by: Dianne van Eck

Hello again everyone,

This past quarter has been filled with many interesting and rewarding projects. From having a lovely holiday on Kangaroo Island, to becoming a grand aunty for the first time, to organising a local Environment Muster with over 20 environmental groups and buying a 1969 caravan… the enjoyable times have been great.

Campus visits

I had the great pleasure visiting colleagues at three Queensland universities during the first week of June. Together with Greg Jakob, Senior Consultant at DVE we facilitated some consultation activities at UniSQ and met with Vice Chancellor Professor Karen Nelson. UniSQ is undergoing some significant changes, as are many Australian universities. Staff are keen to ensure the student experience is of a high quality and it is rewarding to see some of the extensive work that is underway at UniSQ.

Next stop was the University of Queensland, where I met up with our former sponsor from the UTS Faculty of Science, Helen Hume. Helen engaged DVE for a number of process improvement and organisational change projects during her time at UTS. Through her leadership we were able to improve business processes and reduce manual tasks undertaken by her teams. We were able to reminisce over the many changes in the sector since those days in 2016. Helen is now Operations Director of the UQ Brain Institute. I would also like to share Helen’s amazing Lego table décor piece, which she created during the Christmas break. I’m not sure that I would have the patience for such a brilliant piece! Well done, Helen!

Whilst at UQ, I visited their RD Milns Antiquities Museum, which is a remarkable collection of several thousand ancient artefacts. It is an excellent resource for students, spanning almost 3500 years of history according to their website. I commend it to you.

Also worthy of comment is the Precious Collection at the Museum of Brisbane. As I have a huge collection of everyday items and objects which I am assembling for a private social history museum, this display gave me confidence and hope that I’m heading in the right direction with my collection. See the fabulous collection of lapel buttons on the left. More about my project another day. 😊

Last stop was to visit Jodie Davis, Registrar at Griffith University. I used to visit Jodie at the University of Newcastle but since her appointment as Griffith Uni Registrar I had not caught up in person. This was an excellent opportunity to meet Jodie and visit the Nathan campus, where I had not been before.

It is an amazing experience to drive through the lush forest of trees to find the central campus hub. The Student Centre is bright and inviting, with many places for students to study, chat and hangout. It was great to share a coffee with Jodie and hear about the projects that she and her teams are working on at Griffith.

DVE activities

Since I last wrote to you, we finalised the recruitment for the Managing Consultant – Organisational Improvement. I am excited to announce that Larissa Pearce has joined the DVE team.

Larissa has over six years experience at Flinders University, particularly in the International Partnerships and Work Integrated Learning (WIL) areas. She has also consulted independently for many years where she has used her systems thinking and strategic problem-solving skills to solve many problems. Larissa’s passion is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on people, processes and systems. Larissa is also supporting the work to improve placement processes, particularly for rural, remote and international students. The specialised DVE system Placements Plus, is now ‘live’ and being implemented in three universities. If you would like to speak with Larissa either online or in person (she is Adelaide based) about any of these projects, she can be contacted at larissa.pearce@dvesolutions.com.au.

In addition to Larissa, we also recruited Heather Sainsbury to add to the excellent capability within the DVE Governance and Compliance (G&C) team.

Heather’s career in Higher Education includes managing the TEQSA reregistration for Maquarie University and as Director, Academic Governance and Standards at Deakin University. The DVE G&C team has completed some excellent work in recent years assisting many universities and private providers achieve successful reregistration. They also assist new providers with a full suite of services for new registration. Heather’s addition further strengthens our compliance capability and supports DVE’s continued growth in this space.

DVE Webinars

During the past several months, DVE has presented a selection of webinars, supported by experts across the sector. The following webinar recordings are now available:

• The Value of Benchmarking in Strategic Decision Making
• Tips, Tricks and War Stories – TEQSA Re-Registration
• Lived Lessons and Support Tips from Three Regional University Study Hubs (RUSH)

Follow DVE Solutions on LinkedIn for updates and details on upcoming sessions.

Conferences

The ATEM Admissions, Scholarships and Credit Symposium was held in Adelaide at Flinders University from 28 to 30 May 2025. The conference was a great success, led by the Director of Student Administration at Flinders University, Kim Murphy and her team.

The ATEM 2025 IMPACT Conference will be held on 7 – 10 September in Canberra with ANU as the ATEM Conference partner. This is a great opportunity to not only attend an informative conference, but to also tour the beautiful ANU campus.

The 2025 Heads of Student Administration (HOSA) conference will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand from 3 – 5 September.

Preparations are underway for the NAFEA 2025 Conference: The WIL Effect. Shaping the Future World of Work, being held in Geelong, Victoria on 29 – 31 October. DVE’s CEO, Jo Schneider will be co-presenting a workshop with Flinders University Director of Graduate Career Readiness, Nalini Klopp titled ‘Beyond the Checklist: Embedding Risk Visibility, Safety and Wellbeing into Rural WIL Systems’. The workshop will leverage insights from DVE’s 2nd sector-wide WIL survey which is due to be released any day now. If you’d like to make sure your input and insights are captured please contact info@dvesolutions.com.au using the subject line ‘Requesting WIL Survey Link’ – you can also opt in to receive a copy of the final report.

Fun and downtime!

In my last newsletter to you, I had looked after Tommy for a week whilst Jo travelled to Shanghai. She had a great time seeing the sites, particularly noticing how much the city had changed in the past 20 years.

After Jo returned, I had a week’s holiday in Kangaroo Island, travelling with my dear friend, Laurie. We toured the usual sites, which, if you are intending to visit KI, you can see in 3-4 days.

We spent a few days relaxing at Emu Bay, and saw penguins come out at night to make a great deal of noise doing whatever it is that penguins do at night. The ocean and cliff views were magnificent, and despite half of the island being destroyed in the 2020 bushfires, the landscape was returning to its usual colour and shape.

I also had the pleasure of visiting the Chihuly Exhibition in Adelaide. This was the first of its kind in Australia and showcased a collection of fifteen enormous large-scale sculptures designed to complement the garden setting where they were installed.

I have added a couple of beautiful examples, but the photos do not do justice to the sculptures’ size, colour or scale. There are 1,000s of pieces which are all individually wrapped and shipped in special containers. It’s an amazing process and display.

Tommy adventures

Tommy adventures continue. Each Monday we spend the day together and almost always go for our ‘Adventure Picnic’ where we walk around to a small local park with huge gum trees. Last week we were thrilled to see a couple of kangaroos before they bounded off to the next paddock. Each week we see and hear magpies, kookaburras, parrots, galahs, plovers, ravens, wrens and blackbirds. Tommy is learning the call signs of all these local birds. We both love nature.

Farewell, Milo.

Thank you for taking the time to stay connected. If you would like to catch up for an online or in person coffee at any time, please contact me on 0412 417774.

All the very best for the next quarter of 2025.

Warm regards.

Di
Dianne van Eck
Director Higher Education