Dr Ross Coller

Job Title: Manager, Science Communication and Marketing in the Faculty of Science

Company: University of Melbourne

City of Residence: Melbourne

Year of Graduation & Degree: BSc(Hons) 1988, PhD 1995

Additional Study: Postgraduate Diploma in Management, Master of Marketing

Ross talks about Science Communication and Marketing

Promoting science to prospective students” is the best description of my job, and it is is a really interesting and varied task. I supervise a 5-member team who are responsible for our website, a variety of events, schools programs, publications, advertising and raising the profile of our faculty however we can. It's a really entrepreneurial team which bounces around a lot of ideas, and then we have to work out how to balance all our various activities to get them organised on-time and on-budget. It is really motivating to work with a group of bright, creative people who are so eager to help students.

As a manager, much of my time is spent liaising with colleagues inside and outside the University to understand the direction of the Faculty the University, the Government and trends in the wider community. By bringing this information back to my team, we can integrate the trends with understanding why students want to study science so that we can get the right information to them, in the right place at the right time.

I also get to present to many different audiences about the benefits of studying science – to teachers, students, parents and the general community. I've also travelled extensively in North America, to assist students coming to Melbourne for 6 months to “study abroad”. This is an exciting part of the job which has given me greater insight into cultural diversity, even with a country which seems so similar to ours.

When I started my undergraduate studies in science, I never dreamed that I would end up in a marketing job. I knew that I was good at science, but I didn't take into account other elements of my personality, and that the experiences along the way can affect your direction – as they say, a career chooses you!

Every day I use the skills that I learnt in my studies, even though now I don't do any actual new science. It's important to realise that what you study at University is only a starting point - a way of training you to think in a structured way. Chemistry is a great way to broaden your mind as it involves both a quantitative, numerical side as well as a qualitative, descriptive side. For me, it's been a great foundation for just about any direction that I've wanted to go, including previous jobs in finance and administration. The breadth of careers that my peers have pursued continues to amaze me, and proves just how versatile Chemists are.

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