ACADEMIC BOARD MEETING - 10 March 1993

[Another attempt to be timely and brief.]

Before beginning the description of the meeting, I will say a few
words about the Steering Committee of Academic Board. This consists
of the VC, DVC (now Chubb), Professors Darvall, Monaghan, Neave,
Pargetter, Porter and Assoc. Prof. Trembath.  Its main task is to review
the agenda and make recommendations on the handling of each item. As most
of its recommendations are accepted without question, this is an important
and powerful task. Another task is to recommend almost all the
nominations by Academic Board to its standing committees, and for
jobs like Chair Selection Committees. I do not recall any of
Steering Committee's recommendations on Committee Membership being
overturned. On rare occasions an election is thrown open. A recent
example was the Standing Committee which attempted to make peace
between DSBF and ECOM.

On occasions, the Steering Committee's recommendations draw some
criticism. This happened on 10 March.

The meeting began with the VC introducing Professor Chubb as the
new Senior DVC. He commented that the DVC's primary role will be
in day-to-day academic matters, and that in this he will be
somewhat like a Provost in a US university.

Later in the meeting Professor Chubb spoke at length about
quality. His main message was that we must be able to demonstrate
that our output IS of the quality we claim. I kept nodding off.

The VC also tabled a list of duties for the VC/DVCs/PVCs. This had
previously gone to Council, and included Professor Peter Darvall
(Dean - Eng.) who is to be seconded part time to the inner
cabinet.

Professor Porter brought back a revised procedure for Research
Travel Grants. The $75k is to be increased to $100k; $50k to be
for small "grants-in-aid" (min. $500), for which each Faculty may
make a list of 10 nominations; and the other $50k for more major
grants.

The whole proposal triggered yet another debate, but the meeting
seemed to accept the proposal as being much better than the first
version.

Open Learning had another run. Opposition Leader Joe Monaghan
raised an advertisement from St Catherine's stating that credit
was available for their year 13 maths, of which Maths Dept had no
knowledge. Prof. Pargetter talked about the difference between
gaining unspecified credit towards the points for a BGenStud, and
actually getting credit towards a minor or major sequence.

There was also some discussion on the funding of Open Learning.
Pargetter emphasised that the low $300/subject needed to be viewed
against the $28M up-front development payment for the initiative.

The Acting Registrar's report passed without incident, but the
Comptroller's (now General Manager - Comptroller) had a longer
run. Mr Wade made a fuss about the recent Tax Commissioner's
ruling on private use of "frequent flyer" points accumulated during 
business travel. He seemed to be the only Board member to be
excited or concerned about this for, as Marcia Neave pointed out,
surely any benefits gained from University-purchased tickets
belonged to the University.

We were told about the difficulties of finally getting clearance
to use the Old Drive-In site for car parking, which stirred up up
the ritual complaints about the inadequate parking space at
Clayton. [Caulfield staff can only shake their heads in disbelief
and wonder.]

We also learnt that Monash's plans to hang onto the Bronx
properties in the late Andrew Monash bequest were scotched by the
other beneficiaries, who insisted that they be sold. Apparently
elderly members of the US branch of the Monash family have visited
here at the University's invitation. Quite altruistic, of course.

There was a brief discussion of where Monash stood vis-a-vis
Melbourne's introduction of 10% bonuses for all courses for students
taking LOTE and Maths for Specialists (MFS). The concern is 
that this will tend to make Melbourne's
cut-offs higher, and may give the uninformed the impression that
their courses are in more demand or are of higher quality. There was
a distinct lack of enthusiasm for following Melbourne on this.

It is the season of Annual Reports, and the Registrar, Comptroller
and several Deans had their reports tabled on the way to Council.
Two faculties, Science and ECOM had very long reports with
substantial sections for each Department. In the case of Science
the report consisted entirely of a collection of Departmental
Annual reports, with a 3-page introduction by the Dean.

The Steering Committee had picked this up, and "recommended ...
that Deans prepare briefer reports" and "is of the view that Deans
should be dissuaded from submitting what are essentially compendia
of departmental reports."

In asking Professor Rae to speak to his report, the VC asked if he
accepted the comments by the Steering Committee. Professor Rae
said he most emphatically did not. It was the tradition of the
Science Faculty to report in this manner, several Council members
had commented that they found the Science reports particularly
informative, and that in his opinion it was not the place of the
Board or the Steering Committee  to interfere with his report to
Council.

Score: Rae - 1, Steering Committee - 0

[I must admit I found Science's report very interesting. Maths
Dept's section at 1.2 pages is a model of brevity. I started
analyzing a few sets of Departmental statistics, comparing their
EFTSUs, staff and budgets with ours, but for some reason I kept
being blinded by tears.]

On a closing point, the VC at one stage in the meeting said that
he was asking that a summary of Board Meetings be prepared and
distributed to all staff in the University, "just as happens with
Etcetera. "

Will I be out of a Job? 

Does Mal know that to cut costs the number of Etceteras printed 
has been cut by 70%?

Jim Breen
11 March 1993