Director's Message

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue17 1–30 June 2021

Investing in and planning for the future

Although the COVID pandemic remains an ongoing challenge, limiting the movement of people within Australia as well as preventing staff and students from entering and leaving the country, RSAA is pressing ahead with some key investments for our future and starting the process of developing the School’s strategy for the next 5 years.

RSAA is now advertising for two new Level C, D or E appointments to fill the two vacated professorial positions on our faculty. These advertisements should appear in the next AAS Job Register, so we should all be looking for great candidates to recruit, both at mid-career and professorial levels. Note that the School is continuing its policy of hiring two faculty positions at a time, with at least one of the two positions to go to a woman and a clear directive to the selection panel to seek increased diversity in all dimensions. Another step in this direction is joint ANU and RSAA funding for two new Indigenous HDR students who will be starting this year.

RSAA is also investing in the future of SSO and the AITC. We are committing to provide $1.5M towards enabling the full-scope version of the MAVIS instrument to be built for the VLT, which will also gain extra guaranteed nights for RSAA astronomers. At the same time, we are committing $1M towards completing the preliminary design study for the GMTIFS instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will likewise earn RSAA astronomers in-kind credits towards greater access to GMT. Meanwhile, at SSO, we are spending $0.6M, provided through the Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics, towards automating the 2.3-metre telescope. The School is also prepared to commit $3M over 3 years to support the continued operation of the AAT 3.9-metre telescope after the current agreement ends in the middle of 2022. We are actively working with other Australian universities and Astronomy Australia Limited to find the rest of the funds needed to allow the AAT to continue enabling great science by Australian astronomers.

The School is similarly proceeding with substantial initiatives in education. The astrophysics major has now been established, as has the new coursework Masters degree. We have recruited an extra 120 students for the introductory Astronomy 1001 course by offering it outside the traditional teaching periods. We hope to expand our educational reach even further by offering the new Astronomy 1002 course to non-science majors.

There are also a variety of smaller, but still significant, investments the School is making in research, culture, and sustainability. As always, the School is offering sizeable matching funds for all research grant applications and this year we have further invested $105k in specialist grant-writing support, an initiative we will continue next year. The RSAA Strategic Initiatives program outcomes, announced in the May edition of Lunations, will support a variety of Culture Action Plan projects, as well as projects promoting Indigenous education, public outreach, and sustainability. Finally, there is the investment of $118k in solar panels to reduce our climate impact (and our electricity bills!).

These investments will keep RSAA competitive in all aspects of its mission: in research, education, outreach, and culture. However we also need to look to the longer term and that means developing a new strategic plan for the School. Our last regular 5-year School review was held in 2016, so in normal times 2021 would have seen another review. COVID has delayed that to next year (probably), so we have a breathing space to consider what directions the School should be taking in future. The first step in the process of developing a School Strategic Plan will be a Senior Staff Retreat - the last of these biennial planning meetings was held in 2019 and the next will be held over two days on 28-29 July.

These are busy times for RSAA, but it’s great to see so many positive developments moving forward and to be able to carve out some space to step back and think about the shape of things to come.

Matthew Colless