There's a new face on campus at the University of Canberra.
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On Monday, former Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson took up the newly-created role of vice-president of university relations and strategy.
Ms Robinson, a former advisor to the prime minister's office under both the Keating and Howard governments, will be tasked with forging new partnerships for the university during a period of significant change.
Vice-chancellor Deep Saini said Ms Robinson's passion and experience made her "one of the most respected experts" in the sector. Her appointment was a "significant coup" for the university as it charges ahead with its bold five-year plan for expansion, he said.
For Ms Robinson, a Canberra girl through and through, the chance to return to an ACT campus was too good to resist.
"Canberra is in my DNA," she said. "My father was born at Duntroon in 1920."
While Ms Robinson said the university had done a lot in its short 28-year history, climbing up the rankings for 'Generation Y' universities, it had so far been something of a "quite achiever".
"I think it's now time to perhaps get a little rowdier about the role the university plays, not just in Canberra but in national and international areas," she said.
According to 2018 government data, the university scored above the national average on both graduate satisfaction and employment rates.
Putting work-ready graduates out into industry was part of the UC brand, Ms Robinson said. The recent build of the university's hospital saw construction students placed on site for weeks at a time, and, on Thursday, faculty of health staff will move into the brand new wards.
The university also has a strong record for accepting students from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds, Ms Robinson said - something matched in its diverse executive, where women have been consistently well represented.
Ms Robinson, who studied environmental law at the Australian National University, said Canberra was a true "university town", well served by all its academic institutions.
"Something I see...from my work with [Universities Australia] which was very federally focussed...there's a really healthy and mature sense of collaboration between the universities here you don't often see.
"There's competition but you don't see a lot of duplication."
While much of her career has been spent wading through difficult and "sensitive" public policy on energy, she said higher education was a particularly complex area to work.
And one key Coalition policy in need of review, she said, was the decision to freeze funding for university student places at 2017 levels. All institutions, including the University of Canberra, have been forced to put every area of their spending under the microscope ever since, she said.
"The institutions that are growing in their enrolments are of course going to be hit hardest," Ms Robinson said.
"Most universities have been able to accommodate with varying degrees of stress the freeze but 2019 is where the rubber's really going to hit the road."
Almost a hundred employees left the university this year during an ongoing "restructure" of its workforce in response to the cuts.
Ms Robinson has also been appointed Chair of the Cooperative Research Centres Association.
