Director's Message
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue7 1–31 August 2020
It's a pleasure to see more of you in person again now that most ANU staff are back to working on campus! Please read the ANU Guidelines for keeping COVID-safe while working on campus. Also note that, although most RSAA staff and students will now be working at Stromlo or Siding Spring, flexible working arrangements are encouraged. For Stromlo staff and students, the basic guideline is that, with the agreement of your supervisor, you can work from home part of the time if that's as productive as being in the office. However, we would like everyone to be at Stromlo a least a couple of days a week in order to interact with the people you work with and supervise. The exceptions are staff or students in vulnerable categories (see ANU Guidelines), who are still recommended to work from home, although you can seek approval for exceptions from the Director. It remains possible that we will return to more restricted access to campus or perhaps need to entirely work from home again - so make sure you keep that option ready to activate at short notice, just in case!
The discussions about RSAA's culture are now progressing towards a Culture Action Plan for the School. Please review the draft document that Lisa Kewley has circulated and think about how to improve not just School policies but cultural attitudes, how best to implement the needed reforms, and how to prioritise these actions over the next year. We will have a further discussion about the plan on Friday, 7 August, at 12pm via Zoom - I strongly encourage all RSAA staff and HDR students to attend that session. Everyone can contribute to the plan, either by written submissions to Lisa or by speaking up at the meeting.
Two weeks ago we had the annual HDR student reviews, with presentations by most RSAA students. I was impressed by the uniformly high quality of the talks and by the diversity of research topics covered, and offer my congratulations to all the students involved. Particular congratulations go to the winners of 'Best Student Talk' and 'Best Student Paper' for 2020, announced in an accompanying article in this edition of Lunations!
