When the outgoing head of campus at Shepparton’s La Trobe University first took a job at Parkville’s University of Melbourne — the campus she’d herself studied at — she envisaged staying for just a couple of years.
That all changed when she transitioned into a faculty role advising students.
“That was the turning point for me,” Ms Capp said.
“I really loved that work, talking to students who were either thinking about enrolling or already enrolled in something but needed to choose their electives or decide what they were doing the next year.”
She said one role led to another and she ended up dedicating almost her entire working life to universities.
After Melbourne University, she spent time at Monash University, also in Melbourne, before taking her current role seven years ago as head of campus at La Trobe in Shepparton.
“It's been fantastic. I have been very fortunate to have a number of opportunities to do different kinds of roles along the way and as a professional staff member, which is different to being an academic, who obviously do the teaching and research,” Ms Capp said.
“I was able to move around into all different parts of the university, HR, student services, faculty management, department management, student advising.
“I ended up having a fabulous career.”
Despite that, it hasn’t been without its challenges, such as a global pandemic, a local flood event and a multimillion-dollar redevelopment and expansion that blew out to almost double the cost due to it and prolonged its completion.
Now that it has been completed, Ms Capp said the university was able to welcome the community into the campus a lot more because it had the facilities to.
“Community groups can now come and meet and have events and engage with us in different ways and that's been really fantastic, so I'm very proud of the campus,” she said.
Having experienced both metropolitan and regional campuses, Ms Capp said the differences between the two were many.
Being smaller, for starters, brings a certain familiarity city universities can’t compete with.
“It’s lovely in the sense that all our staff and students get to know each other really well, and, in terms of a student experience and the way we support our students to succeed, it’s very easy to connect the services and make sure that, this person knows what’s happening with this student,” she said.
Ms Capp’s passion for education extends far beyond her paid role, as evidenced by her involvement in several other local organisations since being in the Goulburn Valley.
She’s been on the Greater Shepparton Secondary College Council, the Lighthouse Project board, Goulburn Regional Partnership, the Goulburn Murray Resilience Taskforce, the Furphy Literary Award advisory board and involved with Greater Shepparton Foundation’s Lift Off scholarships.
As she prepares to retire at the end of this school year, Ms Capp reflects on her 20-plus years of university management.
She said she learned to never make assumptions about how people would respond to ideas and that people might not necessarily remember what people said to them, but how people made them feel.
“I just think that’s such a powerful thing to keep in mind,” she said.
“I think as a manager and a leader, you want to help people be the best they can be.
“I have had such a great time working with amazing people who have helped me be the best I can be, so that’s a pretty good thing to be able to celebrate.”
An official farewell was held for Ms Capp on December 4 at Shepparton Art Museum.
Listen to the full interview with Ms Capp on our podcast at tinyurl.com/3r7nzemp.
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