With the recent approvals of three massive LNG projects centred on Gladstone, the new Dean of Management & Marketing Professor Roger March feels his timing is perfect in taking up his position at the Gladstone Campus...

"Gladstone is literally the coal-face of Australia's resources boom and the opportunity to develop educational linkages between the University and the business and manufacturing community in Gladstone and beyond is tremendously exciting," he said.

New Dean of Management and Marketing Professor Roger March

"I'm also looking forward to accepting Vice-Chancellor Scott Bowman's challenge to make CQUni a great university within 10 years and I believe strongly that a clearly defined, communicated and operationalised ‘power of place' must be the chief driver in achieving that ambition.

"My first priority, however, will be to build a strong sense of identity and direction for all us in Management & Marketing and that will begin with me getting to know my fellow staff members.

"Beyond that, I want to build a team that aims for individual and organisational excellence in five areas: teaching, program quality and delivery, learning experience, research ethos and performance management process."

While Professor March is aware of the enormous appeal and demand for the University's engineering, environmental and health science programs, he argues that management and marketing are business disciplines fundamental to the success of any organisation, large or small, and whether it's in manufacturing, products or services.

"It's part of my job to sell the importance and relevance of business courses and programs to the broader community," he says.

Roger comes from UNSW's Australian School of Business where he was associate professor in marketing and director accreditation. He was responsible for auditing and implementing quality assurance practices in the business school in order to secure EQUIS accreditation - achieved in mid-2010 - and setting the foundations to receive AACSB accreditation in the near future.

"Quality assurance is a critical evaluative - potentially transformational - mechanism.  A mistake often made by organisations and individuals alike is to regard processes like accreditation as goals, rather than tools. The recent AUQA audit of CQUniversity is an obvious example, although that body's successor, TEQSA, will be far more demanding in terms of the implementation and measurement of such things as program goals and learning outcomes. The mission-based compacts that all universities must enter into with the Australian Government echo with the words and philosophy of AACSB, the major accrediting body for business schools worldwide."

Professor March had a life before academia. He lived for 12 years in Japan, where he studied Japanese full-time before branching out into cross-cultural training, specialising in negotiation and inter-cultural communication. At the same time, he developed skills in Japanese-to-English business translation that eventually led him to establish his own translation and copywriting company in Tokyo, where his client base included many of Japan's leading financial and business institutions. Professor March was also co-founder and twice-president of the Australian Business Association in Japan, an organisation assisting and supporting Japanese and Australians in business.