ACADEMIC BOARD REPORT #8 - 24 November 1999 Last week's Board meeting was the last for 1999, so we were under orders to be finished by 4pm when the valedictory drinks and finger-food was due to appear in the foyer. It was a struggle but we managed to string the meeting out until then. DVC Lindsay opened the batting with a few farewells to retiring members: Ron Davies (yes, read about that in the Press), Jim Warren (retiring yet again), Dick White (as PVC-Blighty he'll still be a member but I doubt he'll fly back for meetings), Bill Melbourne (blimey, sounds like a massacre of Deans/ex-Deans here) and Margaret Gill (now what did she do to deserve being lumped with that lot?). Alan also welcomed John Trembath to the meeting as acting General Manager. John sat there with his eyebrows at the alert but few balls came his way. The VC then went through the annual ritual of reading out the names of the proposed recipients of Honorary degrees in 2000. These are recommendations from the Honorary Degrees Committee, and must be approved (or disapproved?) en masse by the Board without discussion. We approved, but it's all under wraps. So there. The first meaty bit of the agenda was an "exposure draft" of the Vice-Chancellor's Global Development Framework. The document is actually exposed at http://www.monash.edu.au/monashplan/global99/ so I suggest you look at it. I suspect it came into being as a response to various "where are we heading?" questions from Council members, and does paint a fairly comprehensive picture. Then it was the report of a Working Party set up by the VC in February under Deputy Chancellor Knights to look into what is to happen to Gippsland. It is a good report (probably not on the WWW), and among the recommendations were: - retain the campus (as if we'd be allowed close it.) They looked at options like closure, spinning off a free-standing university, returning to "College" status, etc. - (re)appointing a PVC to run the campus - developing a particular focus for the campus in research and teaching. That is a sweeping summary of 28 detailed recommendations. Please read the report for the details. In discussion, the VC let drop that he saw Gippsland being a more distinct campus from the "metropolitan" Monash, and to be regarded more as a model for the development of the Malaysian, etc. campuses. Max King calmly blew away Recommendation 27, which said that staff should get higher teaching loads if they didn't carry out research in a "nominated area". DVC Darvall did his annual roll-call of who-got-what in ARC and NHMRC grants. Monash as a whole came 5th in large ARC grants having just failed to overtake UofQ, and 4th with NHMRC grants. He rightly pointed out that the gross money difference between 1st-placed Sydney with 81 grants and equal-2nd Melbourne and UNSW with 61 grants each was a paltry $1.2M, so it's all about kudos, not cash. Monash also got one SRC grant (Roy Jackson's Green Chemistry), but did badly in SPIRT grants.) There were a few words about the Claytons "Monash Research Graduate School" that has been established. I can't help feeling that having a toothless graduate school is like being a little bit pregnant. Still, if it's a case that other universities have them, well we have to too. I can't imagine Max King letting it remain toothless for too long, so watch out girls and boys. After some wholesome stuff about the rolling of all Monash's Koorie/Aborigine activities into a new Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies within the Arts Faculty, we went on to the latest set of (rather rubbery) figures from Monash International. They were rather marred by enrolment figures which were either internally inconsistent (our new OPG enrolments were shown as higher than our total OPG enrolments) or comparing sheep and goats (we were matched with RMIT where the "tertiary" numbers include TAFE students.) With our eyes on the clock, we raced through a brief presentation on a new Advanced Diploma of MICA Paramedic Studies (why introduce the first and only AdvDip at Monash did you ask? Well it's because it fits into the training program set down by the ambulance/paramedic industry.) Then class was out for the year so it was into the nibbles (very nice, as they should be in the Bastille) and drinks (hmmm, the reds were really a bit young.) Jim Breen 2 December 1999