Associate Professor Jamie MacKee

Jamie has over twenty years experience in academia, and professional education at University level in Australia and a further ten years in a developing country. His approach to research and teaching is based on innovation, critical thinking, problem analysis providing viable, sustainable and creative solutions and student centred learning. He has been received an award for his doctoral research, achieved international recognition with invitations to referee on journals and participate on editorial advisory boards and established a reputation within the discipline with membership on State Government advisory committee. He has recently taken on a further leadership role as Assistant Dean (International) in teh Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment. In academia in Australia and abroad Jamie has been associated with teaching and curriculum development for Architects, Construction Managers and Quantity Surveyors. In a number of roles he has been involved with leading edge educational programs in Architecture and Construction Management using Problem Based Learning. Architectural consultancy and project supervision experience covers an extensive range of work in Australia and overseas focusing on the design, documentation, refurbishment and site supervision of a range of buildings from individual houses to International resort complexes, shopping centres, market complexes, residential complexes, industrial and commercial buildings. Jamie has worked and studied for a number years in Sri Lanka and Singapore. He has been involved in architectural consultancy in Sri Lanka that makes him familiar with tropical and sub-tropical climatic conditions and appropriate architectural responses. A recent major project in which Jamie was involved was a Tsunami project in Sri Lanka. This was a large hospital building designed, documented and tendered within a very short time frame of two months to meet the demands of post-tsunami rebuilding. The University of Newcastle sponsored Jamie to work in Sri Lanka on this project. Finally in 2009 Jamie was appointed as Head of Discipline for Construction Management. In this period he has managed and obtained new accreditation from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (UK). He has also developed a unique online portal for managing continual accreditations and been proactive in addressing problems with in the program, such as a lack of tutorial staff and managing curriculum changes in response to external examiners comments.

Research Expertise
Jamie MacKee is an Associate Professor in Construction Management and his main areas of research are Architectural Conservation and risk assessment of the Cultural Built Heritage due to climate change impacts, Environmental management systems and construction management education. He has published numerous refereed Journal and Conference papers relating to these areas, especially environmental management systems. His work in Strategic Environmental Assessment has been widely disseminated to stakeholders in the Asian region. He has completed a Research Masters Degree at the National University of Singapore that focused on the community impact evaluation of cultural built heritage in Singapore. He is currently a Chief Investigator on an ECR Project that is investigating the impact of global agencies such as UNESCO on the conservation of Cultural Built Heritage in Asia. Jamie has been involved in Tsunami relief designing and tendering a AUD$1million hospital facility and Community Maternity Clinic in Sri Lanka. He is a reviewer for several international Journals including Building Research and Information and Construction Management and Economics.

Teaching Expertise
He has been a Course Coordinator for 8 courses in the Bachelor of Construction Management (Building) degree programme. Three of these courses were introduced in 2006 as part of the program restructure, and I was therefore responsible for their design, development and continuing management/co-ordination. Jamie has also been responsible for the initiation, design and development of a further three courses intended for a 2011 start as part of the current amendment to our program for accreditation purposes. He has been responsible for a number of sustained and effective innovations that have supported the development of our online delivery harnessing the Internet and Web2.0 technologies (refer to section 1.3 below). As an undergraduate research supervisor Jamie supervised approximately 45 Honours undergraduates, with 15 achieving Hons 1 and 12 Hons 2a. At the time of writing this application Jamie is supervising/co-supervising 12 honours students, four PhD students, one masters student, another masters ready to commence and one Masters completion. He has consistently applied scholarly principles and practices to both the development and delivery of my teaching, basing it upon sound pedagogical research and subjecting it to scrutiny in various forums. This has resulted in a series of peer-reviewed papers in 1 journal, 2 conferences and one book chapter since my last promotion and discussed in the Research section of this promotion application. Convening and Coordination of Courses Jamie is responsible for the co-ordination of three courses across three years, first year, third year and fourth year. These are three disparate courses two of which are delivered to a mixed cohort of Construction Management and Architectural students.

