Executive Dean’s Message - August 2021
Dear colleagues,
Happy National Science Week for the week before last! I hope you had the opportunity to celebrate by engaging in some of the fabulous events.
August was certainly a tumultuous month with yet another lockdown, constantly changing government restrictions and significant changes to campus access. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for your leadership and citizenship as we navigated some pretty tricky issues, to ensure that we could safely enable research and teaching to continue where possible. A big shout out to our professional leaders for ensuring that our staff access requests were managed in a timely and effective manner, to teaching staff for the quick transition back to online learning and to researchers for their resilience and patience with lab closures and travel restrictions impacting research and field trips.
Thank you also to everyone involved in Open Day on Sunday the 1st of August, with the whole program switching to online in 24 hours due to the lockdown announced the day before. A special thanks to the Science Engagement team for leading and coordinating our contribution and such a big change, and to the more than 75 academic staff who gave virtual presentations and talked to students online.
A couple of highlights for me this month has been talking to our 2021 academic promotion applicants and hearing about the amazing work they are doing, and speaking at the (virtual) breakfast launch of UQ Science Connect , a new career mentoring program that connects Faculty of Science students with UQ’s global community of alumni and professionals in Science.
Congratulations to all of the recipients of ARC Future Fellowships and ARC Discovery Early Career Research Awards (DECRAs) across the Faculty of Science! New Future Fellows are Paul Evans (SCMB), Magdalena Zych (SMP) and Simon Haine (SMP). New DECRAs are Sarah Sweet (SMP), Timothy Buttsworth (SMP), Xin Wu (SCMB), Naphak Modhiran (SCMB), Claudia Benham (SEES) and Matt Reeves (SMP). Congratulations also to Benjamin Pope (SMP) for being awarded an inaugural Big Questions Institute UQ Fellowship. Please congratulate staff and schools for these great achievements.
Congratulations and welcome to Kelly Cosgrove, who has been appointed as our new Senior Manager of Health, Safety and Wellness and Liz Ganesathurai, who has been appointed as our new Senior Manager, Infrastructure and Facilities. Please make Kelly and Liz feel welcome.
The Faculty of Science will shortly be undertaking a UQ Pulse Survey. This is an important initiative for the VC, Professor Debbie Terry and will provide a point in time check in with how staff are feeling about their work life and workplace culture and the results will be used to determine actions to support a positive, productive and inclusive culture across UQ. The survey will be undertaken in the Faculty of Science towards the end of September and will be anonymous. Please do participate so that we can continue to improve the workplace culture across the Faculty.
As I am sure you are aware, the University’s HR system will be transitioning to the on demand human capital management software system called ‘Workday’ on Monday 4 October. This will impact all of us with improvements to multiple processes associated with recruitment, leave, annual appraisals and more. Please engage in the extensive options for learning about and using this system, in order to facilitate a smooth transition for yourself, your supervisor and any staff that you supervise. Please also be aware that there will be a shut-down of some of our current systems prior to the Workday go-live date, which will impact several recruitment processes and systems between Saturday 18 September 2021 to Sunday 3 October 2021. Further information can be found in the main body of the newsletter, online, or from your supervisor.
There are lots of conversations and planning happening at the moment to ensure we and our students are best prepared for upcoming examinations periods, given the ongoing uncertainty regarding future lockdowns. Your Head of School or Director of Teaching and Learning will keep you informed.
Kind regards,
Professor Melissa Brown
Executive Dean