Interview with Penelope Watson Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University Law School
Where did you start working when you finished university? After finishing my BA (Hons) in political science at the University of Tasmania, I obtained an oncamera position as a trainee journalist with my own weekly segment on This Day Tonight (ABC current affairs television). Later, I hosted the midnight to dawn segment at radio station 7HT, doing both jobs concurrently. After that I returned to Sydney to study graduate law at UNSW. I became a full time Level A academic in political science at UNSW for one year, moved to the law school at Macquarie for three years, then back to UNSW in law. What does your job as an academic entail? What made you choose to move into teaching? My teaching role involves preparing and conducting classes with internal and distance students, setting and marking assessments, administration of my units, staff supervision and mentoring, student pastoral care and mentoring, keeping up to date with the literature on pedagogy as well as on law, developing new units and constant updating of existing units and teaching materials, obtaining grants for teaching related projects eg distance education, or working as part of a team in other people’s grant projects eg leadership and assessment, obtaining L&T Fellowship for the development of LAW-PAL (in conjunction with students). An academic is a researcher and a teacher. I publish in academic and professional journals, write books, book chapters and conference papers. I also referee other people’s papers for peer reviewed journals, develop research proposals and apply for grants. I am currently doing my PhD in torts. Service to the university and/or wider community in various ways is important too. For example, whilst I was Associate Dean/ Director (Learning and Teaching), I undertook extensive policy work, leading curriculum renewal in law, introducing
Macquarie University Law Society
the graduate LLB, mentoring staff on the changes, assisting staff to transition to standards based assessment and graduate capabilities, holding a 2 day retreat for staff on learning and teaching issues, working with national groups on standards for law schools, chairing law school and faculty committees, sitting on many other school/faculty /university committees ( 13 in total), convening the Torts & Contracts interest group for Australasian Law Teachers’ Association and chairing sessions at national conferences, being on the editorial committee of academic and/or professional journals eg Legal Education Review. As an ordinary academic I still do some of these things but more limited. What have you found to be the best and worst elements of an academic career? The best part is teaching – I love law and I love teaching. It is extremely rewarding and satisfying. There is a high level of autonomy, freedom to choose much of your work eg what you want to teach (to a large degree), what you want to research and write about, flexibility regarding where and when you work, being able to focus on the law itself at appellate level rather than the practice of law. The worst part is marking. Do you have any advice for students wishing to get involved in academic life in some stage in their career? Be sure to get first class honours. Increase your research and communication skills e.g. through mooting, journal, thesis, working as a research assistant; get to know academics and practitioners who can be your referees and mentors; do a PhD early (overseas is good but not essential) and publish as much as you can in good peer reviewed journals; get some decent practitioner experience, consider working as a judge’s associate; get casual academic work (marking/ teaching) to see whether you like it.”
Clerkship Guide 2014
[ 33 ]