MUSSE

Chris Heelan, Manager, CIE

The University’s Centre for Indigenous Education (CIE) has a new person at the helm. Zoe Nikakis talks to Chris Heelan about new directions for the CIE.

In his role as General Manager of the Centre for Indigenous Education, Mr Chris Heelan is overseeing some ambitious changes to the Centre and the ways in which it helps our community of Indigenous students.

“It’s about building relationships with the students, giving them a reason to engage,” Heelan says, explaining that the Centre’s new direction is a more student-focused, engaging and faculty-integrated CIE.

The new CIE is all about helping Indigenous students to “explore [educational] options while maintaining [the] academic excellence” for which the University of Melbourne is known.

Making better connections with the faculties and increasing the numbers of Indigenous students at the University as a whole are just two of the challenges that Mr Heelan is tackling, but, coming from Perth just last year, he looks at these challenges from a fresh perspective.

Chris Heelan joined the CIE from Curtin University of Technology, where he was undertaking a two-year secondment to the Office of Teaching and Learning, working as a Senior Lecturer/Curriculum Developer with the C2010 Project. Prior to that appointment, Mr Heelan held a variety of academic positions at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CAS), Curtin University, working as a Lecturer, Academic Coordinator of the Indigenous Australian Cultural Studies Program, Deputy Director and Dean, Teaching and Learning.

In 2004, Mr Heelan, along with colleagues from the Indigenous Australian Cultural Studies Program team (Curtin University), won the Neville Bonner Award for Indigenous teaching within the Australian Awards for University Teaching. His qualifications (Chris will complete his Masters in Human Rights in 2009) and experience make him the ideal General Manager for the CIE.

“We’ve been going through a big period of change, of our staff, and of the core business [of the Centre],” he says. “There’s a new agenda – recruitment and engagement, and making the Centre a place for that engagement.”

Getting to know, and work with, all the other agencies on campus and in the community that deal with Indigenous issues – such as the Academy of Sport, Health and Education (ASHE) and Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit – has been a challenge.

The new CIE is also about “reconnecting relationships” with current Indigenous students, because the CIE only exists “for the students” – to provide them with social and cultural support.

Mr Heelan is excited about this new direction and its emphasis on recruitment and engagement, and the potentially “long-lasting impacts” the Centre’s work will have on the lives of Indigenous students and, through them, on Indigenous communities.

“The students who the CIE works with have the potential to become leaders, both in their immediate communities and on a national level,” he says. “They’re going to be role models too: ‘If they can do it, then why can’t I?’ is the kind of attitude the CIE hopes to create in communities Australia-wide.”

The CIE is currently focused on increasing the number of Indigenous students at the University, be they students from remote areas, like the students from Broome, who are coming to the University this year as part of the Bachelor of Arts (Extended) program, or the local students in Victorian high schools that the CIE is working to engage in collaboration with the Victorian Government.

The CIE is working with high school students to put them on the path that leads to the University as part of a long-term plan to increase the numbers of Indigenous students who study at the University.

With a new manager and a new direction, this year is going to be one of strong growth and new ideas for the CIE and for the students it supports.