5 minutes with Susan Bennett, our new Interim Head of School

Susan Bennett has been appointed as our new Interim Head of the School of Computing, Electrical and Applied Technology. She has an extensive background in tertiary education and joined Unitec late last year as Academic Programme Manager for the School while Nick Sheppard was acting Head of School, alongside his role of Executive Director – Schools and Performance.

Susan was most recently in a quality assurance role at NZQA based in Wellington, where she oversaw the Consistency review process.

Prior to that, she was at Wintec in Hamilton for 15 years in a number of different roles, including Principal Academic Staff Member and student advisor in the School of Information Technology.

Before moving to Wellington to take up her NZQA role in 2016, Susan took a gap year to travel and taught English in Asia, mostly in Hanoi, North Viet Nam.

She is a holds a Post-Graduate Certificate in Leadership in Tertiary Education and a Master of Education form Waikato University.

She enjoys patchwork and quilting and other handcrafts in her spare time, finding the creative time very satisfying.

Commenting on her appointment, Susan said, “I’m honoured and delighted to be leading the School at such a pivotal time for the industry.  The courses the School offers are particularly relevant at a time when digital technology is at the forefront of meeting the challenges of COVID-19, and we’re excited at the opportunities that we’ll be able to pass on to our students.

“The School is also well positioned to assist students to take up the new free trades training initiatives from Government in Electrical Engineering, and we’ve already seen a great response to this.”