Director's Message
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue20 1–30 September 2021
It looks like this lockdown might be both a marathon and a sprint: a sprint between the Delta variant of COVID-19 and the roll-out of mass vaccinations for all Australians over the next few months embedded within a marathon of continuing, but perhaps gradually easing, restrictions as we stumble towards some sort of long-term accommodation with the virus. It’s hard to know how this will play out in detail, but there are a few clear guidelines: get vaccinated as soon as you can; follow the rules laid out by the ACT government and the ANU; and, finally, be kind to yourself and to others - this is hard! RSAA will be responding as the restrictions evolve and will continue to seek safe ways for staff and students to do their work and achieve their goals.
One process that has been affected by the lockdown is RSAA’s strategic planning. In my last Lunations message I proposed that we would have strategic planning workshops during September. With people now working from home and often with extra home-schooling or child-minding duties, holding the workshops in person is impossible and holding them via Zoom would exclude too many. I’ve therefore decided to push the strategy workshops into October, in the hope that restrictions may have eased by then. If not, however, then we will consider ways to hold the workshops online in a way that works for as many staff and students as possible - perhaps with recorded presentations that people view when they can, with discussions held via Slack channels, and using other tools to achieve effective online consultation and feedback. A decision on this will be taken towards the end of September.
Finally, the College of Science has concluded its process for promotions from Level A to Level B (this precedes the process for promotions to higher levels). I’m delighted to announce that all five RSAA candidates for promotion to Level B were successful: please join me in warmly congratulating Andrew Battisti, Noelia Martinez Rey, Joice Mathew, Sree Oh and Amit Seta!
Matthew Colless
