“So many of my teachers at ACU have been hugely influential. I can say with complete confidence that I am a far different person now than who I was at the beginning of my degree.

Being a smaller university, you have an opportunity to really get to know your teachers. In my experience, all of them are genuinely interested in getting to know their students too. This has been invaluable to my learning.

Coming here I made a conscious effort to get involved in the things I was interested in, rather than the things I thought had some practical value to help me reach some destination. It has allowed my university experience to be much more about discovering my passions and making my career fit me, rather than the other way around ”

Michael Ondaatje is Pro Vice-Chancellor Arts and Academic Culture, and Professor of History, at ACU.

He is an award-winning researcher and teacher and a regular commentator on US politics in the Australian and international media. He has been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and was recently selected by the US Embassy in Australia for the International Visitor Leadership Program, the premier professional exchange program of the US government.

In 2012, the Australian Academy of the Humanities awarded Ondaatje the Max Crawford Medal, ‘Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities’.