Williamstown’s Terry Heazlewood, well known as a Lions International district governor, has received a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday honours for service to higher education mainly for accounting.
“I liked learning at university so much, I thought I’d like to stay there,” he said.
He has worked with numerous tertiary institutions including Monash University, Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education, University of Wollongong, Mitchell College of Advanced Education and Massey University in New Zealand.
When Riverina amalgamated with Mitchell, it became Charles Sturt University, Mr Heazlewood became the foundation professor of accounting.
“We set up our accounting programs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia,” he said.
“However, you might have heard of the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s and at that point in time, prime minister Dr Mahathir in Malaysia said no more scholarships, no more students go to Australia – you’ve got to study in Malaysia. Because of the financial situation, they couldn’t afford to give scholarships.
“So, we kept the programs over there and trained them up to teach the students anyway.”
Mr Heazlewood also taught in Cambodia. China and London.
“In London, we taught our business programs and an MBA … they were going very well until the British Government decided that international students shouldn’t be going into England and getting an Australian degree, they should be getting an English one. We had that small problem.”
