Michael Colless retires as Life Member after more than 25 years of service to BDC

Wednesday, 13 Oct 2021

Mike Colless (founding Senior School librarian) was recently honoured with a BDC Life Membership badge. Current recipients need to have given 25 years of service and retired from office. This badge was awarded to Mike in the week of his retirement, by Scott Rodham. Scott was the school’s Secondary Coordinator, Mathematics teacher, and is currently our Archivist. The impressive number of longstanding staff members is testament to the wonderful community within Bishop Druitt College.

BDC Life membership awarded to Mike Colless by senior archivist, Scott Rodham (a fellow member of this exclusive 'club').

The first Bishop Druitt College Librarian, Mike Colless, was appointed towards the end of 1996. There were still boxes of books on the floor and the original bookshelf along the back wall, in what is now the administration block. Some shelves had partly fallen off the wall with the weight of books during the holidays. Thankfully it didn't happen during the school day! 

Mike had been teaching at Southern Cross University and was the Department of School Education library representative on the project development team of the Coffs Harbour Education Campus. He proposed a layout and financial plan for renovating part of the existing administration block to create a library. The plan was accepted by BDC Principal, Victor Branson and was opened in 1999.

He was equestrian team manager from 2000, production manager for the school performance of Me and My Girl in 2002, Chairperson of the BDC Master Planning Committee in 2005 and production manager for the school presentation of “The King and I” in 2006.

Mike was the guest speaker at the Foundation Day assembly 2009, was part of the implementation team for the new BDC website 2011, contact person for Distance Education students from 2012, guest speaker at ANZAC services in Sydney and at BDC in 2014 speaking about his father in WW1 and again in Coffs Harbour at the Anzac Day service 2015.

Mike has been taking classes in the Library on research skills since 2015, helped create the parent lounge portal on TASS.WEB in 2016 and was advisor to the Literacy Committee and redesigning the Library Spaces Project 2018.

Mike has surely left a valuable contribution to the College and will be presented with the 25-year Service Award and Life membership of the college at the end of Term 3, 2021.