Professor Abby Cathcart

Biography

Background Professor Abby Cathcart is the Director of Student Success & Teaching Advancement and a Professor of Governance and Higher Education. She has worked at QUT since 2007, initially as an academic in QUT Business School. She completed her PhD at Leicester University (UK) in the field of organisational democracy and employee involvement. Her research on the John Lewis Partnership has received international attention. Professor Cathcart has won multiple awards for her teaching including the inaugural QUT David Gardiner Teacher of the Year Medal (2014) and three national Australian Awards for University Teaching - an Award for Excellence in the priority area of teaching large classes, a national Citation for her work in Assessment and Feedback and a Program Award for the Teaching Advantage Program.

Professor Cathcart is Director of Student Success and Teaching Advancement, a portfolio which includes:

• Learner Experience & Evaluation
• Student Retention and Success
• Language, STEM and Learning Support
• Educational Development and Pathways to Teaching Excellence
• Awards and Recognition
• Career Development and Employability

She has been a TEQSA Expert for the last 10 years, an assessor for AAUT and Advance HE, and an external Academic Board member of AIPC. Prof Cathcart is a Principal Fellow of the HEA and leads the Advance HE Australasian Accredited Leaders Network. She founded the QUT Academy of Learning and Teaching and more than 1500 QUT staff members have successfully been recognised as HEA Fellows. She co-designed the Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives in Learning and Teaching program for staff (in partnership with the QUT Carumba Institute), and developed the innovative specialist award Associate Fellow (Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives) of the HEA, accredited by Advance HE.

Prof Cathcart has worked with universities across the world to promote teaching quality, develop academic governance structures, and build professional recognition schemes. She has led development programs in Taiwan, Hong Kong, USA and Thailand. She co-leads a national project examining the ways that academic and professional staff are using GenAI in Higher Education work.

Key Research interests

• Generative AI and Educational Practice
• Student Evaluation and Feedback
• Early Career Academic Staff and pathways for doctoral candidates seeking an academic career
• Learning technology and social justice
• Professional recognition (including HEA Fellowship)