Legacy Life Members

Nick Booth, Legacy Life Member

Years of life: 1945–2021
Life membership awarded: 12 November 2009

Photo of Honorary Life Member, Nick Booth Nick Booth was born in 1945 in the UK, and emigrated to Australia in 1962 when his father was appointed as the first Director on the Papua New Guinea Blood Transfusion Service. After some years as a partner in a printing company in Brisbane, he became involved in higher education by being appointed Information & Publications Officer at the University of New England in 1973. After some far from successful efforts at gaining publicity for UNE, both he and UNE were quite relieved when he left in 1977 to take up a position at the NSW Higher Education Board, which was the State body that attempted to coordinate universities and CAEs. Although the job title was ‘Editor of Publications’, he showed other talents and became the person who drafted most of the Board’s advice to the NSW Minister of Education.

In 1985, Nick was appointed Assistant Secretary of the NSW Conservatorium of Music, responsible for the entire administration of the Conservatorium in Sydney and Newcastle. This included introducing a computer-based student records system, needed so that the Conservatorium could meet the requirement of an electronic student data submission in 1987. In 1987, he was appointed as Assistant Secretary (Student Administration) at Kuring-gai CAE. This was an interesting and demanding position, especially in 1989 when HECS was introduced. It was not easy when the College was actually enrolling students and at the same time was receiving instructions from Canberra about how to implement the scheme. This came to an end in 1990, when Kuring-gai CAE merged with the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). UTS already had a very competent Head of Student Administration, and there was a period of limbo until the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (who had been Principal of Kuring-gai) sought assistance in developing a Faculty funding formula based on the student enrolment data sent to Canberra. From this grew a position playing a substantial part in planning future enrolments and funding.

In 1992, he attended the third AAIR Forum in Auckland, which was something of a revelation: it would be quite possible to write papers for an AAIR Forum, with the first presented at the 1993 Forum in Sydney. In 1998, the then President of AAIR, Dennis Ham, sent out an email seeking nominations for various positions on the AAIR Committee. Nick thought he might be useful as a Committee Member, and sent in a nomination. A few days later, Dennis was on the phone: “Nick, we have one more nomination than we need for ordinary Committee members, but nobody has nominated for Treasurer. I wonder whether…” And so began his eight-year term as Treasurer.

In 1999, AAIR decided that the 2000 Forum should be held in Sydney to mark the Sydney Olympics. The Forum Chair was to be the Vice-President, Peter Manass, who was Director of Planning at UWS Macarthur. Back then, UWS was being run as three independent units, based on its three ancestor CAEs. But then a new Vice-Chancellor was appointed who decided that it was rather wasteful to have three separate Planning Departments, and Peter was shown the door. That left Nick as the only Committee member in Sydney, and he organised the 2000 Forum with very little assistance except from the Admin Assistant in his unit at UTS. The 2000 Forum may not have been the best in terms of the presentations, but the lunches were excellent and the dinner was at the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. Who cares about the papers if the dinner is good?

Around 1996, AAIR launched its first website. It was run by a staff member of Flinders University on her departmental server. For obscure technical reasons, users had to type in the server’s IP address to get to the site. Not very user-friendly. By 2001, she had more pressing work tasks and the website was neglected. Nick volunteered to take on the task of Webmaster and established a new website. During his time as Webmaster, all JIR issues and all available Forum Proceedings were scanned, changed to a standard format, and placed on the website. Nick retired from UTS in 2002, found an innocent to be Treasurer in 2006, and resigned as Webmaster in 2008. He now lives in a retirement village in Sydney.

April 2017

Nick Booth’s peers also wrote a tribute to Nick.