ACADEMIC BOARD REPORT 5/97 - 23 JULY 1997

Yes, it back to Academic Board reports, and as I promised in my non-policy 
speech (core, read_my_lips), I will well and truly try to email around a 
brief report after each AB meeting.

It was interesting to return to the Board after a one-year absence. In
one respect the change has been striking. 12 months ago it was very much
Mal Logan's forum, and he presided surrounded my his chosen 
minions^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlieutenants (West, Pargetter, Darvall, Chipman,..)
At the top the cast has changed completely (apart from DVC Darvall, who
wasn't there yesterday). The Board is now chaired by DVC Lindsay, with
the VC (David Robinson) and DVC John Maloney sitting there. 

As people may know, VC Robinson did not want to chair the Board (many
universities have their ABs chaired by others), and I wondered if this
meant that a quite different approach was intended for the AB in the new
regime. Certainly Mal Logan used it as a part of his authority structure,
trying out ideas there, and on occasions enlisting its support in tussles
with the Council. Robinson is obviously distancing himself from it, but
it didn't stop the usual testy questioning of the VC and others that is
one of the more interesting aspects of the Boards meetings.

As usual, there was a longish agenda, but most items were passed en
masse without discussion. Since this is a report of the meeting, I'll
concentrate on what was discussed, but I couldn't help noticing that a
couple of Faculties are busy renaming some of their Grad Dips
"Postgraduate Diplomas", in line with a policy from the Education
Committee. I don't recall our FEC being apprised of this policy. AJH?

The meeting began with Ray Cas from Earth Sciences (who seems to have
taken over Joe Monaghan's mantle as Chief Science-Faculty Whinger)
grumping about the planned EFTSU distribution with new courses, etc.,
but quickly moved to the discussion of the more-or-less final draft of
the long-awaited IT Policy. It was introduced by Ian Dobson in his role
as Vice-Chancellorial Acolyte, and came in for a fair amount of flak.
Bob Porter (outgoing?) Dean of Medicine thought it wasn't a policy at
all; Greg Egan, who seems to have been side-lined on this matter, pointed 
out it only covered infrastructure matters; and John Rosenberg raised a
couple of issues including coordinated use of buying power, which drew a
predictably defensive response from Peter Annal.

It was announced that the search for a Director of IT for the University
had reached a short-list, and it was expected that there would be an
announcement in a week or so. Anyone running a book?

The remaining topic under the VC's report which took time was the
discussion of Items of Interest from the last Council meeting, so of
course Fees got another airing. Much of the discussion centred on the
"quality" of incoming fee-paying students. The policy is that fee-payers
must be within "5 points" of the last-in DEET student, but I recall
the huffing and puffing when International students began to arrive, and
similar noises were made then. John Rickard (Dean BusEco) made plaintive
noises about it being a market, but not many were listening. He's
right, of course. One wonders how the Vale of Academe functioned at all
before Gough abolished fees, but in fact anyone who walked in the door
with fees in hand was accepted.

The Board received a report and a set of recommendations on Teaching In
Languages Other Than English. In a way it was ground-breaking stuff, as
it lays the framework for off-shore operations. There was a long
discussion which got off the rails a bit. From some of the comments, one
got the impression that some members thought it would force them to
teach in Swahili or whatever, whereas it was really laying the groundwork
for selection of bi-lingual staff & assessors for those areas mounting
off-shore non-English programs.

There was a lively discussion of a recommendation from Max King's
fiefdom (also known as the PhD & Scholarships Committee) It has wrestled
for many moons with the question of what to do with PhD (& Masters)
students who submit & are waiting for the examiners' reports. In theory,
unless they keep paying fees, etc. they are not students and can't use
the library, etc. The recommendation is that on the Department's
recommendation, they can be made "Junior Honorary Research Associates."
No pay, but able to use the facilities (and to have their papers counted
in our research quantum....) An issue was WorkCover, but it appears the
PhD & Schol area will pick this up. All good stuff, long overdue, but
the nit-pickers chewed it over for a while before it went through.

The last item was the set of Annual Reports from several Deans. All
pretty much "we did a good job in hard times" stuff. John R presented the
CIT one, which Rob had written, highlighting a few matters including the
attention to first-year teaching and success-rates. After it Dick White 
(Dean Education) commented positively about what CIT had done, and added
that he had greatly enjoyed working with Rob in the interim, and how
much of a debt the University owed to Cliff.

Whew, enough for now. I'll send this off and await the inevitable
barrage of replies from my old friend "MAILER-DAEMON".