Professor Margaret Gardener is in a class or her own

Professor Margaret Gardner’s formidable list of accomplishments in the nation’s universities makes her a worthy award recipient.

Monash University vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Gardner has been awarded an AC in the Australia Day honours list. Picture: David Geraghty

Academic Margaret Gardner has led two universities in Victoria and now is the only Victorian to receive the prestigious AC award in this year’s Australia Day honours list.

Professor Gardner has been vice-chancellor of Monash University for six years and held the same role at RMIT University from 2005 to 2014.

From 2017 to 2019 she chaired the university peak body Universities Australia. She is also a director of Infrastructure Victoria and was president of Museums Victoria.

Trained as an economist, Professor Gardner worked in the business and industrial relations fields early in her career.

Professor Gardner has paid tribute to the many colleagues who have supported her work.

“In a sense, when you are recognised (in the honours list) it’s recognition of a much bigger group of people with whom you’ve had the great joy of interacting,” she said.

University people are heavily represented in this year’s Australia Day honours and Professor Gardner said the impact universities had on the community was much larger than it used to be.

She said universities had also increased their capacity to take research into the community, both within Australia and overseas.

She cited Monash University’s mosquito program, which is working globally to protect people from dangerous mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever.

Universities now reached deep into the local community as well, she said, with the public using many of their facilities including sporting fields, theatres and more.

“We provide services to all sorts of people,” she said. “I think we underestimate how woven into the community they (universities) are in Australia.”