Staff Series: an Interview with Astra Gilfillan
Felicia Lee
Astra Gilfillan is a professional staff member at the School of Linguistics and Languages, University of Melbourne. She ensures the smooth running of academic processes for both staff and students.
Felicia interviewed Astra about her role as Academic Programmes Team Leader at SOLL, her prior work experiences, as well as her personal life.
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Thank you for agreeing to the interview, Astra. First of all, could you share with us a typical day at work for you?
Well, it’s a really varied role. I’m part of the Academic Support Office in the Faculty and our portfolio is quite broad. My colleague, Liza, and I are responsible for a range of processes for both students and teaching staff, for example class registration, timetabling, examinations and results. In addition, we provide advice on different academic programs policies. We are also actively involved in organising Open Day for the School. I’m not directly involved in academic integrity, special consideration or course planning, but I do get a lot of queries around these areas as they are related to what we do.
It can get really busy, but I enjoy the variety of the work and just want to do my best to ensure that our staff and students have a good experience and feel supported.
So how do you manage the School’s Open Day?
I am responsible for a lot of the logistics around Open Day, and I work with the other professional staff members in the School and the Future Students team to ensure smooth running of all of our activities on the day. Some of our Open Day activities include the all-day Expo in the Arts West foyer, information sessions for both languages and linguistics and Languages pop-ups at FBE and Southbank for students in other Faculties interested in learning a language. Our linguistics staff ran an interactive session called Seeing Speech this year, which was well attended, and for the past three years we have run the extremely popular European Languages Café, where each of our languages set up a table with some delicacies related to their language for visitors and interactive activities. What’s fun is that the visitors are encouraged to use some basic phrases or expressions in that language to sample the food. I love that the staff in our School are so welcoming and encouraging to our prospective students.
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That sounds really exciting. Before you took on the role of Academic Programs Team Leader at SoLL, were you working elsewhere?
I’ve been at the University since 2007, with the majority of the time working in the Faculty of Arts in the Academic Programs area
Before working at the University, I was an English Language Teacher in Kyoto prefecture, Japan for three years. I lived in a town in the middle of the countryside surrounded by rice fields and mountains and taught at junior high and elementary schools. I grew up in Japan so having the opportunity to go back and work there was amazing.
How did your previous experience help you with your work at SoLL?
When I returned to Australia after teaching in Japan, I was keen to remain in the education sector. I actively looked for work at the University, and the Faculty of Arts was particularly appealing as I had studied UG here I think my experience in teaching and working with students to develop language skills has helped me to relate to both our staff and students. I have worked in the School of Languages and Linguistics for three years now and feel lucky to work with our amazing professional and academic staff members.
Do you recall a particularly challenging time at work?
The COVID-19 pandemic was such a challenging time for our staff and students for a range of reasons, as I’m sure we can all remember! Personally I was on a secondment during this period but I did not go into the office at all as it was during one of our lockdowns, so I needed to find ways to build relationships with my new colleagues online. Homeschooling two primary-school aged children while working full time was also a challenge but we got through this with a lot of laughs, walks around the neighbourhood and baking (and eating) way too much.
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Apart from work, what do you like to do in your free time?
I love gardening! We have quite a big backyard so we have plenty of space to grow herbs and vegetables such as tomatoes, zucchinis ,eggplant and cucumbers. We also have fruit trees – lemons, oranges, plums, figs and apricots. Gardening with the family is really important to me. And my son‘s primary school has an eco-program where they grow vegetables too so it’s great that he can take the skills he has learnt at home to his school, and vice-versa.
As a family we build a lot of Lego and love going to AFL matches. We are big Western Bulldogs supporters, perhaps bordering on being fanatics. I love drawing and painting in my spare time (not that I have a lot of this…)
We have a pug who was a Covid rescue dog, and he’s our special family member. To say he is spoilt is an understatement! Before the pandemic, we travelled a fair bit, but we haven’t had the opportunity since then – it’s hard as we have a dog. We’re hoping that next year we’ll be able to go on a trip. We used to travel every year to visit family and friends in Canada and Japan – I am so homesick for Japan!
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Thank you for sharing your day-to-day experiences at work with us, and your very interesting life outside of work, Astra!
Thank you, Felicia.