Opportunity knocks

Creating opportunities for students

Macquarie University has had a seminal influence on former undergraduate student, lecturer in Macquarie’s Faculty of Business and Economics, and current PhD student Prashan Karunaratne. Prashan is researching how economics is both taught and learned, with particular focus on first-year economics units and methods of transforming the economics curriculum.

Prashan began teaching while completing his honours degree, and immediately received positive feedback from his students and peers. Realising the transformative potential of being an educator, he decided then that he would pursue it as a career.

“To me teaching is not about imparting knowledge from oneself to a student,” he says. “It’s about equipping the student with the tools for alternative ways of thinking. I want to reach and influence the world by changing students’ mindsets and empowering them to think for themselves.”

Having been a global citizen from an early age — as a child he lived in Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Fiji and Australia — he believes he has been able to connect with people from all academic and cultural backgrounds. His teaching style, he says, has been influenced by peers in the Department of Economics. “I’ve taken elements of best-practice from each of my colleagues and I bring their experiences and expertise to my teaching platform,” Prashan says.

“My primary mentor would be Associate Professor Sean Turnell, who’s known by generations of students to be explicitly and unashamedly enthusiastic!” Sean has shown Prashan that if you exhibit passion for your field, then naturally your students will be excited and motivated to learn.

In 2016, Prashan’s first PhD chapter was published in the Education and Training journal. He recently completed the second chapter and hopes to have the third and final one done by the end of this year. He is also developing a pedagogy philosophy course with the Learning and Teaching team which they hope to launch to a global audience.

As a student who became a lecturer, Prashan is deeply committed to the University and actively seeks ways to give back to its community. An opportunity to honour his students resonated with him, so he made the decision to donate to the Vice-Chancellor’s Fund. The fund supports the University’s priorities, including establishing new scholarships, strengthening vital research and creating new learning programs.

“To give a student the opportunity to sit in these lectures and access education they may otherwise not get is very important to me,” Prashan says. “Whatever connection you have, or have had, with Macquarie University — student, alumni, academic staff or professional staff — it leaves you with the feeling that you’re part of an institution that is actively seeking to impact and influence the world for the better.”