James Harris will be reappointed as the University of New England chancellor for another five years from November.
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Dr Harris and the university council want UNE to be "a thriving, productive, innovative place to work, live, and study," he said.
The grazier, manager of the Abington pastoral station, has been involved with UNE for a quarter-century, serving as chancellor from 2014, and deputy chancellor from 2001 to 2007, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate. He was first appointed to the UNE council in 1994, when his name was put up to the Minister of Education.
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Dr Harris had, he said, always been interested in the university. Before joining council, he consulted academics for agricultural business purposes, while his great-grandfather, Thomas Richmond Forster, donated the hill on which Booloominbah Historic House, now the university's administrative headquarters, and the academic buildings stand.
As chancellor, Dr Harris's duties are 15 per cent ceremonial and 85 per cent administrative. At today's commencement ceremony, he welcomes new students and their families; he presides over graduation ceremonies and college dinners; meets visiting politicians; and attends functions in Sydney.
The bulk of his job is chairing the board - making sure material gets to council members, that communication lines between senior management and council are kept open, meeting the vice-chancellor regularly, and council members when necessary. "It's a whole pyramid of lots of little things," Dr Harris said.
His proudest achievement is developing an effective council that is not scared to make decisions, is ambitious for UNE, and works well together. He has, he believes, healed the tensions that arose during his predecessors John Cassidy and Richard Torbay's chancellorships.
"UNE had a fairly choppy period of relations between chancellor and vice-chancellor," Dr Harris said. "We made the front page too often… I wanted to take the heat out of the relationship between council, senior management, and the university committee."
He and vice-chancellor Professor Annabel Duncan (retiring this year) get on well, he said, and work closely together. The vice-chancellor is the university's spokeswoman, he explained; it's her job, most of the time, to inform the world what UNE is doing.
UNE is Australia's first regional university, and one of the country's oldest. It began as an affiliated college of the University of Sydney in 1938, and became independent in 1954.
Dr Harris hopes the university will lead Australia and the world in agriculture, environmental and soil science, nutrition, archaeology and palaeontology, and pure maths.
"If we can build on those strengths, both research- and teaching-wise, we will grow this place by numbers and reputation, and cement our place in the university landscape of Australia."
While G8s - metropolitan universities like Monash or Sydney - have little trouble attracting school-leavers, UNE's regional location makes it difficult at times to get students. Online numbers are thriving, but getting students to live in Armidale can be hard work. "We're not bad at getting them here, but we've got to get a bit better," Dr Harris said.
UNE, though, offers an entirely different education than a major city university, where students appear for lectures and then go home, Dr Harris believes.
"Unlike a lot of universities in Australia, we give the people who live on campus and our online students a sense that they belong to a community," he said. "They're not a number, they're a name."
University life educates them in their discipline, but also teaches them to think, and to take leadership roles.
"They've learnt to live in a community," Dr Harris said; "they know what people are about; and they're far better members of the community once they've left."
UNE is Armidale's biggest employer, pumping money into the city and New England region. It makes Armidale more cosmopolitan, bringing people who have lived all over the world, and who think differently, to a country city they normally wouldn't come to. "They add some spice and variety to the community," Dr Harris said.
The Australian Human Rights Commission's 2017 report stated that UNE reported the highest rates of sexual assault in the country, with four per cent of local respondents claiming to be sexually assaulted on campus in 2015 or 2016 - compared to a national average of 1.6 per cent.
"We haven't ignored it," Dr Harris said. "We've kept our eyes open; we realise there's a problem, and we're treating it seriously."
The university started a program called Respect New Always; is training college heads and students how to handle situations; and encourages people to report incidents.
"It's a matter of being open, and dealing with it, rather than sweeping it under the carpet," Dr Harris said.