutiny during a High Court Appeal by physicist Peter Ridd, who was employed by JCU for 27 years until 2018, when he was sacked for breaching the university’s code of conduct after failing to treat others “with respect and courtesy”.
He was dismissed for criticising the work of colleagues on the health of the Great Barrier Reef and lost his High Court appeal.
Dr Ridd sent an email to a journalist saying the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University should “check their facts before they spin their story”, when making claims about the health of the Reef.
JCU is ranked among the world’s top tertiary education institutions.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed JCU within the 251-300 bracket of the world’s universities.
The ranking compares more than 1600 institutions worldwide, and was the seventh consecutive year JCU had been ranked in the top 300 of the world’s universities.
Within its overall ranking, JCU performed strongly in terms of the global impact of its research, and the university was ranked 164th in the world for its research influence and role in spreading new knowledge and ideas.
JCU was also recently ranked in the top 201-300 universities worldwide by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
And JCU graduates have a better chance of securing well-paying employment than any other Queensland university, according to the latest edition of the Good Universities Guide.
It awarded JCU a five-star rating for undergraduate and postgraduate employment – the No.1 ranked Queensland university in both categories.
JCU was awarded five stars for graduates’ starting salaries – both undergraduate and postgraduate – placing it within the top 10 of universities nationally.
Founded in Townsville in 1970, JCU has six campuses. It is the second-oldest university in Queensland.
“I’d never lived in anything other than a capital city before heading north and I understood very quickly the joy of living of Cairns and what JCU does matters,” Professor Harding said.
“We are a major employer and we know how important it is to deliver knowledge and research in critical areas of the north’s economic and social wellbeing.
“JCU is part of the DNA for the Far North and I am really proud every day of that connection; it is precious and with it, anything is possible.”
Professor Harding will be succeeded by Professor Simon Biggs, who has said he is excited about strengthening ties with Singapore. He was previously senior deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Western Australia.
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