From Naomi Wolfe, Dean of Learning and Teaching
As I complete my eighth week as Dean of Learning and Teaching, I have been reflecting on what makes the University of Divinity so distinctive – and why our collegiate character matters for our students, colleges and the communities we serve. Across our colleges, I continue to be struck by the extraordinary range of knowledge, traditions, experiences and vocations. Each college brings its own history, culture, relationships and ways of forming people for ministry, service, community engagement and scholarship. This distinctiveness is not something to overcome; it is one of our greatest strengths.
The University of Divinity is one university, but not one college. Students can be deeply formed within a particular college community, while belonging to a wider academic community – encountering different traditions, disciplines, scholars and ways of learning. This is an unusual and valuable educational environment, and one well suited to a changing higher education landscape. The Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) increasingly asks us to understand quality through students’ experiences and outcomes.
From admission and participation through to learning, progression and attainment, the HESF asks providers to show that their systems help students succeed; that learning outcomes are achieved; that learning environments are inclusive and responsive; and that the student experience is continually improved.
The 2026 amendments strengthen expectations around consultation and engagement, safe and inclusive environments, combating racism, diversity and participation in governance, and continuous improvement.
I see this not simply as a regulatory challenge, but as an opportunity. Our collegiate structure places us in a strong position to respond because we already know that students are more than numbers moving through a degree. They bring histories, cultures, responsibilities and hopes; they learn through relationships with teachers, peers, communities and traditions. Our colleges are well placed to know students in this richer sense, and difference is already part of our educational strength.
A genuinely collegiate university does not ask its colleges to become identical.
Instead, it creates the environment for distinctive communities to flourish and contribute their gifts to a shared academic endeavour. Students can belong to a college while benefiting from the depth of a university: encountering perspectives beyond their immediate community, learning alongside people formed in different traditions and cultures, and drawing on expertise from across the University and beyond. In doing so, they learn that difference need not mean division.
A university education should deepen our capacity to listen, help us ask better questions, bring us into conversation with challenging ideas, and prepare us to live and work with people whose experiences differ from our own. Our collegiate system makes this possible. The University adds value through common academic standards, quality assurance, regulatory stewardship, student protection, shared infrastructure and collaboration. The colleges add value through their distinctive traditions, relationships and educational strengths. Each strengthens the other.
The HESF changes remind us that quality is more than compliance: it is about whether our systems and academic practices produce good educational outcomes. Our collegiate structure holds together two essential systems of responsibility – the colleges’ close knowledge of their students and communities, and the University’s capacity to identify patterns, provide assurance, share good practice and support improvement across the institution. A strong college needs a strong university, and a strong university needs strong colleges. Our students need both: they are the reason our collegiate system matters.
When we get this right, our students experience something genuinely unique.
Students are formed within a particular community while participating in a larger intellectual, cultural and educational world. They can be known within a college and supported by the University; grounded in one tradition while encountering the breadth of traditions across our institution; and connected with subjects, expertise and relationships beyond their home college. They can also help shape the community to which they belong. A genuinely student-centred university listens to students and considers their experience as central to improvement. Our collegiate nature gives us a rich foundation for this work: communities where relationships matter, staff who know their disciplines and students, colleges with deep connections to churches and wider society, and a university that brings these insights together.
Our work belongs to wider society.
The knowledge created and shared across the University of Divinity does not remain only in our classrooms. Our graduates serve churches, schools, hospitals, community organisations and wider society. Our researchers contribute to historical, theological, ethical and cultural conversations. Our Colleges sustain relationships across Australia and beyond. Learning and teaching here has a genuinely public dimension.
A great learning experience is not measured only by completing a unit or receiving a qualification. It is also seen in what becomes possible: the questions graduates can ask, the people they can serve, the communities they can strengthen, the assumptions they can reconsider and the contributions they can make. Our collective work matters because our graduates matter.
Our opportunity now and in the days ahead
As I begin another week as Dean of Learning and Teaching, I am more and more convinced that our future strength lies not in reducing our differences, but in helping them work well together. The changing regulatory environment prompts a larger question: what educational experience do we want every University of Divinity student to have? The answer will not look the same in every college – and that is precisely the point. A student-centred university need not be a uniform university. We can share commitments to quality, academic standards, equity, accessibility, participation and achievement while encouraging each college to express them through its own traditions, community and strengths. The University provides a common foundation; the colleges provide distinctive relationships and formation. Together, we create the conditions in which students can flourish. We should be proud of what each college brings – and of what becomes possible because we belong to one University: many communities, distinctive colleges, shared responsibility and a common commitment to learning.
Above all, we share a commitment to an education that equips our students to live and work ethically, thoughtfully, creatively and courageously in the wider world. The relationship between unity and difference is not a tension we need to eliminate. It is one of the great educational gifts of being the University of Divinity.
Naomi Wolfe is the Dean of Learning and Teaching at the University of Divinity. She is trawlwoolway Aboriginal woman of Jewish German and Irish heritage who lives and works on Wurundjeri Country (Melbourne, Australia).
Talitha Fraser
Catholic Theological College
University of Divinity
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