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Ancora Imparo

23 November 2005

As this will be my last column for this year, a little reflection on the past year is appropriate.

One of the real challenges in higher education at the moment is to concentrate on the main game and not to be distracted unduly by the political shenanigans going on around us. We are here to serve the Australian and, indeed, the international community. We will do this by delivering the highest quality education and research and by engagement with industry, business and our communities.

There are a variety of corollaries, including the need to administer the university well, manage our resources efficiently, provide a good general as well as educational experience for our students, achieve our social justice objectives and provide a pleasant and rewarding work environment for our staff. Although we can and must do better in all these aspects, I think 2005 has been a very good year for Monash University, with substantial progress being made in all areas. I will mention a few highlights that indicate we are well and truly on the right track.

Our performance in research using any of the metrics we have available has shown a dramatic improvement. In particular, our researchers were the leaders in two out of 11 of the ARC Centres of Excellence Awards and significant partners in three others. The ARC Centres of Excellence lie at the very pinnacle of the ARC funding system, so this was a stunning performance.

Our performance in ARC Discovery Grants showed a great improvement with an increase in funding of 30 per cent, and the NHMRC Project Grants and Fellowships showed an increase of about 70 per cent over the awards in 2004. After being awarded only one Federation Fellowship in the first three rounds, we were awarded three out of 24 in the 2005 round and, in addition, an existing Federation Fellow currently based at the University of Melbourne is joining Monash early next year. Everyone involved is to be congratulated.

It is notable that our increased funding was associated with an increased number of applications, and this trend must be continued as we are still submitting substantially fewer applications than our Group of Eight colleague universities of comparable size. Our performance in ARC Linkage Grants must improve.

In learning and teaching, we ranked 14 out of 39 in the measures used to rank universities in the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund. We will find out at the end of the month whether we qualify for funding in the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, but whatever the outcome we must improve this performance. The introduction of routine student evaluation of every unit will provide the necessary information to provide short-loop feedback and rapid remedial action for those units that, from the students' point of view, are not delivering a satisfactory learning experience.

Many improvements have been instituted in our management and quality control. An annual cycle of planning, budgeting and evaluation of performance against plan has been instituted across all areas of the university, with the Monash Directions 2025 document being accepted as a directional document at the peak of the planning pyramid. Despite the quixotic and discriminatory demands of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRR), we will sign an Enterprise Agreement that has been deemed by DEST to be 'HEWRR-compliant' and which has been overwhelmingly supported by the staff vote. A staff satisfaction questionnaire is being administered to all staff, and its results will be used to improve the satisfaction and professional fulfillment of our most valuable resource -- our staff.

Despite a downturn in our international student numbers in first semester, our financial outcomes for the year will be satisfactory and will be slightly better than budget, largely due to an excellent year for returns on investments. The capital development and refurbishment plan is going to schedule, with the Caulfield Stage 1 building due to be completed in December and work due to commence on the next stages of the Monash Science Technology Research and Innovation Precinct in 2006.

Our two international campuses have had an excellent year, with student numbers growing rapidly in South Africa. There are more than 800 students now and applications for 2006 are extremely strong. The construction of the new campus in Malaysia has commenced, and intake into the Malaysian branch of our medical school has also started.

There are many other highlights, but that is enough for now. We are certainly going in the right direction, and I appreciate the enormous effort that all of you have made to achieve this wonderful progress. 2006 will be another challenging year with the AUQA audit and preparations for the Research Quality Framework, but we have demonstrated over the past year that we are capable of jumping through the hoops that are placed in front of us and also making progress in the main games -- education and research.

Have a great break over Christmas and New Year and come back refreshed to continue your great work.