Executive Dean's Message - June 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you very much to those staff who were able to attend the Faculty of Science Semester 1 2020 Board meeting last week. We were delighted to welcome more than 230 people to the Zoom meeting to share updates on teaching, research, infrastructure and operations, and to discuss the immediate and longer-term impacts of COVID-19. For those of you who were unable to attend but would like to see the presentation and/or school reports, it can be found here

This message is also available on YouTube.

Thanks for the great feedback about the meeting, especially how much better it was using Zoom! The attendance was much higher than usual and it was lovely to have colleagues from St Lucia and Gatton attending the same meeting. We might even do this next time, but hopefully still have the morning tea!

Within a day of the Faculty Board meeting the world seemed to change yet again, with the release of a discussion paper from the Federal Department of Education, Skills and Employment, outlining a proposed major reform of higher education in Australia. Whilst I welcome the intent for Australia to graduate more scientists and for greater opportunities to be available to regional, remote and indigenous students, it is disappointing to see disincentives being put in place for studying humanities at a time when humanities disciplines are of critical importance to our changing world. It is also devastating to hear about the proposed significant decrease in fees and government contributions to universities for educating students in science and mathematics, which, if approved, will have a significant impact on our Faculty. Further reflections can be found in Monday’s all-staff email from the VC, on the Australian Council of Deans of Science website and in the Campus Morning mail and the media. Please engage in debate on this important topic and influence where you can!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to a very challenging examinations period for Semester 1, this has been a massive amount of work under very different and difficult circumstances. I am aware of a few hiccups and thank teaching staff, course coordinators, T&L chairs, student admin staff and our ADA team for dealing with these so promptly!

It is wonderful to see so many parts of the Faculty completing their return to campus plans, and to see the campus starting to come back to life. I really enjoyed spending time back in on campus this week and catching up with a number of colleagues in the office, cafeteria or just walking around. Physical distancing is easier to manage than expected, special thanks to all the staff who have been providing important guidance on this in our buildings.

One of the highlights of being on campus this week was making a film for the 2020 mid-year graduation, with the VC, the Chancellor and over a hundred academics processing in the Great Court, at least 1.5m apart! Universities are truly wonderful places and I look forward to sharing the video when it becomes available.

Congratulations to many staff for achievements over the last month, including Kaye Basford AM (SBMS), Tamara Davis AM (SMP), John Longworth AM (SAFS), Michael Capra AM (SEES) for their medals in this year’s Queens Birthday Honours list, to Professor Warwick Bowen (SMP) who has been awarded the Barry Inglis Medal, to Ann Keep (SAFS) for being appointed as the new Director of the ATSIS unit, to Felicity Ray, the Faculty of Science HR Relationships Manager (HRRM) for being appointed as the new School Manager SAFS, and to Justine Kay for being appointed to the HRRM role in Science. Congratulations all and welcome back Justine!

A special congratulations to Luke Guddat (SCMB) and colleagues who published a paper on the structural basis for RNA replication by SARS-CoV-2 polymerase in Cell this week. It is always wonderful to see our staff publishing in high profile journals, but this one is especially noteworthy as it brings Luke’s high profile journal publication record for 2020 alone to two Science, two Nature, one Cell and one Nature Structural Biology! Well done! Other publication highlights include a paper by Anthony Romilio (BIOL) in Scientific reports on ancient crocodiles. Please see below for details on this and other great publications from our staff.

Just a quick reminder that ALL staff need to complete disclosure declarations relating to conflicts of interest, secondary employment and sensitive research. The deadline is approaching so please do this asap.

I hope you have the opportunity for some downtime over the next few weeks and I look forward to seeing you all, hopefully in person, next month.

Kind regards, Melissa.