Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo

Ancora Imparo, May 2007

2 May 2007

The members of the Vice-Chancellor's Group, together with a dean from another faculty, have been undertaking annual visits to each of the faculties to review the progress of the faculty, to hear of the immediate priorities relating to their three year operational plan and to learn of any particular issues facing that faculty.

Although there were some issues specific to individual faculties, I would like to make some general comments.

First, across almost every faculty there has been evidence of a stunning improvement in research performance reflected by increased research income and increased publications.

The mock RQF findings reveal that we could do much better in presenting our research and its impact, but the rehearsal itself will help us to do this. Research higher degree student load and completions have been relatively static, but it is pleasing the number of international research higher degree students is rising steadily.

Second, the routine student unit evaluations and the substantial funds distributed in the Learning and Teaching Performance fund have led to faculties giving more attention to improving the learning and teaching in their faculty and that this is being reflected in improved student evaluations. There is much more to do in this respect, but we are making real progress.

Third, by and large, budget targets are being met, although there are particular issues in each faculty that have made this difficult.

Finally, these outstanding achievements have been made possible by the extreme efforts of those who have been prepared to take leadership positions in learning and teaching, research or financial administration of the faculties and by the extraordinary efforts of all the academic and administrative staff of the university.

It is clear that the government funding situation necessitating very high student loads to meet budget targets is placing enormous demands on our staff. The evidence from the visits is that by-and-large our staff are showing their commitment by responding magnificently.

On another topic, the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech has shocked us all. I have written to the University expressing our condolences and understanding of the shocking impact of such an event, given Monash's previous experience, albeit on a much smaller scale. We have two Virginia Tech students on exchange at Monash University at present, and of course we have offered them all the support we can.

It is a timely reminder for us to look once more at our security arrangements. These have been considerably upgraded since our shootings in 2002 and we believe that we have in most respects achieved the best balance between safety and the freedom for staff and students to move around in an unencumbered way.

We have a process by which our crisis responses are regularly tested and upgraded by enacting crisis scenarios. At the same time as the Virginia Tech shootings, our own crisis management preparedness was being tested by an unfortunate accident and power outage at our Clayton campus. The two injured workers are fine and by and large our crisis response functioned well. However, by combining the experience at Virginia Tech and an evaluation of our own capabilities, we have identified a need to explore better ways of communicating instantly with all our students and staff. We desperately hope that we will not face such a devastating event as occurred at Virginia Tech but we must be as well prepared as we possibly can be.

Finally, to end on a positive note. Of the 13 prestigious Fulbright Scholarships for postgraduate study in the US, three went to researchers at Monash University, Daniel Mitchell who will study at Stanford, Danny Gelman at Harvard and Robin Brimblecombe at Princeton. This is a wonderful achievement and I congratulate Daniel, Danny and Robin as well as their supervisors.