AGSM

On entering UNSW’s Tyree Room on November 14 for the MBT’s 20-year celebration, I was greeted by the strong buzz of a happy throng of past and present students and staff. And then it hit me: they were here because of what I had set in motion in 1989. What a buzz for me!

For those who study organisational change and renewal, it will come as no surprise that the MBT originated with a product champion whose vision was closely aligned with the aspirations of the university and its principal paymaster, the Commonwealth. Following a decade as an observer-participant in changing engineering education at the Imperial College London, I was driven to do what I could in Australia to turn engineers (and non-technical professionals) into the innovators and leaders of their industries. My outlook reinforced UNSW’s historical mission, as well as the inclinations of educational and industrial reformers in the Hawke-Keating cabinet.

The first incarnation of this push to create a more innovation-driven economy was UNSW’s Co-op Program. ‘Co-op’ began in 1987 with the creation of the Business Information Technology program. By 1989, over 90 companies were sponsoring 200 Co-op Scholars across three faculties. Underpinning Co-op’s success was our evident commitment to engage employers in shaping the undergraduate education of their future leaders.

From that position the next logical step was to build on this momentum and rethink how UNSW and industry could collaborate at the postgraduate level to produce more effective managers and innovators. Starting in mid-1989, I was able to call upon Co-op’s most active academic and business partners to join me in creating a Master of Business and Technology.

We were very aware of the risk of creating a management qualification that initially wouldn’t have the cachet of an MBA. But

it was a measure of our desire for the management of innovation and technology (and the environment) to form part of the core competencies of business leaders in the 21st century that we decided to put the ‘T’ into the MBT.

Postgraduate rethinkThe MBT’s foundation backers inside and outside UNSW were equally radical in our willingness to rethink who could undertake a postgraduate degree, how the courses could be tailored and delivered, and the extent to which an organisation’s management development program could be integrated with academic studies.

With this kind of backing, it made my job much easier to pitch the program to others – most notably the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) and the NSW Education and Training Foundation (ETF). By early 1990 we had managed to attract $500,000 to develop a new form of industry-linked education.

For the next two years we worked on the assumption that the MBT would become complementary to and interchangeable with the Australian Graduate School of Management’s own Executive MBA. Then, in the middle of 1992, the AGSM decided it wouldn’t partner with us.

Reach No.25Master of Business & Technology

Two decades of vision and renewal

Dr Gary Werskey looks back on 20 years of the MBT and recalls when there was ‘nothing inevitable’ about its birth and success.

Dr Gary Werskey

Never Stand Still Australian School of Business

Continues on page 5

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Conversation with Professor Mark Wainwright, former Dean and Vice Chancellor and President of UNSW

The Academic Director in conversation with…Professor Mark Wainwright

Why was it important to develop a program like the MBT and what was your involvement in this?

Unfortunately I can’t take any credit for the idea behind the MBT Program. My knowledge of the MBT did not occur until my first VCAC in June 1991 when I became Dean of Engineering. It was a baptism of fire for me as I was challenged by the President of the Academic Board, Derek Anderson, and the Dean of the AGSM, Fred Hilmer, over an advertisement for the MBT Program in the Australian Financial Review. One of my first challenges as the new Dean was to get approval for the program from the Academic Board. Thus began a long and enthusiastic leadership role with the MBT. It was clearly a program long-overdue in delivering an alternative to the MBA for professionals in engineering and technology roles. It is my understanding that Gary Werskey was the person behind the idea for developing the program.What did leading such a unique program mean for you, personally?

There were many challenges as a new Dean but the MBT meant so much to me. I had for many years been a great supporter of the recognition of prior learning

Reach No.25Master of Business & Technologywww.asb.unsw.edu.au/mbt

and the MBT provided a flexible pathway for those with significant industrial experience who may not have had the opportunity to hold prior tertiary education qualifications.What challenges did you and the team face while setting up a program which was quite unique to UNSW?

As I said earlier, the biggest challenge initially was to get approval for the program from the Academic Board. The program took off rapidly with only a few courses having been prepared so the next challenge was to develop more courses in a timely fashion. Getting the academics to get their course manuals in on time was a big challenge. Most were not used to preparing such comprehensive courseware.Integrating technology with business was obviously a distinguishing feature of the program. With technology now becoming commonplace, what is the importance of ‘T’ in a leadership degree?

