After more than 40 years of trying to improve the student experience of learning, Angela Brew realised that there was little to be gained in asking academics to change the way they teach. A national tour of universities involved in undergraduate research showed her what was needed was a revolution among students. Angela gave up trying to get academics to change and embraced the power of working with students to demand a different kind of higher education.

Angela discovered her interest in research as an undergraduate at the University of Wales College of Cardiff. She described herself as an average student until she was given the chance to go into the honours program in the philosophy department. Suddenly university education made sense once Angela was allowed to ask and answer her own questions. Sitting in the pub after graduation, Angela accepted that she may have escaped Cardiff with a modest degree but she now knew what she wanted to do. The word that kept reverberating around in her head was ‘research’.

Angela put her academic ambitions on hold when she married and moved to France shortly after graduating. She had studied French as part of her undergraduate degree and began work at her husband’s university as a tutor in the university’s language laboratory. When the family returned to England serval years later, she found teaching full time too difficult after the birth of her second child, and Angela began to look for part-time work. 

It was while working as a research assistant on Social Science Research Council project looking at exams in higher education that Roy Cox suggested Angela enrol in a Master of Sociology degree. Fortunately, there was a system at the University of Essex where wives of members of staff could study anything they wanted for free. Angela enrolled in their masters program and studied the tension in education that exists between resisting indoctrinating children and the requirement for education to transmit culture.

Graduating with a Master of Sociology began what Angela called her “20 years in the academic wilderness”. Even with a postgraduate degree Angela was unable to get a full-time academic position, largely due to attitudes toward working mothers at the time. Instead, she built a portfolio of jobs, becoming a study skills counsellor for mature-aged students at the University of Essex, working on tutor development at the Open University, teaching on Open University courses, and developing two courses that were taught at the University of Essex.

It was while working on a three-year evaluation study in the Department of Electrical Engineering that Angela decided to complete a PhD. Through her multiple consulting projects Angela had been building a reputation in higher education student learning, and she decided that would be the focus of her research. But she also wanted to do something innovative that challenged conventional thinking and combine it with ideas she had for writing a philosophical novel. She spent a lot of time searching for the right supervisor who would let her do what she wanted to do, and eventually arrived at Peter Reason, who had attracted an amazing group of research students at the University of Bath. All of Peter’s students were researching different topics with the common goal of challenging boundaries.

Angela would dutifully travel from Essex to Bath once a month and stay for two or three days studying with her research group. In between visits, she was working as much as possible, having become a single mum who had to support two young children. After six years of being a part-time PhD student Angela decided it was time for a change. Although her preferred job after graduating would have been in a faculty doing higher education research, Angela’s background in student learning prepared her to become the Head of the Educational Development Unit at the University of Portsmouth. She stayed there for eight years, and after repeatedly being overlooked for promotion she decided to sidestep the “jobs-for-the-boys” network and started looking for new opportunities elsewhere. Angela took a chance and came to Australia in 1995 on a one-year appointment to the University of Sydney.

What surprised Angela when she came to Australia was how little her work in the UK was known in higher education circles here. That was one of the main driving forces behind her involvement in HERDSA. Angela had been an active member of SEDA in the UK, and HERDSA, being a sister organisation to SEDA, was the natural society for Angela to join. She had been to HERDSA conferences a few years earlier and was already a HERDSA member and those experiences made her think that being on the HERDSA Executive would be a good way to make connections with the local higher education community.

While serving on the HERDSA Executive, Angela was also the Acting Director at the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney. Dealing with the demands of an acting role and requests to implement unpopular structural changes was stressful. However, it showed Angela that she was better suited to academic leadership than university management.

Angela became the HERDSA President in 1999 and her first task was to put HERDSA on a sound footing by restructuring the HERDSA office so that it did not continue to be a significant drain on the society’s finances. Angela remembered that the meetings of the HERDSA Executive were very challenging to manage. Executive members often expressed very different views and Angela found her role was to draw together disparate ideas and help everyone make sense of them. It was a skill that Angela put to use when she represented HERDSA on the International Council of Educational Development (ICED).

Angela’s final act as President was to establish the HERDSA fellowship program. She led the pilot teaching recognition scheme, organising the initial group of HERDSA Fellows. Each HERDSA registrant was a member of a Fellowship triad, consisting of three registrants and a mentor, working together to produce a portfolio that could be used for promotion applications. Angela found it extremely satisfying to see many of the pilot fellowship group later assume leadership roles within the HERDSA Executive.

Angela’s swansong for HERDSA was as part of the University of Sydney team that hosted the HERDSA Conference in Sydney in 2005. She used this opportunity to showcase the changing landscape at the University of Sydney and the work of the Institute of Teaching and Learning. Her abiding memory of the conference was “it was a lot of work for very little recognition”. From HERDSA’s perspective, the conference itself was an outstanding success, setting a benchmark for others to follow.

2009 was a pivotal year in Angela’s career. HERDSA recognised Angela’s contribution to the Society and higher education more broadly by making her a life member. Angela left the University of Sydney for Macquarie University where she was a Professorial Fellow at the Learning and Teaching Centre.  And Angela was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) to enhance undergraduate engagement by involving them in research and inquiry.

Angela’s ALTC Fellowship brought together a team of international experts and leading Australian collaborators to foster student engagement through developing and sharing protocols for good practice in engaging undergraduate students in research and inquiry in different disciplines. Through a series of regional roundtables and an Australian Summit on the integration of research, representatives from 35 universities and other bodies with an interest in undergraduate research were provided opportunities for sharing good practice and examining available resources.  

The work of Angela’s Fellowship laid the foundations for a ten year program to promote undergraduate research opportunities across Australasia. She established the annual Conference of Undergraduate Research for Australasia in 2012 and founded the Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research (ACUR) in 2014. One of ACUR's early successes was to have a selected group of undergraduate researchers from across the country present their work to invited members of the Australian Parliament at the Parliament House in Canberra, a significant milestone for Australia’s growing undergraduate research community.

Angela soon turned her eye to international connections as a member of the organising committee for the inaugural World Conference on Undergraduate Research, held in Qatar in 2016. In subsequent years, Angela helped organise conferences in Germany and the United Kingdom that were closely modelled on the Australasian conference format.

For Angela students were a powerful and largely untapped force to achieve real change in teaching and learning.  She had an unwavering dedication to empowering students and fostering a collaborative spirit between students and academics leaving an indelible mark on higher education. Angela always felt there was an affinity between work being done with academics in HERDSA and students in ACUR. What set ACUR apart for Angela was its revolutionary spirit, which brought together students and academics aiming for lasting change in higher education. Angela's legacy is a testament to the transformative power of education and the enduring impact of nurturing young talent.

Dr Peter Kandlbinder is an Industry Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney and a HERDSA life member. Peter was a colleague and PhD student of Angela's in the 1990's.
Dr Lilia Mantai is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director at the University of Sydney Business School, and Vice-Chair Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research
Professor Denise Wood is an adjunct in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Chair, Australasian Council for Undergraduate Research.