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Issue 54 | July 2009
Listen to Jim Cullen, President of the CSIRO Alumni, on this milestone membership achievement.
Watch the video
[Windows Media Video 6m:27s] »
Also, did you know we have a register of Alumni in Business on the Alumni website where you can view the business activities of our members?
There is also an In Memory page where you can post obituaries or pay tribute to former colleagues on a community blog.
Glen:
Welcome to monday:m@il, I'm Glen Paul and today we meet Jim Cullen, President of the CSIRO Alumni.
Jim was Chief of Entomology from 1997 to the end of 2002. Now an Honorary Research Fellow, Jim has been the President of the CSIRO Alumni since its inception in December 2003. In addition, Jim continues to try to analyse and write up material from his research years, and looks after the Postgraduate Scholarship Program for the OCE Science Team. He's also a Director on the Board of the CRC for National Plant Biosecurity.
I recently caught up with Jim and asked how he came to be involved in establishing the Alumni?
Jim Cullen:
Well, I guess, I came from a Division which had a really long history of Honorary Fellows, which has always been immensely valuable to the Division, and I thought this was, I've always been a strong supporter of that, and I thought, well, you know, if something broader than that, which could involve expertise across the board and across the organisation would really be quite a good idea.
As it happened when I was, I suppose, arranging to retire, Geoff Garrett sort of grabbed me one day and said, 'well, you know, would you be interested in giving a helping hand to establish the Alumni?' And I thought, well, yeah, look that sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Yes, something I could probably cope with, without being maybe too onerous, seeing as though I had other plans as well. So I said, 'yep, that's a good idea; I'll give it a go'.
Glen:
So, why do you think former staff are actually interested in joining the Alumni?
Jim Cullen:
Look, I think one of the main things is that a lot of CSIRO staff have immense loyalty to the organisation. I mean, they think it's a great organisation, they've been there for quite some time, and it's something they'd like somehow to keep in contact with. So, I think that's probably a prime mover for a lot of people. Also, I think people don't want to lose contact with all their mates and their colleagues from previous years. So, I think here's another mechanism whereby they can do that. I think those are probably the prime movers, that sort of contact, knowing what the organisation is up to, and keeping in contact with people.
I think there are a number of other ones as well, like, can we give something back to the organisation? I mean, we've got quite an amount of corporate expertise and knowledge tied up there, which perhaps is getting lost along the way. You know, maybe we could contribute something, we've got expertise perhaps which the organisation might find useful. There's that sort of thing. And I think, you've got sort of a social side and a sort of professional benefits side to it. I think that's what sort of drives people.
Glen:
So, what have been the major achievements of the Alumni?
Jim Cullen:
Well, there's been a number really. I mean, the whole aim of the organisation has been to sort of really get established and get membership, so we've been chasing sort of contacts, with people who have left the organisation, for quite some time. So the fact that we've actually reached 3000 now is itself a bit of a milestone. I think some of the things we've done—I mean, I think establishing an online community where people can keep in contact, interactively via the internet, they can get news and information, talk to each other, search for colleagues and that sort of thing—I mean, that took something like two and a half years of gestation to actually get that through. And I think that's probably one of the major achievements, and through that we're about to give people an email address for life so that, in fact, when they leave they can have an email address via the Alumni, which means they can keep in contact through that. So I think that's quite a solid sort of achievement.
There are various other things that we've done … I suppose, major aims of the Alumni is to try and give a little bit of feedback every now and again to our parent organisation. I think one of the major things there, is to find, that when people were leaving, they weren't always perhaps treated as sensitively, should we say, as perhaps they could be. This would seem a terrible shame, if somebody has been in the organisation for 20 years, they've been proud of what they've done, they've been proud of the organisation, then all of a sudden in three days they're told to go and, you know, basically clear their desk, their email address is cut off and there's absolutely nothing and the whole attitude could be changed just like that. So, I think that's just a fault in the sort of cessation procedure, so that's been tackled in a big way and we're seeing benefits from that now.
So, there are things like that we like to try and do. I think there's a number of events, some of which have been immensely successful. I mean, the launch of the Alumni in Melbourne with over 300 people was really quite something. I think the fact that the Hobart Chapter is now doing an annual lecture series, and the first one this year had 250 people [attend]. The Brodie Hall address, which is a long standing thing in WA, was sort of declining a bit, and now the West Australian Chapter has taken over that so they're now running that. So, there have been things like that which I think we're, you know, we're fairly proud of, and a lot of minor things as well.
Glen:
So, what would you like to see achieved by the Alumni in the coming years?
Jim Cullen:
I think we obviously want to build on where we are now, and one of the main things is probably to make sure we've actually got sort of local regional groups who can actually organise events for their areas. Now, we've got that in WA, we've got that in Hobart, we've got it in the ACT. It's a bit more difficult to do that in Sydney and Melbourne, because of the sort of spread out nature of people there, but that's what we're trying to tackle at the moment. So, it would be good to have those and obviously Adelaide and Brisbane as well, so that local alumni can feel that there is actually something going on, there's a bit of a program which actually means something to them, so we do want to get that done. But I think in the longer term I guess we're looking at having an organisation which has got the strength and the independence to be able to do things on its own; to come out and have a bit more direct input, perhaps, to the organisation itself; to be able to be, probably, a bit more independent; to really have, probably, a higher profile, but that will take time and something we will get there gradually. I think there's a number of things that we can do which could be of benefit, not only to the organisation, but also to society in general. If you look at sort of the area, the bank of expertise and experience that there is amongst the alumni, it would be nice to think we can actually really do something positive with that. I think that's probably one of our main aims, but it's going to take time.
[end of recording]
