UTS Business School

Carl Rhodes: When you think of university buildings, you probably think of things that are a bit more medieval in character. I think what's great about this building is it's innovative, contemporary, it's different. It's like it's a metaphor for who we aspire to be, to be a different kind of business school.

We're very explicit at UTS Business School of having a vision of being a socially committed school focused on economic, social and cultural prosperity. How does business contribute more broadly, and what does that mean in terms of the research that we do? What does it mean in terms of the education that we offer? And I think that's what really sets us apart. What's different with us is we've really brought social impact to the very heart of everything we do in our research is focused on things like indigenous employment, healthy aging, climate and disability work to embed a positive impact on society, not just now, but also through education for future generations, as our graduates leave here and go out into the world of work, the UTS Aging Research Collaborative is a high impact initiatives, which was driven by academics seeing a problem and wanting to address it in terms of looking broadly at the what some people would call the aging crisis in Australia, and looking broadly at what can we do as a society to create a system where people can age well.

Nicole Sutton: When we have an aging population, one of the kind of key challenges that presents is it increases the demand for care and support services much further beyond what can be provided to someone by their family, their friends and their community. That demographic shift means that to fulfill the needs of older people, then you need, you know, those services to be provided through a formal system. And so with that aging population, that's the sort of pressures that that is introducing the UTS Aging Research Collaborative. It's a research group that brings together experts from all across UTS and they come together with their expertise, be it from business like myself, but from design, from law, from architecture, from health, from engineering, we're bringing this multi disciplinary kind of group of experts together to develop evidence based solutions to what we see as kind of the biggest problems in aging and aged care, particularly inAustralia.

Gwenda Darling: I'm Gwenda Darling. I'm 72 in February. I'm very frank and fearless in what I believe, and I'll say what I believe rather passionate. I think as well, I'm very passionate. I believe you can tell the value of a society by the way they treat their elders. We need to work with younger people who will be designing and creating the aged care programs of the future. Being involved in the work at UTS that the Aging Research Collaborative are doing really inspires me and helps me. Institutions like UTS and business schools are creating the future, and that's important, that we get aged care right. That's what I've been fighting for for years. And if we have institutions that listen, we can help shape and mold the future.

Nicole Sutton: We pull together data that might be workforce data, financial data, quality and safety data, demographic data, to develop independent, robust evidence analysis and commentary about the most pressing problems, the challenges that we can see coming, and also the changes that are coming online as the sector develops year on year, when I'm 70 or 80 and may require those services, I would like it that the system is at a state where it's something that provides reassurance that people will be receiving care and support that can help them age as their needs change.

Carl Rhodes: If business doesn't serve society, who does it serve? So what's the role of business in that? How do we kind of figure in this broader role? How does that relate to issues of the aging crisis? So if you look at these big problems that exist in the world, business is at the heart of them, and business has to be part of the solution as well. We see our role as creating a new generation of people who work in business and a new generation of business leaders who can take on these challenges directly and be aware of, and really change the world.