Surely by now Zlatko Skrbis, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, has become accustomed to the flow of bad news emanating from his beleaguered institution. Either that or the recent renewal of his five-year contract, worth a respectable $5m, is a salve that dulls the pinch of every headline he encounters.
And there have been a couple: about the whopping budget deficits, the governance failures, the staff underpayments, the roving eye of the regulator. Not least of all about the staff turnover, and we can now add another very significant name to the growing list of absconders.
On Monday, Professor Mary Ryan stunned the university’s management committee by announcing her resignation as the executive dean of ACU’s Education and Arts faculty. This is the largest faculty at ACU, Ryan being one of four executive deans in charge. She’s held the position since 2022 and is leaving, in no small part, due to a beef with Skrbis.
Ryan’s next move will a job at Monash University where she’ll soon be announced as its dean of education, a role presently occupied by Professor Viv Ellis. His five-year contract expires next month.
It’s the same job that she was doing at ACU, except Monash’s faculty has no arts or humanities component. It’s a smaller role, a sideways shuffle, and possibly with less pay. Taking it speaks volumes of her willingness to decamp from ACU in a hurry.
Ryan didn’t respond to our requests for comment, but we’ve established that Skrbis invited her to apply for a very significant promotion last year to the role of deputy vice-chancellor. He did not respond to our request for comment on that point, or to what we’d heard: that he’d allegedly promised her the appointment.
Whatever may have been said between them, by October there’d been a shift in mood. Ryan was passed over in favour of an outsider, Professor Tania Broadley, a pro vice-chancellor at the University of Canberra whose appointment was announced in a press release. She started her new role at ACU in February.
ACU Provost Julie Cogin responded to our questions about Ryan’s resignation with the usual brand of arse-covering and narrative-rescripting we’ve come to expect from ACU.
“ACU always encourages staff to explore opportunities to progress their careers and gain further experience,” says Cogin, implying that Ryan’s departure was somehow supported and backed by ACU, a total furphy.
“It is pleasing to be able to attract talent, develop it further and see it grow. We are also proud to promote talent from within, as was the case with a recent executive dean appointment.“
Funny, because that little bit at the end was unsolicited. We didn’t ask about that.
So, no, they didn’t knife a senior member of ACU’s leadership team and prompt her to take a job elsewhere in disgust.
And no, apparently staff have nothing to fear. Internal appointments still happen. Cogin, unprompted, made certain to emphasise that point.
They’re fretting over what the staff will say, but the overdone denial is always a giveaway, isn’t it? The lady doth protest too much, wethinks.
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