Professor Rachel
Spronken-Smith

Rachel Spronken-Smith is a professor in higher education and geography and Dean of the Graduate Research School at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. She graduated from Otago with a BSc(Hons) in 1988 and then worked as an agricultural meteorologist, before undertaking a PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia (1989-1994). Upon returning to New Zealand, she lectured in Geography at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, and completed a PGDip in Tertiary Teaching from Otago. She then moved back to Otago in 2004, where she was an academic developer in the Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC). From 2009-2012 she was head of HEDC, before moving into the Graduate Research School, where she leads doctoral education at Otago.

She continues to supervise doctoral students and teaches into a researcher development programme for graduate research candidates, as well as a supervision and teaching programme for academics. Although still interested in urban climatology, Rachel’s main research interests now are in doctoral education and doctoral outcomes, undergraduate research and inquiry, and curriculum change. She has won several university teaching awards and a national tertiary teaching award in 2015. In 2016 she won the TERNZ-HERDSA medal for Sustained Contribution to the Research Environment in NZ and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018.

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