Recording available: ACSES Equity Fellowship Webinar with Kelly Linden 

Dear colleagues,

Last week, the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) hosted an Equity Fellowship Webinar featuring 2025 ACSES Equity Fellow Associate Professor Kelly Linden. The Equity Fellowship is part of ACSES's commitment to developing research and leadership capacity in Australian higher education equity.

Over the last 10 years, Kelly has developed and led student success and retention projects at Charles Sturt University which led to an AAUT Program Award for programs that enhance learning. Her research interests are supporting part-time students, kindness, and UDL with a particular focus on supporting equity students. 

In this webinar, Kelly presented her findings from her Fellowship "Is the problem us? Helping part-time students to succeed in a full-time world". The Fellowship highlights the extent to which part-time students, who make up 35% of all domestic Australian university students, are juggling competing responsibilities, such as caring and work commitments. Findings from this Fellowship reveal that part-time students on average have lower success and retention and are more likely to belong to an equity group than full time students.

The webinar provoked many insightful and productive discussions amongst audience members, and the Question and Answers portion welcomed further conversation on the part-time student experience such as Regional University Study Hubs, Equivalent Full-Time Student Load, and encouraging constructive behaviour post-failure. 

Please find the recording of the event below for your reference and for sharing with colleagues who were unable to attend. For more information on Kelly and her Fellowship, visit here. 

The ACSES Equity Fellowship initiative provides funding for researchers and practitioners in higher education to complete a project that will inform an area of Australian higher education practice and policy in relation to domestic students, via a combination of research, translation, best practice implementation, evaluation, and knowledge transfer.

Professor Ian Li SFHEA
Research and Policy Program Director
Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success

ACSES Equity Hub: 2026 Community of Practice #3

ACSES will be hosting its third Community of Practice (CoP) event for 2026, bringing student equity colleagues together to provide an opportunity for practitioners to share their lessons learned and best practices in student equity and program evaluation.

This event, to be held online, will include presentations from Griffith University and Waipapa Taumata Rau/University of Auckland, with Griffith discussing their recent work to understand the cumulative impact of multiple initiatives/programs, and Auckland their growing University Entrance (UE) Success secondary schools partnership focusing on Māori and Pacific University Entrance attainment and how they are measuring the impact.

For further information on each presentation, visit here.

📅 Tuesday, 28 July 2026
⏰ 11:00am–12:30pm AWST | 1:00pm–2:30pm AEST
📍 Online via Zoom

ACSES in the News

• "Programs Pave Strong Path to University Success: Report", The Mirage

• "Enabling programs a strong path to university success: report", The National Tribune