After more than 20 years of transitions, Dawn Hay is disappointed to miss out on CQUniversity's next great adventure, as it moves to become a dual sector institution.

Since joining the then University College of Central Queensland (UCCQ) in 1990, she has been part of three institutional name changes and many faculty, school and program restructures.

"I think even if academics retire they could still have plenty to offer their colleagues who are facing fresh challenges," she says.

Dawn Hay looks back on her University career

Dawn's original role with UCCQ involved teaching for the Bachelor of Health Science Nursing (post registration) program, which was the first program in nursing offered by the institution. She was later to become the Program Coordinator, taking over from Margo Lock, an outstanding academic and teacher in Nursing.

Dawn progressed to take on a leadership role in the offering of the Bachelor of Health Science Nursing (post registration) in Sydney to Korean nurses, and then in Singapore and Fiji. Distance education and an international curriculum also enabled take up by nurses in Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Pacific island nations.

Changing roles to become a lecturer in undergraduate nursing, Dawn took many students out on 'clinical rotations' around Rockhampton and Bundaberg.

During this period, she developed a successful international exchange program with Swedish universities including Sunsdvall. Little did she know she would be invited by the Swedish Nursing Association to be part of its Exchange Teacher program.  Dawn travelled all over Sweden, studied a Primary Health Care course and gave a tour of lectures in the north of the country.

It was not long before Dawn was involved in writing submissions for undergraduate nursing to be delivered from the new Bundaberg and Mackay campuses.

She not only had a passion for teaching; she also taught into the Midwifery program and was part of a working team to develop and implement the Master of Clinical Nursing. Later, this program was offered in partnership with Prince Charles Hospital and has only just now been phased out.

Dawn was an active member of the Academic Board, the Faculty Assembly, the Faculty of Health Science committee and later the Academic Advisory committee.

The active academic has been involved in Aged Care consultancies, Manual Handling consultations and Evidence Based Practice. She helped Dr Evelyn Hovenga form a team to conduct an international and national Evidence Based Conference and later was the Australian College of Midwifery convenor of the ACM Conference, at which a young Julia Gillard was guest speaker.

Dawn took a lead role in ensuring many international visitors came to the School of Nursing and would often take them to local sites of interest and Rotary functions. She helped arrange for CQUniversity researcher Associate Professor Nanjappa Ashwath to travel as a Rotarian Peace Scholar to India, where he was able to spread the word about Australian native plants. Dawn also ensured that Rotarian scholars came to visit Rockhampton, with some staying on to do their studies in Business and Health Sciences.

In 2007, Dawn and her colleague Dr Pam Savage were given a challenge to come up with a new concept for a Postgraduate Midwifery program, which gained accreditation status for five years.

During this period, due to the Midwifery profession seeking to be again be recognised as a profession in its own right, Dawn set about to change the culture of how people think about nursing and midwifery.

"This was to be a challenging journey, culminating in the naming of the Nursing and Midwifery School," she says.

"Along the way I was heavily involved in developing documents to gain accreditation for programs and to ensure we could offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses."

Over decades passionate professionalism, Dawn has provided care in all facets of nursing, including in rural areas of Australia and overseas. She was often called on to take the role of lead clinician or to take the place of the second medical doctor, as there was no one else.

"I've been able to learn about the value of people at all levels of the care team and have been called upon to educate beginning nurses right through to expert clinicians," she said.

Even though retirement as an academic beckons, this stalwart's broader legacy will continue to echo through the years, especially as she has also taken on leadership roles in community service organisations beyond the health field, including the Nurturing Migrant project and the CQ Multicultural Association.

Dawn has been a lifelong and passionate advocate for nurses and midwives and the leadership of these professions. She has also encouraged community-level support for empowerment of birthing women.

"Confident mothers birth well, parent well and contribute to community and society well," Dawn said.

"Giving a mother the belief that she's a competent mother, that she can birth her baby, gives her the overwhelming feeling of ‘I've done it' that completes the cycle.

"My rural heritage and the strong sense of community, knowing we can't live without each other, was a natural entry into midwifery."

Early in her career, she spent 15 years working as a nurse and a midwife in Nauru in the Central Pacific region, where she guided the health workforce to gain their overseas nursing and midwifery credentials. She said the Pacific mothers taught her a lot about community and life rhythms.

"I tell my students that midwifery means ‘with women' and they have a sense of responsibility to the next generation; they sense their professional support to the mothers, babies and fathers, supporting a community of care," Dawn said.

"If I could change things tomorrow, I'd have birthing suites adjacent to hospitals, not part of hospitals.

"Working in the Pacific, I also learned about cultural sensitivity and understanding and learned that language should not be a barrier to communication. I learned to watch facial expressions, to speak directly and slowly and to get people to repeat things to ensure I had the message right; much laughter and goodwill went into communicating and learning from each other," Dawn said.