Director's Message
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue14 1–31 March 2021
The College of Science phase 2 change implementation plan has now been released, with no substantial modifications to the original proposal. The affected staff at RSAA are Charley Lineweaver, Jelena Mudrinic, and Naomi Hawley. Jelena and Naomi have elected to take voluntary separations. Naomi completed her service with ANU on 26 February, having decided to be paid out for her parental leave and other benefits. Jelena will leave on 26 April and is spending the next few weeks effecting a smooth hand-over of her responsibilities to other staff, including some temporary assistance from well-qualified CoS finance staff. Charley is currently weighing his options, but will in any case remain part of the RSAA community as a visiting fellow. At the appropriate times, we will properly farewell these colleagues in the form they would prefer.
Having made these difficult but necessary changes to staffing, the School now has to look to rebuilding for the future. The issue for the School, and the University, is fundamentally a reduction in revenue, so we need to look to raising revenue rather than further cuts as the long-term solution. In essence, this means increasing student numbers at all levels and winning more grants and contracts. There are costs to doing these things, including increased teaching load (though from a low base) and the time and funds needed to develop proposals for grants and contracts. As a starter, therefore, RSAA is rolling out new courses (such as an introduction to astronomy for non-scientists), recruiting more graduate students (with better marketing campaigns), and supporting proposal writers with expert assistance (via specialist consultants). During 2021 the School will be exploring other ways to deploy our constrained resources to allow us to both shore up our finances and maintain our great strength as Australia’s leading research group in astronomy and astrophysics.
A key input in this regard is the University’s budget model for 2022 and beyond, an outline of which we hope to see soon. The budget model, along with the ANU’s strategic plan, will guide the School’s decisions on how to invest funds and staff effort in achieving two simultaneous goals: increasing and diversifying the School's revenue base and fulfilling our mission of seeking excellence across our research, teaching, technology, and outreach activities. One modest initiative I hope to be able to announce soon is a School fund to support imaginative ideas from staff or students for actions that will help to advance these goals during 2021.
At the same time, we also need to continue pushing forward with implementation of the RSAA Culture Action Plan. Over the next couple of weeks I will therefore be seeking progress reports from all of the current working groups, with the aim of completing the first wave of actions as soon as possible and moving on to a second wave of reforms and improvements.
Finally, RSAA is investing in solar panels to reduce electricity costs to the School and advance the ANU’s Below Zero climate sustainability strategy. The request for tenders for the solar panels is just being released by Facilities & Services, and we hope to see them installed over the course of this year. In a related sustainability initiative, RSAA is planning to set up one or more electric vehicle charging stations for the use of staff, students and visitors to Mount Stromlo.
Matthew Colless
