Executive Dean’s Message - March 2023
Dear colleagues
What a busy start to the semester! Wonderful to see so many students on campus and to hear that attendance at lectures remains high. Also, great to hear about the breadth of activities and achievements over the past month, across the diversity that is the Faculty of Science. After such a busy time, I hope that everyone has the opportunity for a much-deserved break over the Easter period.
Thank you
Thanks to staff who have completed the Annual Performance Development process for 2022. The Faculty of Science is currently sitting at 83.3% completion. I encourage staff and managers who have yet to finalize this process to do so as soon as possible. Thanks also for completing your mandatory training modules.
Events
March has been a big month of events as we celebrated International Women’s Day and also the opening of the World Science Festival Brisbane. Thanks to the many staff across the faculty who contributed to this wonderful celebration of science!
It was also wonderful to attend a UQ Alumni event hosted by the UQ Heron Island Research Station. 93 Alumni attended to catch up with old friends and make new ones and to engage in a wide range of informative and interesting activities. Thanks so much to Chris Roelfsema (SEES), Stuart Kininmonth (Science), Diana Kleine (Coralwatch, BIOL), Mike Noad (SVS), for their leadership and contributions and to all of the amazing staff at Heron Island Research Station for making this such a great event.
Congratulations
Congratulations to the student and staff winners of the 2022 Faculty of Science awards! It was wonderful to celebrate this with nominees, winners and their colleagues and friends at our awards event a couple of weeks ago. A big shout out to Felicity Ray (SAFS) and Daniel Dunn (SEES) for both winning Leadership and Mentoring awards, to Susanne Schmidt (SAFS) for winning the UQ Values award, and to Christian Forster from the Mechanical Workshop for winning an Award for Excellence. Thanks to the Faculty Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee and the Engagement team for their hard work in the lead-up to and on the day of this event.
Congratulations to Cath Lovelock (BIOL) and Teresa Ubide (SEES) for their success in the Australian Academy of Science Honorific Awards. Cath was recognized for her lifelong achievements with a joint Suzanne Cory Medal, and Teresa was recognized for her early-career achievements with an Anton Hales Medal. And congratulations to Sundaravelpandian Kalaipandian (SAFS) for being awarded a mid-career Advanced Queensland Industry Fellowship to advance the Australian dates industry.
Congratulations also to Melanie Gunn (School Manager, BIOL) for being appointed to an Executive Officer role at Griffith University. Thanks to Mel for her enormous contributions to UQ over many years!
Distribution of Disciplines update
As many of you are aware, we are currently in the process of implementing a major change in the Faculty of Science, as we transition three of our Schools (BIOL, SEES and SAFS) to two new Schools, the School of the Environment and the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability.
The two new Schools will be established on June 30 this year and so our current focus is to map staff from their current School to one of the new Schools, or to another School or Institute within or beyond the Faculty of Science. We are also in the process of recruiting Heads of School for the two new schools and establishing transition committees that will replace existing committees from April, tentatively until the end of 2023. Membership of these new committees will be announced soon.
Head to the Distribution of Disciplines project Sharepoint review page, or resources page.
Other news
Many conversations are in play regarding the University Accord process and the opportunity to shape the future of the higher education sector in Australia. I encourage you to take a look at the Accord discussion paper and make a submission.
Schools and the faculty are currently preparing for this year’s academic promotion session, and it was wonderful to see some of you at the recent Faculty of Science information sessions. This is very exciting given the significant and positive changes to the performance criteria and processes. Further information can be found on the UQ promotions website, the UQ promotions FAQ document, and the Guidelines for evidencing academic achievement document.
Kind regards,
Professor Melissa Brown
Executive Dean - Faculty of Science