Professor Roy Crawford
Vice Chancellor, Waikato University

Career profile:

• Vice Chancellor, University of Waikato,. January 2005 to date
• Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at Queens University, Belfast. 2001 - 2004
• Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. 1999 - 2001
• Responsible for establishing the Polymer Processing Research Centre at Queens University.
• Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the School of Mechanical and Process Engineering at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1989 – 1999.

Achievements:

Professor Crawford has a BSc, PhD and a DSc from Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published 8 books and over 300 papers. He is a Fellow of a number of professional organisations and in 1998 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers.

Thoughts:
Professor Crawford stated that university is important in terms of questioning, free thinking and challenge. He also said that it is possible to have millions of facts but use them all wisely. He said you can process the facts and analyse them but that is not wisdom. Information doesn’t equal knowledge, knowledge doesn’t equal understanding, understanding doesn’t equal wisdom but wisdom is the clever use of knowledge. In many cases that revolve around the learning process, he feels that failure actually means success as people learn from their mistakes.

By Wylie Smith and Katie Collins.