Alumni Profile: Dr Allan Skertchly

Degree: Science 1960 Current Position: Psychologist and emergency management consultant, Darwin In his long career as an academic, university administrator and public servant, Dr Allan Skertchly has worked and studied at academic institutions around Australia and overseas. Nonetheless, he remains a proud Melbourne alumnus and has even managed to stay in touch with classmates from his undergraduate days. Now based in the Northern Territory, Allan has embraced post-retirement life with gusto and has taken on not one, but two new careers - as a psychologist and an emergency management consultant.

I was born in Melbourne in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression, and entered the University in 1948 at the peak of its rapid expansion as World War Two veterans enrolled. With the same staff, and well before the IT age, enrolments were smooth, lectures and ‘pracs’ were first class, and with a strong ‘buddy’ system we coped with crowded labs and large tutorials often running into the hundreds. Our tutors were largely invisible to most of us, so we tutored each other!

In my final year of undergraduate science (1950) I had a wonderful WW2 veteran Eric Snibson, with whom I am still in touch, as my laboratory partner. After a year’s intensive study and lectures we both passed Physics 3, to our very great joy. Our close collaborative endeavors had been rewarded.

I remember my days at Melbourne with great pride for the rigorous scientific mental training I was so fortunate to receive and always wear a Melbourne University tie on important academic occasions, as in the photograph above which was taken recently at Charles Darwin University.

From pure physics I then embraced biophysics and gained my doctorate in that field from Leeds University in 1960, the same year I formally took out my Melbourne BSc! The delay had been caused by my then living in England.

I returned to Australia in 1962, even though by then I had a permanent lectureship at Leeds University, to take up a post of Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales.

Administrative and managerial interests led to my becoming Foundation Director and CEO of a higher education institution which is now called Central Queensland University. From Rockhampton I moved to Western Australia to become Director of Management and Development for the West Australian Government. In Perth I met and married my wife Leola, also a public servant. We have two children: Kristen, an environmental scientist, and Matthew, a wheat farmer. Both our children are married with children of their own.

I joined the newly established Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University) in 1988 as an academic in the field of public administration and management, a position from which I retired in 1994 when I reached the age of 65.

I had always been interested in the social sciences and remember attending some psychology lectures while doing science and maths at Melbourne. I consolidated that interest by graduating in psychology from Charles Darwin University about a decade ago. I had earlier gained degrees in sociology and administration, and am now a registered practising psychologist.

After I left the University my daughter Kristen and I conducted a study of cyclone preparedness in the Darwin region, which led to further consultancy contracts in the field of counter-disaster preparedness, critical infrastructure and hazard mitigation. Together we have written a number of reports and papers and gained several awards from Emergency Management Australia.

For a number of years I was the NT representative on the national Hazard Mitigation Committee of Emergency Management Australia. I have also been involved with the Association of Private Practising Psychologists (NT), the Top End Association for Mental Health, and the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre. I’m currently assembling material for my own and my great-grandfather’s biographies.

I have a strong interest in scientific education and for some years I have been compiling a reading list for scientists and scientific leaders and administrators. Copies are available free by contacting me at allans_adsl@hotkey.net.au.

In all that I have accomplished, the education and training that I obtained from Melbourne University has played an essential part and for that I am profoundly grateful. The possession of a good first degree from a highly acclaimed university is a fine gateway to a successful future.