Vocational Service Award – 2008/2009

The Rotary Club of Melbourne established the Vocational Service Award in 1964.  It is presented annually to a person who has achieved a high level of excellence in their vocation and through such vocation has rendered outstanding service to the community.

Professor Glyn Davis has a distinguished career in public administration, in academia, and in government administration.  He became Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of Melbourne on 10 January 2005.

Our future prosperity requires a university system able to compete in the international knowledge market and deliver world competitive workskills.  A feature of university development in Australia has been the disappointing role played by leading institutions.  By and large they have been content to follow traditional solutions and leave innovation to others.  Much of the innovation that has occurred amounts to little more than attempts to develop our newer institutions to fit a mould developed years ago by our traditional universities.

Under Glyn Davis’s leadership the University of Melbourne became the first of the major Australian universities to move outside this mould.  The changes are important and put the university in a position to compete with other systems internationally and to lift the expectations of various professional societies.

His work in this area goes far beyond expectations of a Vice Chancellor.  While the need to move away from traditional patterns seems obvious, before Glyn Davis there were major impediments to this sort of reform in Australia.  First, reform needed to be led by one of our major institutions and they seemed content to protect their resource base and build on their traditional roles.  Second, reform needed leadership able to navigate a daunting and complex transition.  Glyn Davis has led the University of Melbourne to conceptualise a new future and manage the transition required to move from where it was to where it wants to be.

Glyn Davis has written widely on policy and governance.  His most recent publications are a third edition of The Australian Policy Handbook (with Peter Bridgman, 2004), The Future of Australian Governance: Policy Choices (coedited with Michael Keating, 2000) and Are You Being Served? State, Citizens and Governance (coedited with Patrick Weller, 2001).

He was Foundation Chair of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) which is headquartered at the University of Melbourne.  He recently chaired the steering committee for the Australia 2020 summit.  He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Companion in the Order of Australia.

In presenting the Vocational Service Award to Professor Glyn Davis we recognise his considerable contribution to strengthening the competiveness of our higher education system in Australia and the scope these changes offer to add value to the future skills of many talented young Australians.