Charles Sturt University (CSU) will confer the title of Emeritus Professor on an outstanding academic leader at the CSU Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences graduation ceremony in Bathurst at 9.30am on Friday 15 December.

The title of Emeritus Professor will be conferred on professorial leader and psychology academic Professor Ben Bradley (pictured). The citation reads:

Until his recent retirement in April this year, Professor Ben Bradley had held the Foundation Chair in Psychology at Charles Sturt University since 1998. Professor Bradley held the position as Head of Psychology at the University from 1998 to 2006. After a period acting as the Dean of Arts, he was appointed Director of the CSU Degree Initiative and elected Presiding Officer of Academic Senate.

During his tenure as Head of the psychology discipline, Professor Bradley led the group through growth and consolidation of its accredited courses with the Australian Psychological Society, as well as introducing innovative theoretical dimensions to the research of human behaviour and social interaction.

In his role as Director of the University’s Degree Initiative, he led the review and development of this important curriculum innovation program, which was strategically aimed to clarify and instantiate, in both course offerings and course design, what it is that our University aspires to produce in a Charles Sturt University graduate.

The statement of the Charles Sturt University graduate outcomes developed under Professor Bradley’s leadership remain pivotal to current thinking, and closely relate to the later move towards Graduate Learning Outcomes, and our continuing principles of course design and student support.

Professor Bradley’s leadership in the institution was confirmed when he was elected Presiding Officer of the Academic Senate in 2010. During his term he worked hard to raise the University’s profile and his influence quickly extended outward to the higher education sector.

Professor Bradley was one of the national working group, nominated by the Committee of Chairs of Academic Boards and Senates in 2013, to advise the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency about criteria for assessing effective academic governance in the new Higher Education Provider Standards. In the same year Professor Bradley’s sponsorship of the first external review of the Academic Senate was pivotal for ensuring stricter compliance and awareness of the governance function within and across the University.

While Professor Bradley’s work is grounded in psychology, his openness to interdisciplinary inquiry has contributed to the University’s research success in recent years through his collaboration with outstanding education scholars in the early childhood area.

Professor Bradley’s ongoing intellectual generosity, collegiality and engagement has been an important element in the success of two successive Australian Research Council Linkage grants focussing on the experiences of babies and toddlers in early childhood education and care.

His disciplinary background in psychology was also crucial in the success of the University’s application to the Australian Government for Collaborative Research Network funding to continue to grow interdisciplinary research capacity in early childhood education and care.

Professor Bradley’s longstanding interest in the foundations of human communication has spanned many publications. He completed his PhD on infancy at the University of Edinburgh in 1980. His book Visions of Infancy published in 1989, shows how infancy has served as a tabula rasa for psychological theorizing, the greatest psychologists using infancy as a screen upon which to project their own basic assumptions about the adult mind while paying only secondary attention to babies’ first-hand experiences.

His most recent book, Psychology and Experience, redresses the tendency for psychology to ignore the experiences of the people they teach and study.

Professor Bradley is very well respected in his field. His students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, have always spoken highly of his teaching and passion for his subject. He has achieved renown among academic staff across Faculties as one of the very few professors who has regularly sought to teach in the large first-year psychology subjects. His concern to introduce new professionals in his area to the intellectual dimensions of their discipline and practice has been exemplary as a demonstration of academic leadership.

As a foundation member of the Professors’ Forum, Professor Bradley modelled and resourced attention to the institutional responsibilities of the professor, and the forms of intellectual and research activity implied in the leadership dimensions of this position.

The University has enormous respect for Professor Bradley’s distinguished contribution to international interdisciplinary research in early childhood and psychology, as well as his leadership and scholarly contribution as Foundation Professor of Psychology at CSU. He has been an outstanding role model as an academic leader and is worthy of the title of Emeritus Professor.