Senior executive placements & inter-institutional visits
Senior executive placements
ATN WEXDEV participants are able to undertake short, intensive placements (usually for periods of one month, full-time - but this can vary) with large, national or multi-national organisations in the corporate sector, multi-functional local government authorities, large community service organisations and State or Commonwealth government departments. These job assignments can involve undertaking short challenging projects agreed with the organisation or shadowing executive role models. It is possible to undertake an extended placement as an Internship, an academically supervised research project that carries credit for formal study.
There are major benefits of this element of the Program for the participants: these include a growing confidence in their ability to contribute to environments beyond the universities and their exposure to effective business management techniques. Participants have found it stimulating and inspirational to gain insights into other management cultures.
In addition, the universities derive benefits from staff increasing their understanding of the generic nature of many of the organisational issues they face. The corporations gain from having a project completed; some have established a continuing relationship with the person who has undertaken the placement and have strengthened their partnerships with the universities.
Institutional Contacts and the National Office can provide further advice to women seeking Placements.
They will assist with preparing appropriate corporate style CVs, identify suitable organisations and finalise proposals for projects.
Participants are asked to complete a placement report.
Examples of projects undertaken as placements include:
- Human resources and strategic planning for NEC.
- A survey of the training needs of indigenous people on remote mining sites for BHP.
- A study of the retention of female engineers for Kemcor.
- An environmental project for Black Swan Nickel project, Kalgoorlie.
- An assessment of Westpac's relationship with the higher education sector.
- A paper on copyright and intellectual property issues relating to higher education for DEETYA.
- Development and piloting of a process for leadership development for Optus.
- Review of corporate communications for Telstra.
- Incorporating diversity into National Education programs at SOCOG.
More possibilities with a wider range of companies and organisations are available. Further information can be provided by National Office.
Inter-Institutional Visits (IIVs)
Core Participants are visiting each other's Universities to meet key personnel and to be briefed on initiatives of interest to them. Some visitors have presented seminars on initiatives occuring in their home universities. The framework of the ATN provides easy access and automatic legitimacy for inter-institutional activities of this kind. It promotes mobility among the core group of participating women within the ATN network to observe best practice models of university work and to seed collaborative efforts.
Inter-institutional Visits can be arranged in any field in which a participant has some interest. They are not just academic or professional but should also have some element of executive development. Such visits will be coordinated by Institutional Contacts and the National Office, who will assist the participant define her objectives and how to achieve them, identify key contacts with valuable and relevant experience, and set up formal meetings with interested parties in the host Universities. Participants may also offer seminars or informal briefing sessions to their host universities on some initiative in which they have been involved.
Institutional Contacts can provide further information on Inter-Institutional Visits. Other opportunities will be featured on the Discussion List.