Graduating in December the honour is the culmination of over a decade of study for Lucie Newsome which began with her studying business at the University of Sydney and included a year overseas at the University of Copenhagen. 

Although she has now finished her studies Ms Newsome has remained in the university sector as well as remaining very busy in a variety of  roles for the University of New England.

“I’m still in the Uni sector I’m lecturing at UNE in business, but also doing marketing for political science and sociology and also doing research for education.

“My PhD took four and half years but I did a masters and a bachelors before that so I’ve been studying since 2002, it is really good to have it all done,” she said.

“My thesis was on women in the workplace and how we can get better policies to support women, especially once they have children.”

Ms Newsome told The Examiner one of the highlights of her academic career was a year spent at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark

“I studied and lived in Denmark and they’ve got great maternity leave policies and great support for women in the workforce, and when I was over there Australia didn’t really have a maternity leave policy, and when I returned Australia had installed a maternity leave policy so I was interested to see how that came about,” she said.

“I loved it, it was the best year of my life, my partner and I went over together and he is of Danish origin and we just met a lot of wonderful people and I was exposed to a lot of interesting ideas of how you organise society to support people and it was a very stimulating year.”