Impact and growth

A message from Executive Dean of Law and Business Professor Andrew O’Neil:

I am now into my fifth month as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law and Business at ACU and my vision is that our contribution will be distinguished by:

• courses and units that provide students with an empowering experience and which equip graduates with career-ready knowledge and resilience underpinned by a strong ethical framework.
• excellence in research that is reflected in, and reinforced by, high-level impact in the academy and among stakeholders in government, industry, and community sectors. Much of this will be grounded in disciplinary knowledge but interdisciplinary in scope.
• sustained engagement with local, national and international stakeholders that embeds Law and Business further into the communities we serve and promotes values-led transformation to improve people’s lives.

To ensure that these ambitions are achievable and sustainable, we are working hard to diversify revenue streams, including through growing fee-paying domestic and international recruitment to complement Commonwealth-supported places in our courses.

The Law School continues to attract significant numbers into our programs, with a recent spike in demand for Migration Law and Criminology. This reflects excellence in teaching delivery and innovation among staff. In late April, our Business School received news that we have been approved on an initial accreditation pathway with AACSB, the leading global accreditation body for business education. AACSB is recognised as the gold standard for business school accreditation, with less than 6 per cent of business schools worldwide having achieved this milestone.

In research, faculty colleagues are undertaking projects that are achieving important impact in the academy and among non-academic stakeholders in industry, government and community sectors. Synthesising the highest standards of academic rigour with research that has applied value outside the academy remains the hallmark of Law and Business at ACU.

As Executive Dean, I am excited about the opportunities for Law and Business to continue making a significant contribution to ACU’s cutting-edge education delivery and innovative research. Working closely with colleagues in the faculty, and across the university more broadly, I am committed to driving ACU’s continued success with a contribution that places a premium on impact and growth.