When the program started there was much more ‘T’ in the program than ‘B’. This was important for several reasons. Firstly, the program was not to be seen to be in competition with the Executive MBA of the AGSM (although the course materials were of the same format and quality as that program). It was a time when, as there still is, a demand for knowledge of areas such as project management, energy management and environmental management, etc. The graduates were mostly from management and technology companies and they wanted more business courses and so the emphasis changed whilst still retaining a strong ‘T’ component.The MBT now has over 2000 alumni. What impact do you think this would have had on business and industry?

There are very many satisfied customers among the alumni. Many have taken on new careers and greater leadership positions as a result of completing the program. I could give numerous examples but it is better for them to relate their experiences rather than single out individuals.Anything else you’d like to add?

I just want to say how privileged I have been to work with the MBT Program Directors and staff as well as the course developers and leaders for the nine years that I was Dean. I struck up great friendships with a number of the graduates and enjoyed meeting them at alumni functions here and overseas. I wish you and the MBT every success in the future and I thank you Mehreen for this opportunity to talk about this unique and outstanding program.

Thank you, Mark!

Professor Mark Wainwright

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20 Year Celebration images

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Sandra and Robert Dwyer

Learning and laughs in the Honeywell bunchWhen Sandra and Robert Dwyer joined four work colleagues for the MBT’s debut, it formed a personal bond which has stayed with them ever since.

business studies in general, IT development and management styles at multinational corporations.

‘For us and a lot of the other early MBT graduates we met at the 20th anniversary cocktail party, it’s very satisfying to see that the MBT got through that maelstrom of change,’ says Sandra. ‘There would have been a lot of degree programs that fell by the wayside – ones that couldn’t capture the overseas or online markets and be modern and up to date.

‘Everyone wants the best course they can get for their money. MBT has done an amazing job in keeping up with that, and in fact being a step ahead all the way. Even 20 years ago it was a step ahead.’

After completing her MBT, Sandra achieved her aim of

For Sandra and Robert Dwyer, the MBT’s 20th anniversary has been a time to look back on when they were part of the first intake of students and consider the resounding impact it has had on their lives.

They were among six foundation students who worked for Honeywell in Sydney (including another married couple, Helen and Warwick Rule). Robert is the only one still working for Honeywell, but the group continues to get together two or three times every year to socialise.

It’s an echo of when, after working long days, they would rush off to UNSW in Kensington two evenings a week and grab a quick meal on the way at a nearby Chinese restaurant.

‘What was it called... the Golden Dragon?’ muses Robert.

‘It was the Golden something,’ says Sandra. ‘Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was like being [first-time] uni students again, even though we’d all been working for at least 10 years and were sitting there in our business suits.’

As a group, they lived and breathed the MBT, she says. ‘Most of us were in the finance and administration area, so we worked closely together anyhow. When we were working on a problem, we could bring in aspects of what we were studying and the whole MBT approach to thinking innovatively.’

Sandra was a facilities project manager at Honeywell at the time. Robert was the voice and data networking manager in the IT department.

They did similar MBT subjects – to be frank, there wasn’t a lot to choose from at first – and spent all their weekends studying, using nothing but hard-copy texts in those pre-online days. They attended graduation on the same day.

There was absolutely no competition between them to achieve the best marks, notes Robert, tongue audibly in cheek.

‘Actually, Robert was very cheesed off when I scored a higher mark than he did in Information Technology, his specialty in life,’ says Sandra.

‘But I don’t hold a grudge,’ he says. ‘Twenty years later I’m almost over it.’

The Dwyers are well aware that they did their MBTs during a highly significant period for the course and changes in postgraduate

securing a more senior position at Honeywell. At around the same time, an MBT lecturer offered her teaching work at UNSW.

‘It started a whole new career path which has carried me forward over the last 17 years,’ she says. She is currently a lecturer and academic manager at Charles Darwin University in partnership with Macquarie Education Group.

When Sandra first became pregnant 14 years ago, Robert, who is now Pacific automation college leader at Honeywell, took over her teaching at UNSW for four years.

