New Head of Campus for CQU Gladstone Dr Pierre Viljoen is looking forward to his role in enhancing existing relationships internally between sections of the Gladstone campus and the broader CQU community, as well externally with the local and regional communities and industries.

According to Dr Viljoen: “the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts”.

From this perspective, he views a campus as a “coherent whole consisting of different parts where the interactions and relationships between parts as well as the resultant outcomes are just as important as the parts on their own”.

He also values input into collective decision-making processes and as such actively promotes participative management at all levels.

The new manager’s experience within the higher education sector in South Africa, as well as his professional background in industrial psychology, has fed his desire to nurture relationships and to seek opportunities to further CQU’s vision in Gladstone.

Dr Viljoen already feels an affinity with his new location, having come from a regional university system in an area of South Africa known for power generation and metal industries.

For the past 3 years, Dr Viljoen has been Campus Director at the Witbank Campus of the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in South Africa, home to some 2500 students. Prior to this he was a Senior Lecturer and Academic Section Head for Economic and Management Sciences at TUT.

Dr Viljoen has a PhD in Industrial Psychology and as registered Industrial Psychologist has undertaken consultation work in the pharmaceutical, health, higher education, steel manufacturing, mining and gambling industries in South Africa. In Australia he is registered as a Psychologist with the Psychologists Board of Queensland and a member of the Australian Psychological Society.

He has come to Gladstone with his wife Renette and his 3 children.