Mildura Hub Gains Powerful New Credentials at the Confluence of Education, Technology, and Science

The One Basin CRC is pleased to welcome Dr Pauline Rogers as our new Mildura Hub Lead.

Pauline brings the experience of a richly diverse career, which has taken her from the classroom to senior roles in governance, finance, and education management. From her early years as a mathematics and science teacher, she’s risen to influence the learning of thousands of students and professionals – most recently at the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, where she ran a 35-strong team developing and delivering training with hospitals and clinicians across the region.

In mid-2025, Pauline returned to Mildura and has been working as a post-doctoral researcher on the CRC’s Digital Irrigated Agriculture Workforce Future’s project.

“Pauline’s appointment is incredibly exciting, not only because she loves this region and knows so many of our researchers already, but because she has this unique diversity of experience that’s seen her engage with the leaders of many different industries,” says Rebecca Wells, CEO of the Mallee Regional Innovation Centre, a partnership between the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, and SuniTAFE, which hosts One Basin’s Mildura Hub.

“She’ll be able to draw on this rich background of working with researchers, academics, technicians and industry leaders, and her ability to morph between these different audiences and sectors will be a real strength at One Basin – which relies on close relationships across complex partnership structures.”

For Pauline, returning to Mildura also holds the deeply personal resonance of “coming home”.

Since 2002, when her eldest daughter was born here, Pauline has remained close friends with the members of her Mildura mothers’ group. So when she had the chance to return to One Basin’s Hub in mid-2025, she leapt at the “perfect confluence” of her passions in education, technology and stakeholder engagement.

Now those passions have blossomed into a defining role as One Basin’s Mildura Hub Lead.

Global experience

Pauline also has broad international experience, developing assessment programs with the governments of Dubai and India while at the Australian Council for Educational Research, and coordinating teacher placements in China at Federation University; while her training expertise extends to coordinating delivery and assessment of the Australian Institute of Company Directors AICD’s famous graduate program (GAICD), and training teachers to make the difficult leap to online teaching during COVID.

This rich ‘learning curve’ more than qualifies the lifelong educationalist to take the reins of the Mildura Hub at a critical point in One Basin’s evolution, as the hub ramps up its support to a growing number of projects across the Murray-Darling Basin and a rapidly expanding cohort of PhD and post-doc researchers.

It’s not the first time Pauline has been involved with a CRC, having worked for nearly four years in the 1990s as Education Officer with the Southern Hemisphere Meteorology CRC. “At that time, the ozone layer and climate change were not considered important enough for the CRC to get a second round of funding,” she notes. “Although that equation has changed somewhat in the intervening years.”

Putting down roots

Pauline herself is definitely here to stay – she’s already bought a house in Mildura that will become the “family home” for three grown children studying various scientific, legal and creative arts degrees in Melbourne and Adelaide. And she’s deeply invested in the long-term outputs of One Basin’s work across the farming and the freshwater ecosystems that are the heartbeat of the Mallee.

Pauline returned to Mildura last May, to undertake post-doc research through CSU’s Gulbali Institute on One Basin’s Digital Irrigated Agriculture Workforce Futures project. The pioneering project aims to develop hands-on training across the Basin and the education lifecycle to promote digital literacy and technology use among irrigators, agronomists, technicians, and farm workers. Pauline helped set up a lot of the project’s foundations: a literature review, studies of digital literacy frameworks and best-practice education delivery in agricultural settings, and co-design to map digital literacy into a VET irrigated agricultural subject with SuniTAFE and Swan Systems.

“So I was already in Mildura when the Hub Lead position went live,” she says. “I wasn’t looking for a change, but the fact that I was here felt somehow like destiny. Some of my best friends live in Mildura, and I’ve always visited the region at least three or four times a year.”

Pauline says she’s excited by the position’s rich mix of on-the-ground research support, partnership building, event organisation, support for MRIC, and – ultimately – ensuring a lasting legacy for the CRC’s work.

“I see it as a unique opportunity to make an impact,” she says. “Although I enjoy contributing to research, I’m really drawn to problem solving and using my experience across education, project management and community liaison, to look for new opportunities and make sure we can build the best possible legacy for One Basin going forwards.”