Crispin Dass
Crispin Dass is now a Professor at Curtin University, having commenced his academic career at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga where he was one of the first residents at St Martin’s College in 1992.
Crispin came to CSU from Fiji as a 19 year old undergraduate student with a love of science and stayed in Wagga Wagga for seven years graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy. He remembers “when St Martin’s opened in 1992, it was just seven farm kids and me in a cottage with Glenn Maytum looking out for us.”
“I wasn’t only different culturally, I was also ‘the mature guy’, being a 3rd year student when I moved into St Martin’s.”
“People were very friendly and I even got to go to one of the family farms for a 21st birthday, done the true ‘outback’ way. I learnt a lot about the real struggles faced by Aussie farmers, becoming immersed in a community with real farm people who were teaching me the joys of cricket, football, AC/DC and Midnight Oil. I learnt how young people from the Riverina lived their lives. That experience has helped me professionally because it helped me engage with a diverse range of people and to talk to them about things they didn’t expect me to know about. Spending 7 years in Wagga Wagga was one of the best things I could have done, no regrets. That true blue Aussie grit has helped me many a day through thick and thin.”
Crispin remembers Glenn Maytum, the first Chaplain/Tutor at St Martin’s as “being strict when he needed to be but also someone who was available to us whenever we needed him. He would goof around with us sometimes too, just like one of us. He taught me that the inner child in us is there always at the ready to have fun, age was no barrier.”
“I remember once when we went to the snow at Mt Hotham, and I had no idea what to expect – I’d never seen snow before. I packed Snickers and Mars Bars into my pockets and we went for a ski lesson. When I reached for the chocolate bars, my fingers we met with warm goo, as they had all melted and seeped out of the wrappers, and it took me weeks to get the melted mess out of the pockets!”
Crispin went on to complete his Honours in dairy science, and PhD in cancer research at CSU, before moving to Sydney to complete a post-doctoral fellowship in atherosclerosis at the University of Sydney. He got married to his wife who he met at CSU, and after 7 years in Sydney, he moved to the University of Melbourne and continued his research career working at St Vincent’s Hospital on a type of cancer that afflicts children as young as 9 years old. After having spent ten years in Melbourne, he took his young family to Perth for where he is now involved in a range of projects linked to cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular research at Curtin University.
Now a proud father of four, Crispin believes that living in a supportive residential college is “one of the best things an international student can do”.
“If circumstances allow it, I would love to be able to bring my family back to show them where I started my life in Australia; to see the campus and St Martin’s College.”