Graduation Speech

2009 Graduation Speech

Science & Engineering and Nursing

Data, Information, Knowledge and Expertise

I have great pleasure in taking up the University’s invitation to address the
2009 graduands in the Schools of Nursing and Science and Engineering.
We all come from different backgrounds, experiences and opportunities.
But whether you have come to this point in your careers with all the necessary resources at hand,
or whether you have had to stretch your resources and juggle multiple responsibilities and commitments,
today should be seen as a crowning moment. And I congratulate you on accepting
the invitation to accept your degree today, in person, with families in tow,
as these are seminal moments in your life and your career.
Such opportunities to share personal success publicly come only occasionally,
and you are wise to join in the ritual today and allow yourself to receive worthy congratulations
and to feel some personal pride.

Today you are graduating. You are graduating literally, and your parchment is a testament to that.
Many of you are also graduating in a metaphoric sense also.
Today the University of Ballarat, through its statutes, conveys upon you, in recognition of your demonstrated proficiencies, with a university degree.
You are now a qualified nurse, engineer or scientist and, as daunting as this may seem, society now recognises that you have expertise.
Through reading and critically analysing literature, through field and laboratory practise,
or through swotting for exams, you have interpreted data, sought information,
gathered the knowledge of others and assembled these multifarious elements into something we call expertise.
At the risk of generating a multiple head swell, you are now all experts, to a certain level I rush to point out.
I would hope that one of the key attributes of the graduands assembled here today is that you appreciate there is not one answer,
as you may have believed to get though year 12, but multiple, sometimes conflicting lines of evidence.

Society needs experts and expertise and you are more marketable after today than before.
It probably existed in the past, without the grand label, but today in all areas, we are developing “evidence based policy and practice”.
That policy and practice draws on data, information, knowledge and expertise.
That expertise, your expertise, may be sought by hospitals or agencies, state government or the City of Ballarat,
you may be called upon to give ‘frank and fearless advise’ to a decision maker
or you may be, shudder the thought, asked for comment by the media.

In this world of information overload, multimedia, soundbites, political spin,
youtube, twitter (whatever that is) we are all being encouraged to have an opinion – about everything.
In this atmosphere the boundaries between data, information, knowledge and expertise are all being blurred.
Interestingly, one of the consequences of all this information is that policy is being written by policy advisers
who are now not physically capable of absorbing all the evidence.
As an academic I am encouraged to publish in peer reviewed journals
and there can by a sort of blind faith that that journal article will suddenly pop up in front of the policy maker and knowledge will be acquired.
It is gradually dawning on me that nothing is further from the truth.

Ever heard of policy on the run – watch The Hollowmen and you will see?
The policy maker fills the gaps by seeking advice through networks of contacts or by commissioned or available internal reports.
Where time permits experts may be sought before or during the public policy development process,
or their comment sought by opponents or the media after the policy of formulated.
Often the expert has detailed knowledge of a small area relating to the policy,
general knowledge of the broad field, a certain gestalt – which is an abstract,
intuitive knowledge from their background experience of the field, and then, like the rest of us, personal opinion.

In my field there has been long and vehement debate as to whether the arrival of humans 46,000 years ago
was responsible for the extinction of the giant wombats and kangaroos collectively known as the Australian megafauna,
or whether the principal cause of their demise was the drift into the last global ice age.
A well known Australian of the Year wrote a popular book advocating the former,
generating fervent support, with some authors declaring the debate effectively over.
A close colleague of mine wrote an article entitled “Meganesian BBQ”
where she explored the contention that the view of this author was coloured by the fact that
he was a bloke, and that, like our tendency to stand around the ‘barbie’,
we men have an excessive focus on the meat part of the family economy.
The female graduands and family members will recognise of course
that it is the plant matter that is the most important part of our summer eating tradition.
This, in indigenous Australia, is actually borne out by ethnohistoric evidence which suggests
that most food consumed was collected, not hunted, and that most of that was brought to the table by women.
So, what we do today is a mere continuation of a 46,000 year gender partition of duties.
What my colleague was trying to show however, was that most of the overkill advocates were blokes and that their context may,
at least in part, be explaining their entrenched position.
Effectively, as she said, the stories of the stories also need to be told.

We all have that context, and all our contexts are different.
Despite the finite amount of data and evidence there is a rich diversity of opinion and even ‘knowledge’.
All the graduands here have at the very least touched on the sciences and,
hopefully by now, are aware of the scientific method which is simply the collection of data or evidence to test an hypothesis,
to advance accepted knowledge. That rigorous approach breeds a certain confidence in the outcome,
a confidence that cannot always be reconciled with the variability and unpredictability of the natural and biomedical worlds.
But if we recognise that the mere generation of a question or selection of  particular methodology,
is context specific, then we can develop a greater humility towards what we call knowledge,
and more open to examining what is knowledge and what is opinion – both of others, and our own.

