School Manager's Report

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue13 1–28 February 2021

The consultation on the proposed RSAA change management has come to end. RSAA management and the ANU HR divisions are reviewing the public and private feedback we have received to date. An implementation plan will be released soon. I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone for being involved in the consultation process. I would also like to thank everyone from the RSAA and College administration teams who have spoken to me and explicitly asked how they can assist to manage the workload of the administration team, that may be operating with 3 less FTE.

There are several initiatives from last year that are being implemented this year. The request for quotations for the solar panels to be housed on the roof of the Woolley and Duffield buildings, and (if possible) Faulkner Court, is being finalised. This will be close to a 100kW system that will reduce our carbon footprint significantly. It will also align with the Vice-Chancellor’s vision of ANU being carbon neutral in due course. RSAA will be one of the very first Schools to start implementing the zero-carbon initiative. The investment made by RSAA in this category will reduce the utilities bill from the second half of this year and beyond by 33%. I would like to recognise the work of the Sustainability Committee in developing this initiative for the RSAA Executive.

In a similar way, we are starting to use our infrastructure more effectively to bring external revenue to RSAA. Flexegraph are renting workstations and is using the lab spaces in AITC (thanks to Roger Haynes) and the telescope time sold at SSO is also increasing (thanks to Chris Lidman). Furthermore, we experimented with a course offering in the summer term, which proved extremely successful (thanks to Paul Francis). Paul is looking at offering the online course in the winter term as well this year, which will increase our student load by a fair margin. Currently the revenue generated from this initiative is not passed on to the School, but we are hopeful that this will change in 2022.

I would also like to thank everyone who has donated to RSAA in 2020. We have raised significant funds to assist us with financing the above initiatives, some scholarships, and also some research projects. If you would like to contribute to the RSAA endowment fund that helps us maintain our HDR scholarship numbers, finance and co-fund research projects, and replace aging infrastructure you can contact me or Kellie Takenaka (Development Manager CoS). You can donate your excess annual leave or long-service leave (and I thank many of you who have already donated your leave to the endowment) or you can give online by using this link with your credit/debit card; we can also assist you  to donate via bank transfers. All donations above $2 (after tax payments for leave conversions) are tax deductible and every donation helps us to better conduct our core activities of teaching and research.

Rafat Alam