The Role of the AAB

The role of the Academic Advisory Board (AAB) is to provide advice to the Board of Group Colleges Australia (GCA), appropriate to the academic activities of the company. This advice includes comment on curriculum design and content, course delivery, course assessment, and evaluation of courses. The AAB will also provide advice on strategic academic alliances useful to further the overall objectives of GCA. It may provide advice on the appointment of senior academic staff within GCA, or on any other academic matter raised by the Board of GCA.

The AAB is not accountable to the Board of GCA for the design and content of the curriculum, course delivery, course assessment and evaluation of courses, all of which are the responsibility of paid staff of GCA.

Professor Gus Guthrie - Chairman

Professor Guthrie holds PhD and DSc degrees from the University of London and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Management.

Professor Guthrie has held senior managements positions in higher education in Australia and in a major professional body in the UK, as well as having an international reputation as a scientist in the field of organic chemistry.

Professor Guthrie played a substantial management and leadership role in the establishment of Griffith University, as Dean of the Science School. In the ten years in which he was the CEO at NSWIT/UTS he successfully managed and led significant change, both in culture and structure.

This included the NSWIT/UTS transformation as well as the larger task of the amalgamation of UTS with Kuring-gai CAE, which is held to be amongst the most successful of such organizational restructurings. Professor Guthrie has travelled extensively in America, Asia and Europe.

In March 1996 he established Gus Guthrie Consulting Pty Ltd working in higher education management, fund-raising and innovation. In December 1996 he accepted an invitation from the NSW Government to chair the new Innovation Council, and more recently from Australian Business Ltd to chair its educational foundation (replacing the Hon. John Button).

Professor Tom Valentine - Board Member

Professor Tom Valentine is the Chairman and Executive Director of the Salisbury Group Professor Valentine is formerly a Professor of Banking and Finance at the University of Western Sydney, a position he has held since 1995. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Commerce from 1995-1998.

Other prior positions include:Professor of Finance, University of Technology, Sydney; Professor of Finance and Director of the Centre for Applied Finance, Ku-ring-gai College of Advanced Education and Professorial Fellow and Director of the Centre for Studies in Money, Banking and Finance, Macquarie University

He has been a member of the Board of the Australian Financial Institutions Commission, Chairman of Audit Committee, Australian Financial Institutions Commission, Member of the Board of the Financial Institutions Commission of NSW and Chairman of the Audit Committee of the Financial Institutions Commission of NSW.

Professor Valentine has consulted to the Law Reform Commission on Bankruptcy and Managed Investments, was a consultant to the Royal Commission into the State Bank of South Australia as well as a Senior Advisor to the Campbell Committee of Inquiry into the Australian banking system that led to the deregulation of the financial sector.