In Safety and in Science: Liz Stock’s Legacy
Elizabeth (Liz) Stock.
6 May 2026
When Elizabeth Stock joined the Parkville campus in February 2001, she happened upon a Faculty still taking shape. Building 404 did not yet exist, (the land was still being used as a free Staff carpark) formal timetabling was in its early stages, and departments defined different areas of teaching and research. Liz started as one of two safety staff who oversaw the Pharmaceuticals department, which later became the Drug Delivery Disposition and Dynamics theme, before stepping up to oversee the entire Faculty in 2007. In a crisis, many knew to find her in Office 221A on Level 2, flanked by a regiment of thriving indoor plants.
“It takes more than good intentions to get the job done,” she says of her work. “You have to be up to date with not just university policy but Australian standards as well.”
Her attention to detail is not lost on her supervisor, Rosemary Manning. "One of the great things about Liz is the fact she's so calm, organised and structured," she says. "She's very good with physical, tangible things. It's her technical training, her background, and the skills she's brought from these places."
Anyone who asked would be equal parts surprised and unsurprised to learn that her career began at an explosives research facility in Maribyrnong, not far from the former Footscray ammunition factory. It seems only natural that she would later become an Army Reserves Captain in preventative medicine; a discipline that breathed risk assessment and harm mitigation long before they became the language of workplace policy. Her role at Monash, by comparison, might seem like a soft place to land.
It proved to be anything but. Technical roles can be thankless, operating in the invisible realms of waste management, OH&S, laboratory design, and ergonomics. Liz has a sharp ability to push back when necessary – when it came to risk assessment reviews in particular, researchers would rarely get through on the first try. Their reports would always come back with corrections, a sure sign that someone had taken the time to properly look them over.
Liz acknowledges the tension this could create. "You have to chase people and it can feel like holding them back," she reflects. "They just want to get on and do their research, and rightly so. But by giving them that attention and information, they can then go on to make their own, better choices moving forward."
Outside of her core duties, Liz served as secretary of the Health, Safety and Wellbeing Committee and took up the mantle of First Aid Coordinator, helping to expand training services to include Mental Health First Aid. Her leadership saw the Faculty through the COVID-19 pandemic with the implementation of work from home policies and modified laboratory capacities. Her tendency to take on more than what was required of her became a defining characteristic.
Few people understood this better than Winfield Jugo, who joined the team in 2002 and has worked alongside Liz ever since. "If there were changes in policies, procedures and protocols, Liz would always encourage me to tag along, attend courses and upskill," says Win. "She's been very supportive and a great mentor, ensuring we always kept progressing every year."
What sets her apart, Win says, is her work ethic. "It's second to none. You would never hear her name on acknowledgements – it would always be a team effort, she would insist. She does a lot of things behind the scenes. She usually rocks up at 6:30am and doesn't go home til 6:30pm." On certain evenings, the day didn't end there either. "Sometimes after work she would get changed into army boots and a big backpack to report to her battalion in Carlton!"
Behind the no-nonsense veneer of being strict and regimented Liz is known to be kind, extremely generous, and terribly funny.
Rosemary agrees. "She has a wicked sense of humour, and it will peek out sometimes."
"Every single day for the last 20 years or so, her lunch was always bread, fruit and soup," says Win. "And every single day between 11:30 and 12, she would ask me if I would mind her having lunch."
The reassurance of her steady presence will be sorely missed. Win speaks fondly of having Britney Spears and Taylor Swift playing in the office, recommending her Korean dramas to watch (her favourite, she told him, was Crash Landing on You), her passionate loathing of Google Docs in favour of the trusty S: Drive, and the way she would always fall victim to the gremlins in her computer who misplaced her emails with every update.
On the other side of working life, Liz looks forward to volunteering and travelling around Australia. Somewhere out there, a rescue Rottweiler, a pot of Benalla honey and a pile of op-shop books wait for her. For those who remain at Parkville, a great deal of what makes this place work will go with her.
No human being is perfect, however, and Liz infamously had her own double standard. Her teammates were not above pointing out that for over 20 years, one particular chair occupied the same spot in the safety office. This chair belonged to a woman who had spent a quarter century ensuring everyone else complied with routine replacements. Liz was not particularly moved by the observation. It remains, to this day, unreplaced.
In safety and in science, it is commonly accepted that things expire with time, and value declines with age. If such is the case, then like a faithful old office chair, Liz remains the exception.
The Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences thanks Liz Stock for her committed service between 2001–2026, and wishes her all the very best for retirement.
ENDS