Student Support Services (University Development and Administration)

This volume Student Support Services: Exploring impact on student engagement, experience and learning, covers a wide and diverse range of higher education contexts to explore the current state and the future of student support services.

Dr Henk Huijser holds a PhD in Screen and Media Studies, and has been an Academic Developer involved in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education since 2005. Between 2010 and 2012 he was responsible for the institution-wide implementation of Problem Based Learning at Bahrain Polytechnic in the Arabian Gulf, followed by a three-year stint at the Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in Australia’s Northern Territory, where he was Senior Lecturer, Flexible Learning and Innovation. He continues to be an Adjunct Researcher and Postgraduate Supervisor at Batchelor Institute. After two years as an Educational Developer at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China, Henk has been a Senior Lecturer, Curriculum and Learning Design in the Learning and Teaching Unit at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, since 2017. Henk has published extensively in the field of learning and teaching in higher education, including (with Megan Kek) Problem-based Learning into the Future: Imagining an Agile PBL Ecology for Learning (2017, Springer). He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal for Academic Development, the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, and the Journal of Peer Learning. More information at: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9699-4940

Associate Professor Megan Yih Chyn A. Kek holds a PhD in Education focusing on student development and higher education, an MBA majoring in Marketing, a Bachelor of Science in Business Information Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science and Humanities. She started her early career in the Malaysian banking sector, at the back end as an organisational analyst improving business processes, and at the front-line serving clients as a senior bank officer. Before being attracted to the academia, she applied her keen interest in consumer behaviour while working in the banking sector to researching entrepreneurship and innovation of the SME sector in Singapore. Her interests in how consumers behave and what industries lacked motivated her to enter the academia with the vision to build meaningful interconnected educational environments that develop skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values that students would need to fulfil their capabilities, so that they know who they are and possess the agency to reach their potential and contribute to the well-being of themselves and families, communities, nations and ultimately, the planet. She has published papers in influential and high-ranking journals. In 2017, she co-authored a forward-oriented book (with Henk Huijser), Problem-based Learning into the Future: Imagining an Agile PBL Ecology for Learning, arguing for an interconnected educational environment for student development and learning that can be more humane, agile, and responsive to overcoming complacency, contradictions, and dilemmas. She is most proud of her contribution to educating students for a supercomplex world with the Singapore Prime Minister’s Enterprise Award for Innovation in Education. The award recognised her team which she co-led as the most outstanding team whose work created the highest new value to the public service.

Associate Professor Fernando Padró has a double major PhD in the areas of academic administration and curriculum and instruction. After having served as Associate Professor in the Doctoral Program and Interim Director of Educational Leadership at Cambridge College, he is currently an Associate Professor (Pathways) in USQ College (Pathways) and before that Director of Learning and Teaching at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). He is also actively involved in academic governance at USQ, serving as Deputy Chair of Academic Board, Chair of the Student Appeals Committee and Deputy Chair of the Academic Programs Committee while also serving similar leadership roles in governance at Monmouth University and the American Association of University Professors. He was on Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency’s (TEQSA) Registry of Experts (2013-2018), Chair of the American Society for Quality Education Committee (ASQ – 2013 through 2014) and E.L. Grant Medal Selection Panel (2018-2021), and Faculty Fellow with the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA – 2009-2013). He has also been Editor of the e-journal Quality Approaches in Higher Education (ASQ Education Division), a member of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education’s (INQAAHE) Best Practice QA Review Team, member of the International Standards Organization (ISO) ISO/TC 176 Working Group. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The TQM Journal (Emerald) and an occasional reviewer for the Total Quality Management & Business Excellence Journal (Routledge). Orcid #: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8763-912X