Rather than prepare an obituary, we have put together appreciations of Colin – shared, we know, by many who were associated with him in the administration of higher education institutions. Colin imparted qualities by example. An academic recounted to one of us how, on his appointment to a junior position in an Australian university, he had been introduced to its Registrar by the Professor in his department. Said the Registrar: ‘I hope Professor … has not given you the impression that we in the Administration are the deadliest enemies of the academic staff’. ‘On the contrary’, said the Professor, ‘I’ve been telling him that you are the liveliest of enemies!’ The academic went on to say that it was only at the Australian National University (where he later held a Chair in what was then called the School of General Studies) that he first encountered a bond between those who taught and those, the administrators, who were their supporters; and it was Colin Plowman who made partnership the model for the conduct of a successful higher education institution. We came to appreciate the pressures imposed by academic life and to conceive our various functions in terms of making a smooth road for teaching and research.
Our abiding memory of Colin is his encouragement of us to look beyond the confines of our jobs and to appreciate the economic, political and social drivers of higher education policies and practices. He demonstrated that staff would not learn how to manage by osmosis (although many of us were certainly learning by trial and error!) and he did something about it. In the face of opposition from some of his peers, Colin was influential in founding a national association for administrative staff in higher education employment, now called the Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM). Further, he helped to institute, and often led, courses for nominees from Australasian advanced education colleges and universities – an unheard of thing when these places, if they did anything at all to develop understandings of administrative staff about their functions, did so in isolation from others working in the same field and usually by way of unformulated apprenticeships. These courses were sponsored by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (now Universities Australia) and were the basis for the extensive raft of staff development programmes now run by ATEM.
Colin engaged directly with people at all levels and any exercise he ran became a mutual exchange. In the often extended socialising after each day’s work, he could (among other things) tell you, in order, the names of all the Melbourne Cup winners. Not least, Colin had an abiding concern for the welfare of students. A remarkable number of them knew Colin by name, and he knew theirs; and not because they had been in trouble with the university either!
Colin’s welcome was never contrived when one or other of us visited him at the Australian National University. There were many cheery lunches at ‘Chats’ (a locale infused with Colin’s qualities). Above all, there was the continued warmth in our often infrequent associations with him over later years: we were like familiars who encountered each other by chance in the main street of a small country town – and went together to the nearest public bar for liquid refreshment. You counted for him. You recognised how much he counted for you.