The Company Director, Dr Col McCowan OAM PhD was a registered psychologist, teacher and counsellor who has extensive experience working with individuals, systems and countries in all education fields, in governments at strategic and policy levels, and as an international consultant / project manager.
He is a member of five relevant professional associations (including 2 life memberships), a Fellow of the Career Development Association of Australia (CDAA) and an International Fellow of the National Institute of Career Education and Counselling (UK). He is on the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Career Development.
He has authored and co-authored a number of publications including Working the Web: Career planning via the Internet, with the most recent one listed four paragraphs below below. Research interests include generational study, adolescent decision making, fourth generation evaluation, evidence-based practice, quality assurance standards of service delivery and analysing destination and outcome data. As an academic, his areas of specialisation were adolescent psychology and career education and development and counselling.
He has been manager of nationally award winning services ranging in size from 2 staff to in excess of 500 staff. He has also been responsible for Units in: training and development, assessment, resource development, career information, international students, and career counselling, guidance and employment. He has worked as a Principal Policy Officer for a State government, represented Australian career practitioners at three international symposia on Public Policy and has been the convenor of over 25 national and international conferences.
Col presents at conferences – including winning best-practice papers. He won the Hobson’s National Award for Excellence in Career Counselling and in 2007 was awarded the prestigious Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to the career industry in Australia.
He has worked as a consultant for organisations such as UNESCO, UNDP, ADB and AusAID for the governments of Mongolia, Bhutan and Oman, delivered services in Thailand and India and worked extensively in Vietnam for schools and universities and in collaboration with the social enterprise, Song An
Much of his work is documented in the book Introducing Career Education and Development: A guide for personnel working in educational institutions in both developed and developing countries, which is available as a book through this Web site..
His most recent Doctoral esearch has resulted in the production of the suite of four Career Education and Development Scales (CEDS) which are also available through this Web site.
His personal interests revolve around his three children and grand children and being an avid art collector, landscape gardener, author, family historian, and sports fanatic, He was a very successful captain of a premiership winning cricket team for five successive years.