Executive Dean's Message - April 2020
Dear colleagues,
It is hard to believe that it’s only a month since the last Faculty newsletter, so much has happened in the intervening weeks. The pace of change both globally and within UQ is amazing and I have been so impressed by the response by our Faculty community. I would again like to reiterate the appreciation from me and to echo the comments made by our Vice-Chancellor in his email and video.
For those of you who are working from home, I hope you are adjusting to the new normal. I do understand the challenges from my own experience and note, in particular, the impact of the current situation on those staff who are caring for school-aged children. Science HR has developed a comprehensive intranet site on working from home with links to numerous resources and advice. This can be found here, and includes some excellent tools and for dealing with the range of challenges when working from home.
As anticipated, our international student enrolments are down this semester. This overall reduction in student numbers has had an impact on our budget, and across the Faculty we have been working hard to find savings to address this. I am pleased to report that we have met the savings targets we have been asked to find at this stage, through a combination of delaying building projects, delaying appointments, and reducing expenditure on a number of non-salary items including travel. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed or been impacted by this. It is hard to predict how COVID-19 will impact the budget in Semester 2 this year or in 2021, as this depends on how the pandemic progresses over the next few months and the impact of this on the current travel restrictions, but this will become clearer as the year progresses.
In addition to UQ's financial position, the financial position of many of our students has also been greatly impacted. Please consider giving to the UQ student emergency fund to support our student impacted by COVID-19.
It is great to finally have some certainty about Semester 2 this year with the recent announcement of O-week commencing 29 July, and classes commencing 3 August and finishing 30 October. Further details will be communicated in the near future.
UQ is also planning for our post-COVID-19 recovery, with conversations happening around the development of new revenue-generating short courses, and thinking deeply about what we have learned from this period and what elements we may wish to keep doing after this is over. Please give some thought to this and discuss with colleagues and supervisors, your input is highly valued!
Congratulations to many staff for their research achievements, despite these challenging times. A shout out to Cath Lovelock (BIOL) for her recent Nature paper, to Lisbeth Grondahl (SCMB) for her new ARC Linkage grant, to Luke Guddat (SCMB) for publishing a Nature paper and a Science paper in the same week (wow!), to Julia Loginova and Pia Wohland-Jakhar (SEES) who have developed a COVID-19 tracker, and of course to the COVID-19 vaccine team (SCMB) for the ongoing and spectacular achievements in the preclinical testing phase of the project.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the UQ Program Architecture 2 project. The response has been outstanding with 26% of our programs, 37% of our plans (majors) and 30% of our courses being discontinued from 2021. This will free up a significant amount of staff time to focus on new priorities for the University. Well done and thanks again!
Please remember to continue to nominate yourselves and your colleagues for prizes. Current opportunities include the 2020 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes. There are opportunities to reward excellence across the areas of research, innovation, leadership and science engagement. Entries close May 15.
The DVCR recently announced the new Director of the Global Change Institute (GCI). Professor Rachel Parker will be joining UQ in July, moving from her current role as Director Strategic Growth in QUT’s Institute for Future Environment. Rachel has a diverse background and has degrees in both Arts and Laws and obtained a PhD in Industrial and Innovation Policy. Her research focuses on the business and social dimensions of uptake and diffusion of science and engineering research across the economy and the creation of economic opportunities from new technologies. The Global Change Institute also has three new innovation brokers. These Innovation Brokers will facilitate the bringing together of relevant disciplinary research capabilities from across UQ and beyond to help shape major transdisciplinary research partnerships and attract partner investment.
Finally, it is great to see some of the restrictions being lifted in Queensland, with opportunities now to take a day trip and do more shopping. Enjoy!
Kind regards,
Professor Melissa Brown
Executive Dean