What colleges have you attended?
I am a perennial learner. Not because I am restless or obsessive, but because learning itself animates me. It is the process—attention, discovery, application—rather than the outcome, that draws me forward.
I began with pure mathematics at University of Sydney. I was young, immature, and not ready for what I really wanted to do. Mathematics gave me structure and discipline while I grew up. At the same time, I was learning how to live out a newly formed faith, shaped as much by student groups as lecture halls. That season laid important foundations in my life.
The next step was theology at Moore Theological College, which felt less like a decision and more like a calling. This had been a dream that refused to go away. Those years were rich—intellectually demanding, relationally deep, and marked by friendships that have endured. But it didn’t take long to realise that ideas alone weren’t enough, so I did a Diploma of Ministry alongside it. I needed to learn how thought becomes practice.
My time at United Theological College wasn’t about earning another degree. It was a time of discernment—chaplaincy training, parish work, time in low-socioeconomic communities. What I learned there was that not all valuable learning shows up on a transcript.
Later on, I enrolled in psychology at University of New England. Because psychology was oversubscribed, I started with management and marketing units. To my surprise, it was the leadership subjects that grabbed me. Psychology itself left me uneasy—too confident about its objectivity. I didn’t finish the degree, partly because I was working extra hours to support my wife through her studies, and partly because I’d found what I was really interested in.
That clarity led me to a postgraduate degree in Church Leadership and Management at Charles Sturt University. It was here that I discovered a deep and lasting passion for homiletics—the study of preaching—where theology, language, imagination, and lived faith converge. That passion eventually carried me into doctoral work at Sydney College of Divinity (now the Australian University College of Divinity), where years of learning finally cohered into something integrated and whole.
Later still, after many years teaching at university, I returned once more to study. I completed a Master of Professional Education at Deakin University and a Masters degree in Tertiary Education Management at University of Melbourne. I realised that while I had been teaching for years, I had never formally learned how people learn, nor how universities actually function as systems. These degrees taught me how to integrate everything I had already learned in service of others’ growth. That is what I currently do as principal of a university college in Sydney.
The Afterword 
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