Professor Margaret Gardner, the only vice chancellor to become a state governor, has been awarded this year’s AFR Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to higher education.
Margaret Gardner likes to draw an analogy between Australia’s universities and the triumphant Olympic squad that returned from Paris with a record medal haul.
“It’s a bit like the Olympics: how did a country the size of Australia produce such an impressively sized international education sector, so much incredible research, and so many world-class universities in the top 100 on global rankings,” says Gardner.
Professor Margaret Gardner, AC, and Victoria’s 30th Governor, has been awarded the 2024 AFR Lifetime Achievement Award for her dedication, commitment and service to Australia’s higher education sector.
The judges acknowledged Gardner’s distinguished career as a university leader, her passion and intellectual clout and her effectiveness as a manager.
She has never been an apologist for excellence, including in the Group of Eight universities which conducts about 70 per cent of Australia’s university research output.
Under her charge, Monash rose in the global university rankings. It was named the 37th best university in the world on the most recent QS ranking, 54th best in the Times Higher Education ranking and 74th on the Academic Ranking of World Universities. In the AFR Best Universities awards last year, Monash ranked fourth.
From the beginning, Gardner’s career was on an upward trajectory. An economist by training, she found her place in academia working on industrial relations, specifically examining trade union strategy relating to female professions of teaching and nursing.
A Fulbright Scholarship quickly followed her PhD, including time spent at some of the US’s most stellar universities, including University of California Berkeley, MIT and Cornell before she returned to Australia and quickly rose up the ranks.
But it was as the head of RMIT between 2005 and 2014, and then Monash from 2014 to 2023, that she staked her claim as one of Australia’s longest-serving and most successful vice chancellors.
Source: AFR