The couple have a daughter, 11, and son, 13. ‘They live IT,’ says Robert. ‘They don’t know anything about lining up at the library to photocopy textbooks and all that.’

Michael Abbey Lynda Smith Stephen Buckman and Tara Czinner

MBT Staff over 20 years

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The student-nominated winners of the 2011 AGSM MBT Facilitator Prizes for Excellence are Bette McIntyre (face-to-face class) and Dr Ian Cook (online class).

It’s telling that when you talk to Bette McIntyre about her Facilitator Prize for Excellence, she’d rather talk about her students.

‘The students themselves are the delight of the MBT,’ she says. ‘They are bright, interesting, pragmatic people who have real world experience and are looking for the theory to back that up. They intuitively know a lot, but don’t necessarily know the correct titles and names to put to things. I help them make links to those ‘a-ha’ moments.’

Bette, who teaches online as well as face-to-face, has been facilitating the Fundamentals of People Management course for seven years and the Introduction to Management course since its inception two years ago. She has

Students the driver for prize-winning facilitators

a graduate diploma in change management and an MBA, and also runs her own human resources consulting company, HR Logic.

She says that most of the people taking the Introduction to Management course haven’t studied for a while, so they are quite reticent about coming back to it.

‘They’re thinking ‘Am I up to it? Are other people smarter and more experienced than me?’ So part of my role is to get them to understand that everybody has value they bring to the table, that the collective brains trust is much greater than the individual’s.’

Bette started her career as a corporate trainer and has continued to work in that field.

‘The MBT is not lecturing. It’s self-directed learning,’ she says. ‘My job is to facilitate your learning and tease the best out of you.’

‘I also encourage people to get to know each other, whether they are online or face-to-face – to leverage those relationships and make them work, not just from a study perspective, but what they can professionally achieve by developing new contacts.’

Adelaide-based Dr Ian Cook has been an MBT facilitator for six years, currently for the Enterprise Risk Management, Management of Innovation and Technical Change, and Supply Chain Management courses.

He’s a doctor of philosophy with a background in industrial engineering and management studies, and he has his own management consulting practice, Ian Cook Strategies and Solutions.

He says he tends to be provocative and sometimes controversial, which engages students very quickly. ‘I focus on relating the texts to topical situations and firmly believe I have to get all students to have an opinion, even if I don’t agree with it. I think students learn better this way.’

Ian pays close attention to the students’ profiles and takes an individual approach. ‘I note where they have been and what they have done, and try to purposefully unseat them. I’m probably online with them every day and I try to answer every post. I recently had 128 responses in one week.’

The distance learning factor means he has students all over the world: the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia... ‘It’s stimulating for me too,’ he says.

He is particularly adept at drawing out international students, putting them at ease and helping them overcome their language difficulties if English isn’t their first language.

‘They can be used to lecturers talking at them while they take notes, but what we do is draw on models and examples, and get them to interact and communicate. I’ve had lots of cultural appreciation training, so I’m good at that.

‘I also make sure the international students are integrated with the Aussies and that anyone new to the MBT doesn’t feel on the outer with students who may have been studying together for a couple of years. I put a lot of importance on integration – for example, making sure that study groups aren’t all IT people, all engineers or all public servants.’

Maureen Murphy and Adriana Hincapie

Disappointing as this was, it may have helped the MBT evolve and renew itself as a joint venture of the commerce and engineering faculties. I also note that in the last 12 months the MBT has at last found its way – as originally intended – into the AGSM’s offerings.

On the other hand, there was nothing inevitable about the MBT’s birth and subsequent success. Had I not appointed such a capable course developer as Robyn Stutchbury, it is doubtful we would have got off to such a splendid start. And when Robyn and I left UNSW at the end of 1993, it was fortunate to say the least that Professor Mark Wainwright became the program’s undaunted champion.

Leader and innovatorSince then, the MBT has advanced as much by its wits as its results. Pioneering companies such as Honeywell were among the first to show how much the program could benefit both their employees and their businesses. Meanwhile, successive cohorts of MBT academics, administrators and alumni have managed to renew the course both technologically and intellectually to the point where it is today an outstanding leader and innovator in the field of management education.

So many thanks to everyone for their part in helping to realise a vision set out so many years ago. What a buzz!

