Lifelong learning drives Dr Rahima Akter's success
For Dr Rahima Akter, graduation has never marked the end of learning. After completing her PhD in Business and Management with CQUniversity Australia in 2025 she has continued to build her expertise, recently completing a Graduate Certificate of Tertiary and Adult Education to strengthen her impact as an educator.
The qualification follows a career spanning research, policy and higher education, and reflects Rahima's belief that learning should continue well beyond any single achievement.
"To me, lifelong learning means never treating a qualification as a finishing line," she said.
"I've moved between roles and countries over the course of my career, and at each stage, learning something new has been what made the next step possible."
Originally from Bangladesh, Rahima spent more than a decade working as an Assistant Director (Research) with the Export Promotion Bureau under the Ministry of Commerce, where she conducted research, engaged with exporters and regularly visited manufacturing workplaces.
Her passion for improving the lives of women workers later became the focus of her doctoral research at CQUniversity. Motivated by personal connections to Bangladesh's ready-made garments industry and the ongoing challenges faced by women in the sector, Rahima explored gender equity in employment and the effectiveness of workplace regulations designed to protect workers.
Her research examined issues including gender-based violence, workplace wellbeing and labour rights, contributing to broader conversations about creating safer and more equitable workplaces for women.
While completing her PhD, Rahima simultaneously was building a career in higher education, first as a Casual Academic with CQUniversity and later as a Lecturer and Unit Coordinator. It was through these teaching experiences that she recognised the value of formally developing her educational practice.
"I had already been teaching in Australian universities for several years, but most of what I knew about teaching I had learned on the job," she said.
"The Graduate Certificate felt like the natural next step: a chance to formalise my teaching practice and become a more deliberate, evidence-based educator."
One of the most valuable lessons from the course was learning to design teaching around student learning outcomes.
"The biggest shift for me was learning to design teaching backwards from learning outcomes rather than forwards from content," Rahima said.
"The course gave me the language and frameworks to do this more rigorously and to explain why it works."
She also developed a deeper appreciation for inclusive and culturally responsive teaching practices, an area she considers particularly important when working with students from diverse backgrounds.
Today, Rahima teaches business, management, human resource management and marketing students and is passionate about helping them develop confidence alongside academic knowledge.
"I want my students to leave my units not just having passed an assessment, but genuinely more confident thinkers, able to analyse a problem critically and connect what they've learned to the real world," she said.
Rahima believes the same commitment to fairness and inclusion that underpins her research also shapes her teaching.
"A lot of my own research has focused on gender equity, labour rights and decent work, and I try to bring that same commitment to fairness into the classroom," she said.
Balancing study with an active teaching workload and family responsibilities was not always easy. However, she credits careful planning, determination and support from CQUniversity, including assistance received through CQU's Carer's Pathway to Completion Scholarship during her PhD journey, for helping her achieve her goals.
Looking ahead, Rahima remains committed to continuous growth, both as a researcher and educator.
"In a field like business and management, the regulatory environment, technology and student needs are all constantly shifting, so an educator who stops learning very quickly stops being effective," she said.
"Staying curious isn't optional in this profession, it's the job."
Dr Rahima Akter graduated at CQUniversity’s Melbourne graduation ceremony on Wednesday, 12 August.
