Professor Rod Gerber: a tribute

Professor Rod Gerber, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Workplace Learning, passed way in August 2007 after a short battle with brain cancer. Professor Gerber accepted an invitation to join the Board in 2001 when he was Dean of the Faculty of Health, Education, and Professional Studies at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia. A geographer by training, with an international academic reputation, he was a strong proponent of phenomenography as a methodology, and developed a research interest in workplace learning as a result of his broad perspective on education.

Among his more substantive publications in the workplace learning field are Training for a Smart Workforce (co-edited with Colin Lankshear, another EAB member), Routledge, London, 2000; a report for the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, with Sue Gelade and Ralph Catts, “Securing success: good practice in training people aged 45 and over who are disadvantaged in the labour market” (2003); and Learning at Work: Organisational Readiness and Individual Engagement, co-edited with Geraldine Castleton and Hitendra Pillay (Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2006). He was working on another co-edited book on workplace learning up to the time of his death.

During my period as Editor of JWL, 2001-2007, Rod Gerber was one of those reviewers I could rely on not only for a thoughtful and helpful response,but a quick one, usually within a week and often the next day. So I leaned on him quite a bit over the years when I needed a quick opinion, and sometimes a third opinion, on a submitted paper. With another board member, Michelle Wallace, he helped me select the winner of the 2006 Outstanding Doctoral Research Award sponsored by JWL though Emerald Group Publishing. He will be missed from the journal’s board for the scholarship, wisdom and compassion he brought to the reviewing role.

Darryl Dymock