Celia Hammond says she wants the University of Notre Dame Australia to be “more daring” as she begins her second five-year term as Vice Chancellor.
The mother of three told The Record this week she wanted Notre Dame to be more vocal on issues that matter.
“We have an important role at this time in Australian Church history to be able to stand up and demonstrate all that is good about the Catholic Church,” she said.
“I want Notre Dame to continue to graduate people who … are prepared to go out to the whole of humanity and contribute.”
Professor Hammond was re-appointed as Vice Chancellor for a further five years earlier this month, and says she still has “unfinished business”.
“I still feel that I can give something to the university, and the board obviously still thinks that I’ve got something to offer, so I’m delighted to be continuing on,” she said.
Professor Hammond said the university had grown and expanded significantly since she took over from Dr Peter Tannock in 2008.
“The university has matured in that time period,” she said.
“It has moved beyond the challenges of being a new and unusual one-of-a-kind institution … and it’s probably more secure in itself as an institution.
“Now it’s about starting to create an identity and to try to build up different areas beyond just merely survival.”
With campuses now established in Broome and Sydney, Professor Hammond is leaving the door open for further expansions.
“If there was any extension, Melbourne would be a possibility, but at the moment our focus is on continuing to build our strengths in the areas that we are in,” she said, before adding, “But never say ‘never’.”
Professor Hammond said the university has outlined three major goals that it will focus on in the coming years. “What we’ve set as very broad, very high-level goals are, firstly, authentic Catholicity – to continue to build and work on our Catholicity as an institution,” she said.
“The second broad goal is continuing to build excellence in all academic endeavours, and the third one is … to continue to build our efforts in community engagement.”
The Vice Chancellor said although, in her 15 years at Notre Dame, she has always believed that it has been an authentically Catholic university, the public perception was not always the same.
“If there are people who believe [the university is not authentically Catholic] then obviously there is a gap in how we’re portraying ourselves or how we are being seen by others, and that does concern me,” she said.
But in an increasingly secularised world, developing and maintaining a truly Catholic identity is one of the main challenges for a Catholic university, Professor Hammond said.
“The ability to actually continue to be authentically Catholic and not be held in breach of a law about anti-discrimination … that is always a challenge,” she said.
“We’re not here if we’re not Catholic … and if there are things that potentially compromise our ability to [be Catholic] then we have huge issues.”
But despite the challenges inherent in running a Catholic university, Professor Hammond prefers to focus on the positives.
“As Catholic universities, it’s not about what we can’t do … but what we can do because we’re Catholic,” she said.
“We can talk about love, we can talk about faith, we can talk about hope. We understand the spiritual and religious dimensions of our students.
“I think we all need to focus on what we’re empowered to do by virtue of the fact that we are Catholic.”