Prior to the meeting I and a number of Senators attended the annual celebration for professional staff who have reached 25 years of service. I met the new V-C for the first time and he spoke about the need for budget belt-tightening - no coincidence that Enterprise Bargaining negotiations are about to start again.
In the informal part of the Senate meeting, the CEO of JKTech, one of the University's successful research commercialistation companies, did a presentation on the company and how well it is going (although things might ease a bit if the current resources boom has peaked). The company returns a dividend to UQ.
Statements by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor on recent achievements; PPL changes; reports of Senate sub-committees; annual report on equity and diversity; honorary degree nominations.
A review by a Senate-appointed working group recommended that the membership of the EDSW be cut from 21 (including staff and student reps) to 3 senators plus the VC and SDVC. It also recommended that the subcommittees (dealing with disability, indigenous participation, etc) be scrapped, in favour of ad hoc working parties to deal with specific issues. The main arguement was that the EDSW and sub-committees needed to focus more on governance and less on management/operational issues (which the Equity unit can handle). Having consulted with staff who have served on the committees in the past or at present, I reached the conclusion that there was less need for a highly-representative EDSW Committee nowadays, given equity and diversity is now a mainstream element of the University's operations, compared to when the Committee was first set up. My sources said however that there could still be work for the sub-committees, eg disability support for staff might still have some way to go. They suggested that ad hoc working parties should continue to have staff and student members, and I suggested this be an underlying premise in setting up such working parties. The recommendations were approved.
God forbid that a Senate meeting with parking on the agenda would not spend some time discussing this matter! The recommendation was that having moved from a statute to rules, parking move again to become a policy. Fair enough. The policy will now be drafted for the next meeting. I asked whether the Traffic & Parking Policy Advisory Committee would continue to function (having managed to get staff reprsentation on this Committee a couple of years ago) and was told by the Chief Operating Officer (Maurie's new title) that although it meets infrequently, it will continue to deal with the "big issues" (including parking charges).
In anticipation of new TEQSA governance requirements on universities, there was some discussion of whether there is enough Senate involvement in the Board and whether reporting from the Board to Senate could be improved. Ideas are being worked up behind the scenes by the top brass. I suggested to the President after the meeting that maybe having a couple of external Senators on the Board's Standing Committee might help.
