“When I came to Worcester in the late 1980s, I had no idea how much it would change my life,” said Mary Mahoney, now a governor at Walsall College and a leading advocate for lifelong learning.
Mary’s journey began in Tasmania, where she studied a degree in home economics education. “I was one of the first to go beyond the diploma and complete a degree,” she recalled. “That made me and my colleagues a little bit exceptional at the time.”
Her time at the University of Worcester was meant to last two semesters. “I contacted Worcester to say, could I come and experience higher education in the UK from a teacher education but also a home economics education perspective,” she said.
“Worcester had a really famous home economics department, and Megan Slade, the Head of Department, was just a real powerhouse. She was the first woman head of department I’d met who had a doctorate. I looked at her and thought, ‘I want to be just like you.’”
Mary quickly became part of the team. “She trusted me to do some work as a guest lecturer, and to go out and supervise students on placement,” said Mary. “It was overwhelming because I was driving around Worcestershire countryside in a terrible car that kept breaking down!”
She added: “It was tough, finding my way in a foreign country, but Worcester wrapped around me like a family. They were so welcoming and so professional.”
That experience shaped her ambitions. She said: “I always wanted a PhD after I met Megan. I’d grown up in central Tasmania, a very long way from the rest of the world, and suddenly I was catapulted into English education.”
Mary added: “Worcester gave me confidence and made me believe I could work in the UK and develop a professional career.”
And she did. After returning to Australia briefly, Mary’s career took her from Bath Spa University to Deakin University, again, back in Australia, where she shifted focus from education to public policy.
“My PhD is in healthy public policy,” she said. “I became a bit of a guru on health impact assessment of government policies because I could see what was happening in the UK and wanted to bring that thinking to Australia.”
When Mary returned to the UK to live permanently in 2006, she brought that expertise into higher education innovation. “At Wolverhampton University in 2014, I set up the inaugural Centre for Lifelong Learning,” she said. “My job was to innovate. I was to take learning to the community, wherever learning was needed. We developed learning centres in communities where participation rates in higher education were low, and built partnerships between community organisations, further education, and key local stakeholders.”
Her work didn’t stop there. Mary became a national voice for lifelong learning. “I’ve been the secretary of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning for about 10 years,” she said. “I went to see the Minister of State for Skills speaking recently and she kept saying that lifelong learning is an imperative for our society, and I thought: ‘yes, we did that,’ it took a long time, but we did it.”
Mary added: “Lifelong learning is about giving people the chance to step on and step off education throughout their lives.”
That mission brought her into partnership with Walsall College, where she now serves as a governor. “Walsall understands it better than anyone,” Mary says. “There’s a real social mobility phenomenon running through the college. Education changes lives. I’ve seen it in my own family. My dad was a bus driver, my mum a housewife. Now there are two PhDs in the family.”
It’s why Mary is passionate about the new University Centre partnership between Walsall College and the University of Worcester. “This is about opening doors,” she says. “For someone in Walsall who thinks university isn’t for them, this partnership says: ‘Yes, it is.’ Worcester is a trusted and friendly environment. The staff will look after you. It has a strong sense of what it’s about and wants students to succeed.”
Her message to anyone considering higher education? “Go for it. Education is the key. It changes lives, families, communities. It changed mine.”