Darlene McLennan wins EPHEA Lifetime Member Award

ADCET is proud to announce that our very own Darlene McLennan is now a 2022 EPHEA Lifetime Member! EPHEA Lifetime Member awards recognise significant and long-term contributions to equity in universities and TAFE across Australia and New Zealand. The award also seeks to recognise specific contributions to work within EPHEA over the years.

Darlene McLennan has been a tireless advocate for people with disability in tertiary education sector for almost two decades. She has been the manager of the Australian Disability Clearinghouse for Education and Training (ADCET) and the National Disability Coordination Officer (NDCO) for Tasmania for over 17 years.

She also shies away from the spotlight so was pleasantly surprised and grateful for her nomination. The Lifetime Member Awards were announced at a Gala Dinner as part of the EPHEA Conference in November this year. Normally held every two years it's actually been three long years since EPHEA members have been able to get together in real life. This made the celebration of five new Lifetime Members including Darlene a grand celebration at Canberra's National Portrait Gallery. 

The enthusiastic and warm applause for Darlene as she accepted her award reflects the deep appreciation of Darlene's leadership in the tertiary education sector.

Formal nomination

Below is the formal nomination description provided for Darlene's nomination from the EPHEA Lifetime Members page.

Darlene McLennan has been a strong advocate and leader for people with disability in tertiary education sector for almost two decades. She is currently the manager of the Australian Disability Clearinghouse for Education and Training (ADCET) and the National Disability Coordination Officer (NDCO) for Tasmania.

During her time at ADCET (hosted at University of Tasmania) Darlene has led a dedicated team of experts to establish ADCET as Australia's leading resource on disability in tertiary education. She is passionate about supporting people with disability to find success in their studies and supports disability practitioners nationwide in their practice.

Through her leadership in bringing different stakeholders and people with lived experience together, Darlene has nurtured significant projects in areas such as online professional development modules, practice guidelines, workshops, webinars, podcasts and up-to-date web-based resources.

Recent projects of significance include a range of free eLearning packages for disability practitioners including Disability Awareness, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Supporting Students with Disability in VET for educators and practitioners; NDCO resources for students; guidelines for online learning for students who are Blind/vision-impaired or Deaf/hard of hearing; and Accessible ICT Procurement guidelines.

In addition to this work, Darlene has been a strong advocate for disability practitioners through her ongoing dual role as ADCET Manager and National Disability Coordination Officer, her role as President of ATEND (Australian Tertiary Education Network on Disability) from 2012 to 2015 and ongoing involvement on the ATEND National Committee, and State Convenor for EPHEA in Tasmania.