An academic row of bitter proportions has broken out inside Sydney University’s Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery between the newly-appointed Dean of Nursing, Professor Jill White, and senior lecturer Marilyn Orrock.
At the centre of the stoush is White’s decision not to renew 60-year-old Orrock’s fixed term contract when it ends next month. Orrock is in no mood to leave her generously paid position and has complained to all and sundry.
She has a group of supporters who are urging her to file a formal complaint with the university, the NSW Nurses’ Association, the Nurses and Midwives Registration Board and the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission claiming she is a victim of, among other things, “ageism”.
Others say that it is a straight forward industrial issue and that Orrock should lodge a complaint with the NSW Industrial Commission.
Before joining Sydney University this year, White had spent 10 distinguished years as the Dean of University of Technology’s Nursing, Midwifery and Health department.
A registered nurse and midwife, White holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing education, a master’s degree in education and a PhD from Adelaide University.
Since arriving at Sydney Uni’s Mallet Street campus, White has made clear that she wants to take the faculty to new levels of quality education following the departure of her predecessor, Professor Jocelyn Lawler.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Orrock and Lawler are close personal friends. Other senior members of the faculty who were recruited by Lawler also remain loyal to the recently departed dean.
This has created management strains for White, the newcomer, who wants the faculty to move on.
The depth of personal animosities is breathtaking with one of the anti-White brigade supposedly telling friends: “We will bring White down.”
Is this the atmosphere in which to train the future frontline Florence Nightingales?
Professor Deb Picone, the Director-General of NSW Health and a former right-wing nurses’ union official, is well known to all the antagonists. Perhaps she could tell them to take a Bex, calm down and get on with the job.
Maybe Pat needs to learn how to do searches on the previous two search engines mentioned. My search for Marilyn Orrock on the Sydney University website and the same engines mentioned by Pat have actually have turned up publications for Ms Orrock.
As someone who is currently undertaking her PhD, therefore research active, (from Sydney Uni website), it would hardly be likely for Ms Orrock to “have set the world onfire in research over her 60 years”. When compared to other senior lecturers who have the same “life skills”, “work experience”, research activity” and “degrees” Ms Orrock seems to be on parr with her fellow collegues.
It would be nice for some to actually get the facts straight before putting their obvious bias to paper.
The two main duties of academics are research and teaching. I don’t know what quality a teacher Marilyn Orrock is, but it doesn’t appear that she has exactly set the world on fire in research over her 60 years. Both Google Scholar & PubMed searches return precisely zero publications for any M Orrock. With Sydney University being one of Australia’s leading research intensive universities, I imagine research inactive staff would be hard pressed to cut the mustard .
I think people are missing the point. The real question here is, does the risk of ageism increase as a person gets older? Now there is a PhD topic for any of the Sydney Uni academics who don’t have one already.
And when they have worked that out maybe they could halt hostilities long enough to worry about what is going on in our hospitals and health care in general, including the shortage of nurses!
Is this so newsworthy? A straight out human resources matter internal to the university. Not only universities but many organisations have to deal with such issues constantly. No-one outside can hope to know the full story and the university management has to make decisions on this as they see fit.
What is the matter Crikey? Are there any broader issues for us in this?