In his role as course co-ordinator he has predominantly been involved in the design and the redesign of individual courses, though all three of the courses that he currently teachs arose out of the restructure of the Bachelor of Construction Management (Building) degree programme, in which he participated. These courses have evolved since their commencement in 2006. Jamie has spent time considering the curricula and appropriate material. For example in ARBE2101 Construction Ecology 2 the original brief was to deal with sustainability issues. The challenge was to find an approach that satisfied two different types of students each with diverse objectives. The final solution was to work to his strengths in evaluation and cultural heritage. The resultant course focuses on decision making for sustainable outcomes in the built environment including the conservation of cultural built heritage. The course deals with evaluation and assessment methodologies with a focus on the application of the Green Building Councils Greenstar Rating system on the advice of members of our Industry Advisory Panel. In his courses there are significant numbers of distance learners. To support and mentor their progress I have pioneered the use of online tutors. This has been successful in my first year course where he has engaged a graduate of our program who works for a construction company in Newcastle. This person was responsible for monitoring and supporting the online groups for their oral presentations and group report. He developed a good relationship with the students. Being a former distance learner and working in industry he quickly gained the respect of our predominately working distance students. He is currently leading/managing, designing and developing a major amendment/redesign of the Bachelor of Construction Management program to align with new accreditation priorities. As part of this process Jamie has directly designed and developed three new courses and lead the amendments to a further ten courses.

Administrative Expertise
In 2008 Jamie was invited to become Student Academic Conduct Officer (SACO) for the School of Architecture and the Built Environment. This appointment continued until he took over as Head of Discipline: Building. During this time he implemented a standardised approach to the processes for reporting and prosecuting academic misconduct throughout the School. To support this he introduced a series of basic proformas that made the process more transparent and streamlined. This resulted in a quicker turn-around in cases. Jamie processed 19 cases of suspected academic misconduct, 17 of which were upheld. He also participated in various events, sharing experiences and offering observations/advice to other SACOs.

In 2009 Jamie was invited to be acting Head of Discipline, Building while the Head of Discipline was on SSP. This became permanent in 2010 due management restructuring in the School. As Head of the largest Discipline in the Faculty Jamie initiated and implemented a number of very significant activities and reforms. The first major activity was to design, develop and implement an online portal for managing the accreditation by professional bodies. This is a site that operates through Blackboard and becomes a repository/database for all the material that was previously put together every three or five years in paper form. This new site has the advantage of allowing external examiners and visiting panels to examine our programme and associated material prior to a visit which then makes the visits quite focused and streamlined. The next major activity that he undertook personally was to plan, organise and lead the disciplines first accreditation from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (UK) (RICS) with and outstanding outcome. The RICS is a major global professional institution with over 200,000 members worldwide. This was done in parallel to the development of the online accreditation portal discussed above. The online portal was a key component of the successful accreditation by the RICS. The management of this accreditation is ongoing as the RICS assess our course annually due to their interests in partnerships with the accredited institution. HJe had to also manage this partnership.

He lead another new accreditation with the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors (AIBS). There is a national shortage of Building Surveyors this accreditation is addressing a national need. As part of this new accreditation he developed and managed a number of significant reforms. These include major amendments to improve the program and three new courses that will make the Construction Management program at Newcastle unique in Australia and align with AIBS requirements. During my first weeks as acting as Head of Discipline Jamie acted quickly to address a need for teaching support due to our increase in numbers. He advertised for expressions of interest in tutoring and with the satisfactory response created an online register of tutorial staff that is managed through Blackboard. All staff accesses this portal when searching for teaching support staff.

While Head of Discipline Jamie strengthened ties with the Industry Advisory Panel (IAP), introduced measures for greater engagement, and initiated a number of reforms that include review of membership and invitation to senior industry personal, two have accepted. Due to his efforts the IAP have had a direct involvement in providing advice on the current amendments to the programme for accreditation as discussed above.

Collaborations
1. Conservation of the Cultural Built Heritage in Asia: In particular the use of Systems theory as the foundation of an Asian approach to conservation. 2. Disaster Management: Focusing on resilience of the built environment in the wake of disasters. Impacts of Disasters on built heritage, developing resilience in built heritage in the wake of a disaster. 3. Construction Management Education: Innotative approaches to assessment, problem-based learning and on-line teaching.