Southern Cross Education Institute
Our Team
Your SCEI-HE experience will be supported by an academic director, course coordinator, field placement officer, student welfare coordinator, and staff and student support officers.
Professor Adela McMurray
Chair – Academic Board
Professor Adela McMurray, PhD, has academic and industrial experience in manufacturing and service industries. She has over 82 publications, won best author and teacher awards and research grants totaling over $2.5 million. She is an active participant on corporate and academic boards of both universities and private higher education(HE) institutions.
Associate Professor Kay Margetts
Member – Academic Board
Chair – Course Advisory Committee
Kay is an established expert in the Early Childhood Education sector, holding a Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Education and numerous publications specialising early years education. Kay holds an honorary membership with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and consults independently for various universities and private higher education providers on both course development activities and board appointments.
Dr Natasha Ziebell
Member – Academic Board
Member – Course Advisory Committee
Dr Natasha Ziebell is a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. She has designed, coordinated and taught programs in initial teacher education and professional learning programs for teachers. Her research focuses on curriculum reform, curricular alignment and authorship, with a particular focus on the intended, enacted and assessed curriculum. Recent projects include the Learning+ mathematics tutoring program, the Australian Education Survey focusing on teaching and learning during COVID-19, exploring complementary classroom and museum experiences in collaboration with the Melbourne Museum, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to support students with diverse needs.
Natasha is the Deputy Lead of the National Ethics and Privacy Sub-committee for the Assessment for Graduate Teachers, and the Chair of the Parliament of Victoria Education Advisory Panel. Natasha began her career as a teacher in early childhood settings and primary schools before joining the University of Melbourne in 2007.
Mr Hector Gaston
Member – Academic Board
Chair – Course Advisory Committee
Hector is an experienced local government executive with a broad history of working within service and regulatory/funding frameworks.
He has been responsible for setting and driving organisational strategy to ensure the successful development of inclusive communities and the delivery of significant community infrastructure.
Hector has further experience in the management of large budgets and the implementation of organisational change, service excellence and cultural change. Hector is currently the Director of Community Services at the Hume City Council.
John Grech
Quality Assurance Manager
John Grech combines many years’ experience in industry and education. John’s qualifications include a Bachelor of Business (Marketing), Bachelor of Education and a Master of Education (by research). He is a long-time member of the Research Society and a past member of both accounting and marketing professional bodies.
With over 25 years’ experience in the public and private education sectors, John has extensive capability and knowledge of the vocational and higher education, as a practitioner and manager. Prior to that, he held a number of positions in advertising and media, government, manufacturing and technical sales. He also has many years’ experience working as a consultant assisting both large and small organisations in areas such as advertising and marketing strategy development, education, market research and e-business.
He has taught and coordinated degree level subjects in areas such as marketing, academic research, market research, information technology and risk management. His teaching experience also includes many years delivering programs across China as well as in Australia.
John has extensive experience in higher education curriculum development having led the course development for degrees in business, accounting, hospitality management and information technology. John also has extensive experience in developing higher education policy, education business systems, quality assurance and compliance processes and education management. He is passionate about providing enhanced learning environments for students using digital technologies in a blended learning context.
John has research interests in open education resources, quality and compliance, the internationalisation of education, work integrated learning and the development of innovative and future focused higher education curriculum and pedagogy.