She has just been named the first female dean of the University of Otago’s School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences — a position that was dropped on her a bit sooner than she was expecting.
‘‘I’m trying to find my feet — trying to find out what I’m supposed to be doing in this job.
‘‘It’s like learning to walk again.’’
Until recently, she was the school’s associate dean (curriculum).
But when former dean of the school Prof Chris Button went on study leave and unexpectedly decided not to return, she put her name in the hat for the job.
‘‘So the process has been quite quick and I haven’t had a chance to figure out what I’m going to do in the role yet.’’
She said the department went through a ‘‘management of change’’ in 2017 which involved a curriculum restructuring and some of the staff were laid off.
‘‘Chris Button did a fantastic job of getting the school moving forward again and our student numbers are back up and our curriculum is flying.
‘‘So I see my job now is to continue to make sure our curriculum is relevant and that we’re attracting the top students,’’ she said.
‘‘I think we’re in a good place.’’
Asked how she felt about being the department’s first female dean, she said she was unperturbed.
‘‘I’ve never been someone who’s been kind of ‘yay, yay, women’, and I’ve never felt like I’ve been discriminated against because I’ve been female.
‘‘But it’s a nice tenure for the female to be taking over after all the males that have gone before.’’
Prof Hargreaves is proudly Scottish, and joined the school in 2002 after completing her PhD in exercise psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor.
She serves as an associate editor of the European Journal of Sport Sciences and on the editorial board of the Applied Journal of Sport Psychology.
In practising what she teaches and researches, she can be found regularly being physically active in Dunedin’s beautiful outdoors.
