Several senators participated in a tour of teaching spaces refurbished with funds from the HECS-Plus charge, including the Engineering First Year Learning Centre, the Collaborative Learning Centre in the Sir James Foots Building, and BEL and SBS spaces in the Chamberlain Building. Prior to the Senate meeting proper, Prof Michael Keniger, DVC(Academic) gave a presentation on future refurbishment plans.
The University is required by State law to review its strategic plan. It usually does this towards the end of each year, looking at the rolling 5-year plan. With all the changes in higher education, the VC initiated discussions earlier this year. Senate started looking at some big-ticket issues at 1 or 2 of its meetings earlier this year, but requested dedicated time separate from the formal meetings to do this in detail.
Management has suggested the planning now wait til Prof Paul Greenfield takes over as VC at the start of 2008. The current VC has set up a number of working parties (wonder who's on them?) to examine a number of issues and produce reports for Senate for early in 2008.
The current list of issues (abbreviated by me) is:
A Planning Committee has finally been formed. While the offer of yours truly to serve was not taken up, the Committee that has been assembled looks sensible. I hope that it will consult with stakeholders in the UQ community and will be seeking that it does.
A fundraising campaign has been launched to get funds from industry and the public to put with funds from UQ and the Commonwealth Government to fund the relocation of large animal teaching and research from St Lucia to Gatton by mid-2009.
It is understood that some staff, particularly some long-standing general staff, will not want to relocate. I expect the restructuring clause in the Enterprise Agreement to kick in for them and that they will receive separation payments if redeployment is not sought or is unsuccessful.
Over the last few years, Senate has done its own self-assessment of how its going and how it might improve what it does. This has been via a questionnaire that members complete anonymously. It has included open-ended questions. However, management proposed dropping the open-ended questions for the mid-term review and just having 'circle-the-number' questions. I and another Senator, Bob Wensley, argued against this and Senate resolved to keep the open-ended questions.
Some major changes, particularly for St Lucia, are afoot. General staff rep on the Traffic & Parking Policy Advisory Committee, Eddie Hall of Security Section, has been keeping me informed, and together we have been trying to influence/moderate some of the proposed changes. To his credit, Professor Trevor Grigg plans consultation with the wider UQ community before the changes go to Finance Committee on their way to Senate in November.
However, TAPPAC had agreed that the consultation take place in September. I asked Prof Grigg in the Senate meeting why there had been slippage and whether the consultation would still occur with reasonable time for people to respond. Grigg said that the delay was because he wants to suggest some further changes to TAPPAC in early October, but that the consultation period would occur before the end of second semester.
Other business was routine, such as rule changes, professorial appointments, reports from sub-committees and UQ Holdings, etc.
