ACADEMIC BOARD MEETING 9/9/92 The Saga of the Two Faculties had its second episode at September's Academic Board meeting. Moving with commendable speed, the VC distributed a five-page paper of recommendations in response to the previous meeting's request (probably drafted by Pargetter & Porter). After some introductory comments about the Faculties having "different cultures, contexts and emphases which are important on both academic and professional grounds to the the University as a whole", he recognized "the strength of feeling in the University that two Faculties ... is not acceptable", and that there were poor "perceptions outside the University". He then made a set of recommendations, from which I paraphrase the main points: (a) From 1 July 1993 there will be a single Faculty called the "David Syme Faculty of Economics and Business." (b) the main office (sic) is to be at Caulfield Campus. (c) the Dean's position is to be advertised immediately. No appointment is to be made to the vacant Dean's position in Economics, Commerce & Management. (He noted that Peter Chandler's term expires on 30 June 1993.) (d) the Faculty to have departments of Economics, Econometrics, Management, Accounting, Banking & Finance, and Marketing. (e) an Implementation Task Force to see it in. The proposal was debated for about 90 minutes, while a crowd of Clayton students clamoured at the door, and eventually presented a barely coherent petition opposing the "takeover". It quickly emerged that the only two points of real contention were the words "David Syme" in the name of the Faculty, and the location of the "main office". Both these points were pursued with such vigour and increasingly strident tones by the ECOM staff and students that one could be forgiven for concluding they thought it would be the end of civilization as we know it. A graduate student got quite emotional, claiming her PhD would now be worthless because it would have the word "Caulfield" on it. Perhaps the low point was reached when one ECOM staffer, presumably an economic rationalist, claimed that using the name of a high-tariff advocate would make them the laughing stock of economists in Australia, and would be proof that "the college had taken over the university", and that they were being "downgraded". The DSBF people were fairly quiet. As Peter Chandler said, they thought that peaceful coexistence could have succeeded, but as it was obvious the Board wanted only one faculty, they accepted the recommendations. The strongest speech in favour of the recommendations came from Pargetter, who emphasized the need to retain balance post-merger, warning against a situation which could have all faculties administered from Clayton, and Chisholm's largest academic unit obliterated. Eventually Richard Snape (will he reapply for Dean?) moved the deletion of the words "David Syme" from the name (lost 27-34 with some abstentions) and the removal of the reference to the location of the faculty office (lost by the same margin, with even more abstentions.) The original recommendations then passed with token opposition. I noticed that those voting against the amendments included the two DVCs, most of the Deans, and almost all the non-Clayton members. The recommendations now go to Council, where their acceptance is by no means guaranteed. There were a number of other fairly major items on the agenda: (a) the VC reported on the Open Learning initiative, which will get $30M over the next 3 years. Monash tendered to run it jointly with the Univ. of Qld. Unfortunately UofQ is not in high esteem with the DECs, and it eventually withdrew. Monash has retendered alone, but with all the other universities and DECs bombarding Peter Baldwin, the VC is sanguine about a favourable decision. (b) the report of the Review of Psychology was tabled. It recommended pulling the disparate units (two Departments, part of a Gippsland school, a couple of centres) into a single Department of Psychology within the Science Faculty. This was the expected outcome, and it was passed after some ritual opposition from the Education Faculty, which actually runs an APS accredited Grad Dip. (They don't lose the course; there will be a Psychology Advisory Board overseeing all accredited courses.) (c) the report of the Review of Art & Design was tabled. It recommended the establishment of Art & Design as a "sub-faculty" within the Arts Faculty, to include the Caulfield and Frankston Departments and the Gippsland School. It was passed without discussion. (d) the final report of the merger of the Gippsland Schools into the Faculties was tabled, along with the individual School/Faculty merger agreements. This too was passed without discussion. (We were tiring.) (e) the report of the Working Group on Parking at Clayton was tabled. The main recommendations are: (i) increasing "permit" spaces to 5628, by including the present "gravel" areas, with 1.3 permits to be sold for each space. (ii) increasing the permit fee to $45 from $37. (iii) establishing 1200 free places in the former drive-in site across Blackburn Road, with the shuttle bus diverting to stop at its gate. (iv) increasing the DVO (Designated Vehicle Only) places to 210 from 120. No extra fee. Transferable DVO permits will be allocated to Deans, but will not be assigned to specific cars. (v) 70 coin-in-the-slot 2-hour visitor parking places at 50c/hr. All this will cost $150,000, mostly for surface preparation, footpaths, lighting & signs. An interesting table in the report showed the breakup of land use at Clayton: USE AREA (Hectare) Buildings 18 Car Parks 22.5 Roadways 4 Gardens, Sport, Open Space 55.5 TOTAL 100 [People have asked where I get the time for this amateur journalism. Well this epic was typed on my trusty 386 Notebook, sitting at my dining room table between the hours of 7:15 and 8:40pm, whilst waiting for my younger daughter to finish her phone call and let me back to my desk.]