With thanks to my predecessor, Kay Whitfield for her organising, I facilitated a meeting of several members of the general staff from different parts of the University with senators Mary Mahoney, AO and Robert Wensley, QC for an hour or so. Mary and Bob spoke about their roles on various Senate sub-committees and how general staff can engage with those committees, where applicable. Staff raised a number of issues with the Senators and we all had a discussion about ideas to mark the University's Centenary.
Want to be in the pool of staff to meet with external Senators and me for an informal chat? Here's how.
The students put up a motion to re-establish the student position on the Finance Committee, a position dropped (along with the academic staff nominee) at the previous meeting. They spoke extremely well, particularly Meggen Lowry, who pointed out that there had been no compelling argument put forward for why the student member had been dropped. The claims of senior executives that they were abiding by the spirit of the National Governance Protocols and double-guessing DEST and the Minister were shaky. The students challenged any member of Senate to show how a student member of the Finance Committee would have a conflict of interest.
The motion was put to a secret ballot (causing the Vice-Chancellor considerable displeasure) and passed by an undisclosed margin. A win for common-sense!
While most of the arguments put up by the students were equally applicable to the argument that staff nominees should be members, the conflict of interest claim has more traction when it comes to staff, seeing salaries make up much of the budget and staff pay for carparking. The President of the Academic Board (who supported the students) is a Finance Committee member, and tried to claim in the debate to be a psuedo staff representative. That leaves the general staff, out in the cold again. I see little immediate hope of getting staff nominees back on to the Senate.
But, as the Vice-Chancellor pointed out, members of Senate are free to raise any matters related to the Finance Committee's reports to Senate. Maybe there will be some long and boring questions coming up from the staff nominees on Senate.
A VSU Working Party had been formed by the University to consider the impact of VSU on UQU's and UQ Sport's operations and how the University might be able to assist. The Union has slashed its budget and is in the throes of restructuring, with a number of staff redundancies. However, its current ambition is to maintain its full range of services, even if the level of activity in some is reduced.
To its credit, the Working Party recommended that all students have access to key UQU services, rather than make them available to financial members only. However the level of subsidy initially offered by the University would have left the Union short. The Finance Committee requested that the Vice-Chancellor try to find more money, which he did. Accordingly, the grant to UQU for the next three years is at a level requested by the Union.
The only downside from a general staff point of view appears to be that the Central Administration will lose $400,000 of external income derived from an administrative charge levied on Student Service Charge income, to provide services to students. When I asked Douglas Porter what the implications of this would be, he had no answer.
The Office of Marketing & Communications and an Office of University Development & Graduate Relations will form the Division of Community Relations. A Director will be appointed to each of OMC and OUDGR. While the hunt for a someone to oversee the Division continues, the Deputy Viche-Chancellor (Academic) will be responsible for the Division.
The main push here is (a) to better coordinate marketing and student recruitment efforts, both domestic and international; and (b) to lift the University's relatively poor performance in engaging with its graduates. Faculties and Schools should note that the V-C thinks that it is inappropriate that they don't engage more with their final year students, particularly around the graduation phase.
Senate noted the Report of the Review of Student Support Services and its accompanying Implementation Plan.
The Finance Committee Report included discussion of the budget parameters and assumptions for 2007. No big changes, except amplification of the 'user-pays' philosophy, whereby Faculties (and by implication their member Schools) will be levied for their implied use of central services (eg, Library). A series of drivers is being developed for the final 2007 budget document. Total income in the 2007 budget was expected to be 6.5% higher than in 2006, although the Commonwealth Grant would increase by only 2.5%.
Senate is required to vote on every professorial appointment. Concern was expressed that there is an increasing tendency to recruit by invitation rather than open advertisement. It was acknowledged that the market for top academic performers is tight, and universities need to move swiftly to secure (and sometimes retain) top staff. Let's just hope that the genuine need to sometimes make offers and counter-offers to high-fliers (rather than wait for them to respond to adverts they don't even read) is not abused, such that the University's reputation as an equal opportunity employer is not damaged.
Other matters on the agenda were either of a routine nature or strictly confidential at this stage.