As a graduating expert you now carry with you your qualification that you take with you today.
As a degree holder you will know that to contribute to your employer’s goals you will need to draw on data and evidence.
You already have your reputation of course, but your qualification is one of the building blocks of your professional reputation.
Going forward this very much defines the credibility of your gestalt,
or your hunch or your expert opinion. In many fields that forecast,
you are riding by the seat of your pants, and you will rely on this internal knowledge.
As a young postgraduate student I had the opportunity to consult to mining,
downhill skiing and forestry interests. Not the preferred bedfellow,
or even paymaster, of a green greenie I’d have to admit.
The world wise director of the consulting team advised me that
there is no advantage for the consultant or the client in advocating too heavily or too meekly for the environment or the developer.
A too enthusiastic report would be challenged by the developer
and one too lenient would be challenged through the review process.
In the end I learned that it was best to argue from the irrefutable evidence even though your mind
would have you advocating even where evidence was weak or in dispute. 
Adopting this line helped establish my professional reputation.
I note the Federal Minister calling for academics to comment publicly,
from a position of knowledge, but where they wished to express opinion,
it was fair to do so without their qualification, however exalted.
This is good advice for the development of evidence based policy,
and it is good advice for the academic as it establishes structure that protects their professional reputation.
There remains a role for expressing opinion, but given that is as context specific as the next person,
we ought be open in acknowledging that and decline
the temptation to empower our opinions with the title bestowed by the academe.

This is no less the case for you today, graduands with a Bachelors degree in Nursing, Science or Engineering.
In all your future pursuits you will call on your qualification,
the standing it gives you, and the knowledge you have developed through the course of your degree.
There will be times when you are drawn from the comfort of your sphere of expertise,
whether it is in the workplace or around the BBQ debating the relative influence of humans and climate change
on the demise of megafauna or the state of our environment.
Here you will find yourself in the uneasy ground of sorting your knowledge from your opinion.

You have all gained considerable knowledge and are here to rejoice in the great success of graduating with a University degree.
the qualification, respect the knowledge you have gained and go out and engage with the community
and actively contribute to the challenges we have ahead.
Take care representing your professional reputation as it is precious.
But express your rights as a member of the community and present your opinion and lobby as you see fit,
as the individuals with the rich and diverse backgrounds you all have.

Peter Gell is the Professor of Environmental Science, Director of the Centre for Environmental Management
and leader of the Regional Futures research theme at the University of Ballarat.
He has held International fellowships at the University of Paris Sud, France and Loughborough University, U.K.,
is Adjunct Professor at The University of Adelaide and has been
Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK.
He has spent the last 20 years using the records of long term change contained in the sediment layers in
lakes and swamps to disentangle the role of people and climate change and variability on the nature of our environment, across Australia,
but also in Brazil, the U.K., France and China.
He heads a global research task group within the
International Geosphere Biosphere Program examining the relative impact of people and climate on the world’s lakes.
He also convenes a national network examining the impact of people on Australian ecosystems from the long term perspective.
He has produced over 100 publications and industry reports,
100 conference papers, held 20 nationally competitive research grants,
and supervised 60 honours and postgraduate students.
He presently leads a Land and Water Australia grant examining the historical precedence of the present drought in south-east Australia.

        Peter Gell 2009

2007 Graduation Speech

Academics, graduands, guests and Uni personnel
Thank you for all being here, for this our grand farewell
We’ve worked for years, within these walls, our goal a fine degree
And all that work has now paid off, as you can plainly see

At those bigger Uni’s, a student number is my I D
No personal attention, no one there to help just me
Here we know our lecturers, perhaps a bit to well
But it sure beats the alternative, of some large Uni hell

A varsity, as small as ours, comes with its good and bad
The student/teacher ratio is the best we’ll ever have
The problem with small classes though, is when you don’t arrive
It makes it kind of obvious, when the class is down to five

We lack, perhaps, the student life, depicted on the screen
No alpha, beta, gamma house, and no ice hockey team
Our societies, the few we have, certainly pack no punch
No Marxism in the morning, no dead poets after lunch

But the quality of teaching, you’ll hear no complaints from me
The work that goes on day and night, our potential they can see
We have been taught by lecturers, committed to the deed
Of making sure that each of us leaves here with all we need

Our library is extensive, our pool and gym supreme
We’ve all seen constant changes here, to help us reach our dream
We’ve seen our fees so hard at work, just witness our F block.
It’s been transformed to modern art and something less ad hoc

But there is more to Uni life, then lectures, exams and marks
The social aspects, we can’t forget, the fire and the sparks
Friendships we have formed that may last until we die
Things we’ve learnt about ourselves, that’s made us laugh and cry

We’ve all done things, this past few years, our parents should not know
We’ve taken risks, we’ve drunk too much, some have the scars to show
We’ve seen the world through others eyes, maybe wishing we were blind
We’ve learnt the world outside of school can oft be more unkind

You may have learnt to love someone, like you never thought you could
You’ve had to deal with more oddballs that you thought you ever should
For some the school to Uni change, meant moving up a gear
Some of us have struggled, but it’s a testament we’re here

But as we leave these hallowed halls, taking our next stride
Remember what they tried to teach us, on this coaster ride
Let’s show our new employers, the quality of our grade
The high caliber of graduate, that Ballarat has made

So lets all thank our lecturers for patience with no end
Thanks to all the library staff, did we drive you round the bend?
Thank you to the admin team, for the work that you have done
And thanks to all the other folk, who help this Uni run

Thank you to our families for their tireless support
Without all these unsung heroes, it may all be just for naught.
Thanks go to each other for making it so fun
And lastly, as you’ll all agree, thank God we’re finally done

        Bradford Tetlow 2007