After spending the last four years as a casual lecturer working across both Australasian College of Natural Therapies and Endeavour College of Natural Health, it was time for a change.
As of this week (30 April 2018) I started a new permanent part-time role as Senior Lecturer – Naturopathy, on the Sydney Campus of Endeavour College.
As a casual lecturer the interaction you have with students in the classroom can be amazingly powerful and influential. However the impact you can have on the actual content of subjects, their structure, and how they are assessed, is minimal. To be honest I have been missing this aspect of education for the last 18 months, and this new role as Senior Lecturer comes with national management of two herbal subjects at Endeavour, allowing me to sink my teeth into curriculum development again.
I’m really looking forward to getting a long term plan together for improving these subjects (Herbal Medicine Pharmacology & Pharmacognosy, and Clinical Herbal Medicine), and working with the team of lecturers who deliver them across our all our campuses nationally. And the good thing is that I still get to teach each week, so I can see first hand what needs work, and what works well, and still have a direct impact on students in the classroom.
Additionally Endeavour is very focused on developing a research profile in complementary medicine, and so actively encourages and supports its academics to conduct research, present at conferences, and write for peer reviewed journals. I think this is important for any modern higher educational institution, and extremely valuable in herbal and naturopathic medicine. Over the next few months I’ll be working on a couple of research projects and aiming to publish next year, and perhaps present at a conference or two. So stay tuned for more information on the research and what it might mean to you as a herbal or naturopathic clinician.