Prior to being an teaching academia, I had 2 years of experience as a
Resident Adviser in University College, The University of Melbourne. As
an RA, I am much involved in the residents' and students' welfare, as
Genevieve had summed up my role:
Maurice was a Resident Adviser (RA)
for from May 2006 until March 2008. This position included duties such
as ensuring the security of the College buildings at night, informal
mentoring of students and pastoral care of students. He was a most
reliable RA, always on time for duty and very accommodating with duties
for other RAs with challenging academic or social timetables.. He
frequently attended both Monday and Tuesday High Tables and I came to
rely on him to be there in the Senior Common Room before the arranged
time and thus there was always someone to greet the apartment guests and
students and to offer them refreshments. Maurice was meticulous in
carrying out his duties and could be relied upon to provide a succinct
but useful report for administration personnel. He interacted with a
range of students and became an informal mentor to a number of them.
Following on from these interactions he was able to highlight areas in
which the College could provide further assistance to students. At the
same time Maurice developed collegial relationships with several of our
academic visitors, exchanging ideas and maintaining correspondence with
academics from diverse areas of scholarship. Maurice presented aspects
of his academic work at seminars on two occasions at University College
and the ensuing discussions were most appreciated by the audiences. He
proved to be a valuable member of staff.
--
Genevieve Leach, Director of College Welfare, University
College, The University of Melbourne (May 22, 2008)
I think those 2 years had engrained an attitude in me that students'
welfare is an important pre-requisite to sustained academic and
eventually, career achievement. This has certainly underlined in my
teaching philosophy. I believe that the
toughest aspect is to help my students manage their emotional welfare as
the signs of distress may not be obvious and my resources (time and
energy) limited. Hence, I am willing to go an additional mile whenever
I can, which may be in the form of casual chatting over a coffee, to
build their emotional strength and I think my entry point to achieve
this is by having good rapport with my students. Formally, I had ran
two 1-day workshops on "Finding your ideal career" and "Your ideal
learning state". |