ACADEMIC BOARD REPORT #7 - 20 October 1999

Last week's Academic Board was something of a pay-back for the 47-minute
quicky in September. This time we were there for a full 135 minutes,
grinding through a rather long agenda. My report is rather short, as it
was not a very exciting meeting.

Before I go any further, I need to say that all the InfoTech items in
the Education Committee report were passed without discussion.

The meeting began with the introduction of the Chancellor, Jerry Ellis,
who was attending in his capacity as a Board member. In fact the first
such Chancellorial visit in living memory - I've been an almost
continous member since the the AB was formed from the Professorial Board
back in 1990, and I certainly don't recall Bill Rogers or Sir George
Lush gracing us with their presence. As someone said unkindly of Jerry:
"having flown BHP into the ground, his next challenge is Monash...".
I fact I would love to know what he thought of the ponderous AB process.
I had morning tea with him the previous day in my capacity as a board
member of the Japanese Studies Centre, and he told us all that we (academics)
held far too many meetings with too many people attending them.
Anyway, he said a few words to the AB about the need to "demonstrate we
are adding value" to "management".

This time there was no Vice-Chancellorial presence. I thought he may
have been in a cave in conclave with his fellow Neanderthal VCs, but it
turns out he was overseas.

DVC Lindsay kicked off the meeting with some farewells; first  to DVC
Maloney, who I seem to remember was farewelled at the previous meeting
too, and then to Peter Wade who is calling it a day after 14 years.
Ironic that we farewelled him the day after his wife handed back her
State Cabinet post.

DVC Darvall remarked that there was hardly a person in the room who had 
not been frustrated by Peter at some times over resourcing, but Peter
was in his opinion the best financial manager in the tertiary system.
(Round of applause.)

Then it was onto the draft 2000 budget, with the discussion being led by
Peter Wade. We had a 6-page memo from the VC explaining the process. I
noticed in it that the relative funding model was not touched (despite
its review having been promised every year for the last six.) The excuse
this time was that DETYA is allegedly working on a new model, so it
would be appropriate to wait. Ho hum.

From InfoTech's position, the budget has a lot of pluses, with very
strong growth in funds from recurrent sources. This is happening at a
time when most other faculties are seeing static or shrinking budgets;
in fact only a special off-the-top padding has made the Science and Arts
budgets survivable this coming year. The sting in the tail for us is that
the non-DETYA funds are growing greatly as a proportion, and hence we
are rather exposed.

This year there is an incentive to go for extra externally (fee &
international) EFTSUs, but the effect is ratcheted as the economists
were quick to point out. Apparently there was a look at moving the
proportion allocated according to research quantum from 11% to 20%. This
was not followed through, but it was strongly hinted that it would apply
next year (Medicine will be the big winner.)

Discussion was rather dominated by grizzling from Science. Ray Cass told
us yet again that their woes came from them being so generous in letting
Science students do "outside" subjects. Ho hum.

The newish Law dean, Stephen Parker, gave his "Leading the Way"
address. He made a good point that law students now paid more in HECS
than the faculty received to teach them, and that the market is getting
crowded with 30 law schools now operating in Australia. The Faculty is
having a retreat and were looking for a catchy title for it. "Legalling
the Way" he wondered. A voice in the back row suggested "Sueing the
Way". As his predecessors have said before, he repeated that the Faculty
badly needed a research focus.

Most of the remainder of the meeting was taken up with the presentation
of the final reports of LTOP working parties on Promotion of Educational
Technology, Relevance of the Curriculum and Flexibility in Pedagogy. I
must admit I found the recommendations of the latter two to be
particularly opaque, and I really wonder if anything will come of them.

After a bit of muttering about a new Bachelor of Design (Multimedia
Design) to start at Caulfield and move to Berwick, they let us escape.

Jim Breen
25 October 1999