ProfessorMichelle Dickson

As an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education leader, I have contributed to revolutionizing the Indigenous
education portfolio in Sydney School of Public Health (SSPH) and Faculty of Medicine and Health (FMH), establishing initiatives and leading
innovations that draw on my academic and Koori cultural knowledges. Important in this leadership is my capacity building plan that moved SSPH
academics into leadership roles in FMH . I developed a team model to build the next generation of education leadership in SSPH and FMH.

 Through this model, three of the staff I mentored have taken on defined Academic Leader positions.

In 2019 I obtained ~$5million donation to establish a social and emotional wellbeing initiative for Graduate Diploma in Indigenous health Promotion,
and  have stewarded the relationship with the donor, on behalf of SSPH and FMH.

 Until 2023 I taught into 20 units of study each year, (my USS average was 4.55). A shift in my role into Director of the Poche Centre for
Indigenous health at the start of 2023 saw my education portfolio shift some focus towards increasing my research education activities, student
supervision, research mentoring and leadership.

In 2022/23 I led a FMH Indigenous education scoping study ( 0.4FTE of my workload) that reviewed all Indigenous teaching, engagement,
assessment, accreditation requirements and curriculum content for FMH. This substantial, FMH wide review resulted in a strategy report and
discussion paper proposing a 5 to 10 year plan that would enable FMH to integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content more widely across
degrees, ensure Indigenisation and decolonisation of curricula, build capacity of academic and professional staff in Indigenous education, facilitate
authentic connections to community and lived experiences of health and align current and future curricula with accreditation needs. My work
presented a strategic plan, a budget proposal, and an implementation to FMH executive who have since established a process to adopt
recommendations that will embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and practices as core business across the FMH
education portfolio.