Eva Dabasy

About Eva Dabasy

Eva was reluctant to teach at William Angliss when the opportunity first arose in 1972. She had been teaching food science and nutrition at Emily McPherson College and was returning to work after maternity leave. By reputation, to her William Angliss meant boisterous apprentice butchers on trains. At her interview she was asked to describe her experience to date. When she replied that she had developed the Food Science Course at Emily McPherson College (now RMIT University), Ray Way announced that she had the job as Head of the Food Science Department. Her classroom was a very old chemistry laboratory, which was thankfully updated into a multipurpose space to optimise classroom learning with the facility to conduct food science demonstrations and practical work.

Eva loved her work and she especially loved teaching students who were curious. Her nutrition courses, whilst being created to meet the needs of the workplace, were delivered such that students had a grasp of their own food choices, including the impact of these on their personal health. She also linked the teaching of food science to industry practice to ensure that graduates were effective in their future work and encouraged the teachers in her department to ensure their teaching also focused on student needs, a job at which they excelled.

Eva did a great deal of consultancy work whilst at William Angliss. Consultancies included specialised nutrition training for shift workers at Kodak, recommendations for nutritionally sound boardroom lunches for Smorgon Consolidated Industries, and ICI (now Orica), and audit of the nutritional quality of meal delivery at five of Victoria's Prisons. She also completed a nutritional analysis of the marketing practices of fresh food produce, meats, delicatessen items, 'low fat desserts, and fresh salad preparation for Coles-Myer National Head Office Marketing Department to inform healthier options.

Eva found education consultancy on the international stage most rewarding. Project work included acting as adviser on standards, learning materials and assessment where a major output of the program was the development of 104 learning and assessment materials to optimise training delivery in 112 schools throughout Indonesia. She was saddened when that country's tourism industry took such a hit after the Bali bombings. Earlier Eva was also one of a six - member team of consultants representing the Asian Development Bank. The team's objective was to review Indonesia's current vocational education system sections pertinent to tourism and hospitality, and to propose strategies to meet the trained manpower requirements identified. She was also Consultant, Benchmarking for the General Organization of Technical Education and Vocational Training Curriculum Department, Saudi Arabia.

Eva enjoyed curriculum development and developed the course material for the Diploma of Tourism and Hospitality for the Penang project with RMIT University. Out of that work came the offer to develop the Bachelor of Applied Science (Tourism) and the Bachelor of Applied Science (Hospitality) to be implemented jointly by RMIT and William Angliss Institute in 1997. The degrees were nested in the Advanced Diploma of Tourism and the Advanced Diploma in Hospitality, para-professional programs in their own right and delivered by William Angliss Institute. These were extended in academic content to articulate into the third year of the relevant degrees to be delivered by RMIT University.

Eva retired from William Angliss Institute in 2002. Since then Eva has been education consultant for several projects, local and international. Eva's last consultancy with William Angliss Institute was as Project Manager, Degree Development in 2005-6. The outcome was registration of William Angliss Institute as a Private Provider of Higher Education and the development of two new degrees: the Bachelor of Tourism and Hospitality Management and the Bachelor of Culinary Management.

Eva remembers William Angliss Institute for the harmony and support between staff and also between staff and students. She said: The big thing was that people cared about each other – when the chips were down we cared. We helped each other. We collaborated. There was also a sense of community where people shared and exchanged ideas. This meant to give and take ....... and there was more give and less take.