Two decades of vision and renewalContinued from page 1

From the start the MBT represented a change in the way learning and teaching was delivered in universities. A much higher emphasis was placed on multi-disciplinary, reflective and facilitated learning. 20 years on, we have maintained and further strengthened these key benefits of breadth, flexibility, relevance and academic rigour. We continue to develop the program to ensure the focus is on enhancing the leadership skills needed in the complex, rapidly changing and uncertain environments we face today.

Our reward has been our extremely satisfied clients. Over the past 2 years our overall student satisfaction ratings have been 98% and 99%.

But of course a program can only be as good as the people who are involved in it and I ‘d like to pay special tribute to a few MBT pioneers:

Margaret Brennan: Margaret joined the MBT in 1991 and worked here for 15 years. Initially, her role was typing and desktop publishing of study guides but I have it on good authority that she was basically doing everything except teaching and writing courses!

Ruth Laxton: Ruth was MBT’s educational designer for 10 years and is the one who moved us into the 21st century by setting us on the path to e-learning. In any given year, 70% of our students study online. Ruth has made invaluable contributions to the design of learning and teaching not just in the MBT but across the higher education sector.

Dr Leslie Russell: Our first brave applicant in 1992. For Les the real advantage of the MBT was its relevance and flexibility to be tailored to where he was working and where he wanted to be.

But by far the most valuable aspect of who we are, is the relationships between the many who make up the MBT family – our wonderful students who now come from a huge diversity of industries, our alumni and the alumni advisory committee who makes sure we keep in touch, our passionate facilitators and coordinators who really are the jewels in the MBT crown, and of course my terrific team – Felicity, Jacqui, Bill, Andrew, Suzanne, Gillian, Jen, Bas, Romey and Claudia who make sure that it all happens.

With such a high level of engagement from so many supporters of the MBT, we look forward to another two decades of excellence and leadership in education for business, technology and sustainability.

Director’s Message

Dr Mehreen FaruqiAcademic Director

MBT Program

Have you joined the AGSM MBT Alumni and Students Group on Linkedin and shared in some of the discussions fellow MBT’ers are having?

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www.asb.unsw.edu.au/mbt

August 2012 Graduates

Master of Business & Technology Program, Level 1 AGSM Building, Australian School of Business, The University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia Telephone +61 2 9385 6660 Facsimile +61 2 9385 6661 Email mbt@unsw.edu.au CRICOS Provider No. 00098G

Photography by Matthew Duchesne © Milk & Honey Photography.

Master of Business & TechnologyLisa TarryAli AfzalMark BaileyPeter BillingtonJulian BirdAlex BurtonMichael CallejaDerek ChanIain ClarkeSteven CleggettKelly ClerkePhillip DuceLorraine EveryDavid FitzpatrickBradley FoenanderCharmayne GenningesArun GhatgeAndrew GooleyBen GraingerMichael HallNassim HijaziSimon HorneLee HorsingtonLeif KingTerence KwokLynley Layng

Michael LayngFrank LentiniTroy LevissianosAri MaidenbergBradley MazzuchelliKalma McLellanJason NgMatthew ParkerRay PetersNeteshwar PrasadPriya RanigaSatis RendlaHoutan SadafiPaul SanchezNathan SchurmannJennifer SturrockFrederick SyerJoel ThirgoodSunny TingXiaoqiang WangMark Zanetich

Graduate Diploma of Business & TechnologyRuari MacDonaldMatthew SchmidtStephen WilsonGeoff Hongel

Graduate Certificate of Business & TechnologyTate CulleyThomas DavisSeth De NeefNiamh FitzgeraldChristopher FreemanVeronica FrostRita HardingJeganathan HarishankerJames HeronJordan KojouharovAldo MatinezEugene MeanyIan Walker

Terence Kwok and FamilyLisa Tarry and Andrew Tracy engagement

Michael and Lynley Layng

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Did you know, as Alumni, you can return to study any of the current MBT courses as a non-award student? You can access course information online via iTunesU and watch videos of the Coordinators speaking about their subject area. Scan the Quick Response Code opposite using your QR app on your smartphone and subscribe to ‘Master of Business & Technology’.

Continuing education with the MBT

Peter Billington and family