Dear People, 
No doubt you've been reading (probably with mounting irritation) my correspondence with various people about the job advertised at La Trobe. I'm sorry; this list seems to be included in replies that people reasonably believe are going to just the person named in the "To" box. But since our washing is now on this very public line, I'd better clarify for any more of you who are wondering whether our job is only for Australians: the advice I've had is that my institution is hoping for an Australian, but not ruling out non-Australians (despite what it says on the ad itself!), so if you are interested, by all means apply and see what happens. 

You may also like to know how our work compares with what you are used to. We are not a writing centre in the traditional sense of a place staffed by peer tutors under the supervision of expert academics in English. We are up to 25 people (part-time/full-time/numbers vary) working on 5 campuses of a large university with a good proportion of students who need support in developing their academic language and skills (well, I think all students need that, but in terms of the university's mission for us, it will help you to know what kinds of needs we specifically target). In addition to matriculants and mature-aged students whose first language is English, we have international students; local students with English as an additional language; students from families with little experience of higher education; refugees; and students from rural areas (it may surprise you that this is a particular category, but in Australia, rural can be very rural and can place constraints on educational opportunities). We are mostly (but not exclusively) middle-aged academics with various postgraduate qualifications who have made a career of working with students to develop their academic language and skills, and while we come from various professional/disciplinary backgrounds, we tend to have some expertise in applied linguistics and experience of teaching in cross-cultural contexts. Until now, we have worked a good deal with students one-to-one, as well as teaching worskhops and in some cases subjects for credit, and collaborating with discipline teaching staff to embed skills development into their subject curricula. Currently the emphasis is being shifted from helping individual students directly, more toward supporting subjects so that more students are helped indirectly. At the same time, we've had an organisational shift from reporting to Faculties (i.e. clusters of disciplines grouped together under a Dean) to reporting to a central unit, and that is why the university is recruiting a manager for this unit. We will continue to work with the Faculty or Campus that we have been located with up to now, but we will be administered centrally, managed overall by the person who takes up this post.

I hope that gives you a better idea, in addition of course to the information in the advertisement itself. I also hope that if you want to ask me anything more, you'll succeed in addressing your reply to just me!

Cheers,
Kate