ACADEMIC BOARD MEETING 7 OCTOBER

A much quieter and shorter meeting than the previous two. In
fact now I look back over my annotated agenda list, I wonder
that it took 105 minutes. I will only comment on items that have not
already been reported in Etcetera.

o DVC Porter was not able to report on his review of postgraduate
programs, as he did not have the full information fro faculties.

o the VC reported the outcome at Council of the DSFOB/ECOM merger
recommendation: that it was approved pending a reconsideration and
recommendation from him on the name of the Faculty, and the student
representation on the implementation committee. Mal clearly did not 
want the debate resumed at the Board, and stated that he was saying
very little because there were threats of litigation and the last 
thing he wanted was for the matter to end up in the Supreme Court.
The mind boggles.

o there is to be a review of Education, largely prompted by DEET. Similar
reviews are likely at other universities.

o a review is starting of courses and structures in the Community
Services area.

o there was some discussion of attitudes to the VCE and the quality
of its scoring as a selection criterion. The VC reported that in general
we would be looking at external CATs as a discriminator in 
border-line cases, e.g. the last 10-20% accepted into each course.
UofM is considering looking at externally assessed cats for 80% of
the intake.

o the structure of the OPen Learning exercise was described. The $30M
funding is special for three years, and then it will be on its own
(i.e. normal DEET $/EFTSUs). It will be a company with a Board
of Directors. There will be an Academic Programs  Board, with
representation form all participating institutions. Where a course is
offered towards a Monash degree or diploma, it will have to be
approved by the relevant Faculty Board.

o Berwick seems very cool. All the (new) government said on the matter
pre-election was something vague about new university developments
in the SE corridor.

o the VC reported of an informal grouping of "research oriented"
universities with the AVCC. It may be a case of the INs and the OUTs,
and there was some comment that the binary divide may be reopening.

o there was a brief and cautious report on FCIT's discussion, etc.
over Malaysia, and approval in principle to proceed with developing
the proposal. It was emphasised that there was no commitment at this
stage, that no capital investment was considered, and that it was similar
to the successful MSC Syme (that word again) exercise.

o acting Registrar Jim Leicester, in his report, justified the lack of a
Swot-Vac. The message was that if we want a swot-vac, the 2nd mid-semester
non-teaching week would have to go (as is the case at UofM).

o a few words were exchanged about the review reports on the Science
Faculty and the Physics Department not being made available to the Board.
I think Ian Rae agreed to forward both (or perhaps it was just the review
of the Faculty.)

o the list of recommendations for promotion to Reader and Associate
Professor was tabled. It is confidential until approved by Council, but
there are strong rumours that Srini goes to AssPro and Lloyd Allison to
Reader. Assuming this is correct, my congratulations to both. Lloyd will be
the first and only Reader in the Faculty. There were a record number of 
promotions (36), which as DVC Pargetter said in his report was a recognition 
of the expansion of the University, and that there was a backlog resulting 
from previous small numbers of promotions. A number of Principal Lecturers 
also successfully applied for reclassification.

[And this was intended to be a short report.]

The next meeting will be 18 November.