Designing for change
Swinburne’s Dean of Faculty of Design, Professor Ken Friedman, reflects on the past five years.
Five years ago last month, I had coffee in Amsterdam. Some people travel to the Netherlands for drugs. Others go for the pleasures of the flesh. I went to meet with Professor Ian Young.
At the time, Ian was Vice-Chancellor and President of Swinburne University of Technology. Ian was looking for a Dean to head the Faculty of Design and my name was on his list.
The truth is that I had no ambition to be a dean. I was a research professor at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, where I worked in leadership and strategic design. My research included leadership and organisation theory, but I had not managed an organisation since my entrepreneurial days several decades back. Even so, the issues and challenges of leading a design faculty in a university moving toward a top research profile interested me – and Ian is very persuasive.
For the past five years, I have been a dean at one of the world’s 400 best research universities. I’m proud of what we have achieved. I have enjoyed the challenges of the job working with outstanding colleagues in the faculty and across the university.
This past month, we began a process that will move the Faculty of Design from Prahran to the Hawthorn campus. This requires intense logistical planning and operations management.
When I interviewed for the dean’s post, I stated in plain language that I’m not an administrator. My mission was an emphasis on research, and I hope that I brought new dimensions to the faculty as the kind of dean one might find in a classical Scandinavian research university.
Today, we face a different challenge, and the faculty needs a new kind of dean. We need a leader with different skills, and the ability to juggle complex transition issues while maintaining our momentum in education and research.
The move to Hawthorn means a great deal for both missions. While we share interdisciplinary courses and degree programs with other faculties, there is more commuting than there should be.
Now, students will be on one campus for our degree in Product Design Engineering. There are other good engineering schools in Australia, and other good design schools, but only Swinburne offers an integrated product design engineering program where students graduate as full-fledged engineers with a comprehensive range of industrial design skills – and every graduate has a job within months of completion.
Our award-winning Digital Media Design group will prosper as well, with greater engagement between programming skills in information technology and creative skills in design.
We already have Australia’s only degree program in Design Anthropology – one of two in the world today. Closer engagement with the social sciences and business will make what we do accessible to students in other fields.
Interdisciplinary teaching is at the heart of the Swinburne Design Factory. Students work on industry-focused projects much as Design Factory students do at Finland’s Aalto University and China’s Tongji University on their way to successful - and well-paid – jobs.
Swinburne Design Factory is also a research platform where experts from several disciplines come together to solve problems for business, industry, and public service. It’s easy to collaborate and to cooperate when we run into each other every day at Swinburne’s on-campus coffee shops. And Melbourne’s best Reuben sandwich is across the road from Design’s new home at Hawthorn.
On September 1, I will leave the Dean’s office to focus on my role as University Distinguished Professor. Dr. Scott Thompson-Whiteside will become the Acting Dean.
Over the past five years, it has been my pleasure to work with Scott as our Associate Dean International. He has also served as Acting Deputy Dean, distinguishing himself in the complex planning and resource management issues that converge in modern university leadership. I am confident that Scott is the right person for this job, and I am certain that he will lead Swinburne Design with skill and the sense of purpose that makes a vital difference.
In my first day on the job, I said that I want to build the kind of design faculty where I’d like to work as a professor. My return to life as a research professor gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. My responsibilities will include working with Swinburne Design Factory, Australia’s only university-based Living Lab.
I will continue as Vice Chairman of the Design Research Alliance, an association of design faculties at seven leading research universities: Aalto, TU Delft, Hong Kong Polytechnic, Loughborough, National Chen Kung, Politecnico di Milano, and Swinburne.
There will be other projects coming up as well. In the first week of October, I’ll be in Helsinki for Design Factory Week, together with colleagues from Aalto and Tongji. At the end of October, Shanghai will host Radical Design Week, an international extension of Helsinki’s year as the World Design Capital 2012.
At the Emerging Practices Forum, I’ll present a keynote on design in the global knowledge economy and the role that design education and design research must play. I’ve written an article on this theme, published in the journal Visible Language: Models of Design: Envisioning a future design education.
Most importantly, this is an opportunity to return to a stronger focus on research. I’ve got a book under way on inter-media and the interdisciplinary Fluxus group of artists and designers that I hope to wrap up early next year and new projects are already stacking up.
Since the announcement last week that I’m stepping down as dean, I’ve had nearly 200 messages. My dance card is filling up with journal articles and research collaborations, along with a query on a prestigious fellowship applying strategic design to major international problems.
Then there is a note from a colleague at another university informing me about his debut as a stand-up comedian. He suggests I think about a similar career path for the future. I’ll let that one pass, at least for now.
Professor Ken Friedman is University Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of Design. For the past five years, he has been Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology.
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