Professor Kevin Dunn, Dean, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney

Kevin Dunn

 

Kevin joined UWS in 2008, and is a professor of human geography and urban studies. He is a leading researcher in the geographies of racism, immigration and settlement, Islam in Australia, and local government and multiculturalism. The author of numerous books, including Landscapes: Ways of Imagining the World, published in 2003, he is also the President and Fellow of the New South Wales Geographical Society.

 

A transcript of the Occasional Address, delivered by Professor Kevin Dunn:

"I began working at the UWS in May of 2008. I was allocated an office in the Kingswood precinct of our Penrith campus. A campus which is just across the road from where I had played football for the Kingswood Soccer Club, as it was then called. My brothers and I would ride our bikes Kingswood shops to buy 30 cents worth of chips. The shops haven’t changed much since that time, they have only aged, become dilapidated and vaguely threatening.

I went to School not far from my new office, at Cambridge Park High School, located between St Marys and Penrith.

University was a daunting experience for me. No one in my family had ever been to a university before. I struggled, I dropped out. I came back two years later, when I was older and more independent. University is a struggle, even more so for those who are ‘first-in-family’. And that will have been how it was for a lot of the graduates in this audience today. About half of the students at UWS are what we call “first in family” university students. We are very proud of that. UWS brags about it.

So, in May 2008, I left the University of NSW and accepted a post as Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the University of Western Sydney. We now offer an Urban Planning degree, and our first graduates will complete next year. The degree received accreditation from the Planning Institute of Australia, the organisation that Robyn Vincin has given so much of her time to for. Robyn will receive an esteemed award tonight, for service to the community, more on that later, but planning and planners set out to fix places, to make our cities more liveable. This is something which my old shopping haunt of Kingswood shops urgently needs.

I had been asked to come and build a new Geography, Urban Studies and Planning group. I did that. I assembled a great team of people. We have PhD students and honours students doing great research in Urban Planning and in geography at UWS. And, in the last nationwide assessment of Geography units across the country, by the Federal Government, we were judged to be a Geography unit that was at World Standard. I had achieved what I set out to do. But I made a difference, a difference within a university that is based near where I grew up.

I made a difference in a university that teaches students from my own place in the world. I have established a thriving Geography department, and to me as a Geographer, that is a massive legacy to leave to my discipline.

I now have new challenges. As of January 1st this year, I became Dean of the new School of Social Sciences and Psychology at UWS. I have leadership responsibilities for great disciplines, disciplines like Psychology, Social Work and Counselling. Disciplines that are fundamentally about making the world a better place.

I have stated that my ambition is for the UWS to become an esteemed and leading institution for professional education in the human services disciplines of the Social Sciences. That is my continuing ambition for your alma mater.

UWS has an overall mission of ‘making a difference’. How to make a difference? How can you make difference, what advice can I offer. I believe that such advice is an expectation of these addresses. What advice?

Don’t put off the hard jobs. Getting started is the quickest way to get the job done. Doing your assignments and exams at UWS will have taught you that. Doing your honours, Masters or PhD theses will most certainly have done so. Carry that forward.

You need to cultivate your passion and utilise your strengths. The world is run by those who turn up. Speak-up, speak out, and contribute.

Some of you will already be working in your chosen professions. I said before that these were great disciplines: Psychology, Social Work and Counselling. They are great because they are fundamentally projects for the advancement of the public good. I don’t think many students enrol in a Social Work degree with the ambition of becoming a billionaire or an entrepreneur. Those students are driven by a passion to improve the circumstances of their fellow citizens.

It would not usually be appropriate to single out any specific graduate in address such as this. But we will soon hand a posthumous to John Gilroy, the husband of Dani Gilroy who died last year while completing her degree at UWS. In the face of that sudden and shock loss, staff at UWS rallied to work on an appeal to raise funds for a student prize in Dani’s name in perpetuity. It was decided that the prize would reward a student of excellence, but, in the finest tradition of our great disciplines, the recipient must also demonstrate:

  • “emerging wisdom and worldliness as demonstrated in their report on their social work field placement;
  • a dedication to social justice as demonstrated through field placement or broader community involvement, and
  • a positive attitude as demonstrated by a commitment to helping their peers and building community on campus”.

These criteria reflect Dani’s own qualities.

The degrees offered by my School, our School, I say, encourage and generate students that will make a difference.

To those of you who have been bitten by the bug of knowledge acquisition – make sure you avail yourself of the opportunities for further study. It is from within our student ranks that we find the future honours students, the future PhD students, and, ultimately, our future Professors. Be the best at what you want to be. That is also a sure-fire way to ensure you make a difference on this planet.

The UWS has high expectations that you will be a credit to this university. I have high expectations that you will be a credit to my School, and to the great discipline in which you are about to be formally affiliated. I expect you to be a credit to the great staff at this university. A big thank you to your teachers here today.

Your family, and your extended family, have high expectations. You know that.  You are role models now, and you are making a difference in many ways. Through your actions and words, it is expected that you will make your communities and families proud, that you will be a credit to them. You may think that burden of responsibility is unfair, and it is, but we all need you to be the best you can be, to make a difference, and to do your communities proud.

All the very best on the next stage of your life’s journey. This next stage is one where you will begin to see just how you can change this world for the better."


 

Photos: Sally Tsoutas