Senior Fellow Award Professor John Panter

John Panter is an Honorary Life Member of AISHE and of the National Tertiary Education Union (Australia). John was born in South Australia and obtained his BA from the University of Adelaide in 1967. The following year, he moved to New South Wales where he undertook a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at the University of NSW. In 1972, he was appointed Head of the Department of HPS at what was to become the University of Wollongong also in NSW.
John’s interest in teaching and its improvement led to the formation of that university’s first academic development unit in 1979 which he headed on a full-time basis from 1985. During his term of office, the unit was noted for developing Australia’s most comprehensive system of student surveys of teaching and for the introduction of that country’s first compulsory introduction to teaching course for newly appointed members of the academic staff.
In 1998, John took early retirement at the University of Wollongong and moved to Trinity College Dublin where he lived and worked as an academic and staff development consultant until 2004. He also undertook consultancy work in most Irish universities, some institutes of technology and for a few other groups with an educational dimension to their activities.
In 2000, he drafted a constitution for a proposed All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE) which was duly accepted (with some amendments) in that year at a meeting of interested parties in Cork. He served the Society as Vice-President for three years.
Since 2004, John has returned to Ireland every year for short periods to continue consultancy work and to collaborate with his long-term colleague Sylvia Huntley-Moore from TCD in writing conference papers and handbooks.
During this period, John served terms as Branch President of the academic union, a
member of its National Executive and as a member of the university’s
governing body.