Dr Barrie Todhunter

Although an accidental academic who came into USQ fourteen years ago on a six-month contract, I have enjoyed every minute of my time at USQ, taking on my third career after architecture and project management to fulfil a childhood ambition to be a ‘teacher’. I am extremely fortunate in that I have the opportunity to work with mature-aged students who come to university to fulfil their personal ambitions to either learn for the sake of it, or to further their already distinguished careers. I inherited a small specialisation in project management as part of the MBA program and was able to develop it into what is probably the largest program of its type in Australia.

Through my doctoral research into distance learning for postgraduate students, I was able to fine tune my teaching philosophy into what I regard as ‘teaching for one’. Every student has unique needs and I try to help them achieve those objectives. In recognition of the value of project management skills, it is now in the core of the MBA and has its own Master’s degree. I am particularly proud of the platform the staff in the discipline have created for doctoral research in the discipline and that is our major focus at present.

I had to hit the ground running in my early years as we ran intensive teaching sessions for Defence staff in Canberra and for off-shore students who valued our weekend fly-in/fly-out sessions in Singapore and Malaysia. That gave me the grounding to develop the current intensive workshop model we use in the project management program where time-poor students come to the Springfield campus from Friday morning to Sunday evening to network, explore the theory behind the practice, and to interact with practitioners who share their ‘war stories’ from the trenches. The intensive workshop program was recognised in 2012 as teaching excellence in the form of a USQ Citation for outstanding contributions to student learning.