Presentation by the Director, Sustainable Minerals Institute on the vision, operations and performance of the SMI.
These included approval of the budget for 2015 (looking good); approaval of the Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2014; appointment of Academic Board President for 2015; PPL changes; progress against strategic plans; Senate committee and Academic Board reports.
My academic colleage, Tony Roberts, said that the Steering Committee for the 'Enhancing Systems and Services' initiative seems top-heavy with management, raising concern about the level of consultation that will occur. He suggested that a parallel representative consultative group be set up.
The Vice-Chancellor's response was that as individual initiatives are identified and developed, implementation groups will be established that will include stakeholders with knowledge of the area concerned.
The cynic in me had re-christened ESS 'Eliminating Surplus Staff', but after attending an information session, I am more confident that change will be implemented not just for the sake of cost-cutting and will be gradual and measured. There is little doubt in my mind that there is an agenda of reducing the ratio of professional staff to academic staff, which is fine if it doesn't mean the academic staff have to take on professional staff work to get things done. Watch out for increasing centralisation of administrative functions.
I'm slightly annoyed that the outcomes of the 2012 culture survey have been cherry-picked to justify ESS. Unsurprisingly for any staff survey at any time in any universe, a desire to reduce red tape was identified, but "enhancing the student experience" was not something that came out of the survey, whereas more participative and transparent decision-making was. Enhancing the student experience and better integration of research and teaching were things that actually came out of a post-survey management retreat.
Says something about the ongoing workplace culture at UQ?
There was some debate around the management responses to the recommendations of the external review of the Academic Board - mainly concerning the tension between managerialism and collegiality, the independence of the Board, and its reporting lines - should it be to the Senate or the V-C?
An implementation committee is being established and will report back to Senate in June - expect more debate then.
The Chancellor remains keen to reduce the size of the Senate from its current 22 to a much lower figure. Statistics for other Australian universities and some overseas ones were noted. There was a lack of time to debate the matter fully, but there was sufficient appetite to agree that the Chancellor approach the Qld Minister for Education about an in-principle reduction - the details of how much and what the composition will be are to be revisited at a future meeting.
As has now been publicly announced, John Story will not stand for re-election after this year. Senate agreed to the establishment of a sub-committee to oversee recruitment of a replacement.
Most of the quite long meeeting was spent discussing a confidential initiative that the University is considering.
