Linnea Boileau, Work Integrated Learning Coordinator, Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching

What’s it like working at Flinders? I started working at Flinders off campus, 10 years ago. I have always worked within this College and have had roles across managing a community based medical education program, community engagement and assessment. Flinders has provided me with many opportunities to not only enhance my career but to work with many wonderful people and it’s the collegiality within my team, across Colleges and with my rural and NT colleagues that I really enjoy – working with some many people towards the single purpose of enhancing the student experience.

My role as a ‘business partner’ has given me the opportunity to work with many people across my portfolio, other Colleges and within my College and to share the knowledge and expertise I have developed to deliver our service. The great thing within this College is our connection to Rural and Remote, and I have worked very hard to integrate both the portfolio and College objectives across these teams. I have learned a lot more about how other Colleges do their business and also how other sites have worked (in the matrix structure) and this has enabled our WIL team to work more consistently and efficiently in many areas.

What is your professional background? I started my career in Dental Nursing before moving to Oral Surgery. After moving to Darwin for my husband’s work, I went back to Uni and worked in the Emergency Department in the Rural Darwin Hospital. I met wonderful people and patients while working in the NT and have many fond memories and still have friendships from that time. Returning to Adelaide and having children, I moved to medical education at Adelaide University in the Department of Surgery, before coming to what was the Onkaparinga Clinical Education Program (OCEP) for Flinders. I have been very fortunate to have had some wonderful mentors along my career pathway, many of them while here at Flinders.

If you weren’t working at the University, what else would you be doing? I would study! I genuinely believe in lifelong learning and I would be a professional student! I have a Year 12 student at home who I am trying to encourage to stay motivated to finish his Year 12 (if year 12 isn’t bad enough without a pandemic!) but I want him to know that education is always open at any age and will always lead to an opportunity.

Tell us something about yourself others may not know: I love camping! My family has a couple of shacks on the Coorong with no power, no mobile range, no running water, and the best long drop ever,  and I love taking our campervan away with the rest of my family creating memories … fires, camp oven shared meals, kayaking on the lake, no phones, no xbox, no makeup, and a little bit of whisky … perfect!

What’s one thing you couldn’t live without? Running. I am obsessed! I run with a friend at 4.30am, most mornings, most weeks … unless it’s under 4 degrees! I ran my first marathon with a broken bone in my foot and while I am not that extreme anymore and just stick to half marathons, my injuries have taught me many lessons about training. Probably the hardest part about running, particularly long runs, is the mental game and I think that is one of my strengths…and hills!