I was sad to hear of the passing of two people who hold important places in UNSW history and in the hearts of many staff and students, past and present.
The first is Lady Patricia Mason, who was farewelled last month. Lady Patricia was the wife of Sir Anthony Mason who served as the fifth Chancellor of UNSW between 1994 and 1999. Sir Anthony came to UNSW following a stellar career in law, rising to the role of Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. As Chancellor, Sir Anthony successfully steered UNSW through a time of government funding cuts and organisational change and, led pioneering fundraising events to support scholarships, research and capital development. Sir Anthony credited Lady Patricia, his wife of almost 70 years, with his success and longevity in the law, saying he could not have achieved what he had without her ‘unflinching support’. Vale, Lady Patricia Mason.
I was also sad to hear of the passing of Justice Jane Mathews, former Deputy Chancellor at UNSW between 1992 and 1999. The Mathews name has a strong association with our university, the Mathews building named after her father, Dr Frank Mathews, who served as Deputy Chancellor from 1976 to 1981. In a tribute to Justice Mathews, the Honourable Justice Beazley described her as a hero in the law, music and education – citing her role at UNSW, her trailblazing efforts for women in law, including being the first woman named to the NSW Supreme Court, and for her support of the arts, including the Australia Ensemble. Vale, Justice Jane Mathews.
On behalf of UNSW, I offer our heartfelt condolences to both the Mason and Mathews families.
My thanks to the many staff who have been involved in preparations for our expected 35,000 visitors at Open Day this Saturday. It is shaping up to be a fantastic day, and I look forward to seeing many of you there.
You will have received my email earlier this week letting you know that the UNSW Strategic Priorities paper is now available online. The paper reflects the contributions of students, staff and stakeholders during the consultation over the past few months. Your feedback on the paper is welcome until Friday, 20 September and will form the basis for producing a Strategy 2025 Update document by the end of the year.
I was in Brisbane last week for the AFR Higher Education Summit to deliver a talk on equity in university admissions. I acknowledged the need to make a lot more progress at UNSW, but I was able to talk about the success of our Aspire program; our developing plans to offer places to the most talented students from the 300+ low-SES schools across the state, not solely relying on ATAR; efforts to expand our scholarship schemes; and our aim to have over 13 per cent of our undergraduate students coming from low SES backgrounds by 2025. If you are interested in the topic, you can read my talk here.
A focus of the Summit was the keynote delivered by Minister for Education, Dan Tehan. In his address, the Minister placed higher education within the context of the Government’s broader priorities of a strong economy and national security. He detailed the new performance-based funding scheme, as well as the various other reviews currently being undertaken, and highlighted the importance of collaborative research. This foreshadowed the Minister’s Press Club address the following day, in which he covered the Government’s Regional, Rural and Remote Education Strategy, and announced a University Foreign Interference Taskforce, which will see universities work with national security and education policy officials to mitigate instances of interference.
Some of you will have seen media coverage last week of a report suggesting that universities are ‘blind’ to the risk of reliance on one dominant international student market. As I wrote in response in the AFR, reproduced in the Newsroom here, our institutions are in fact highly attuned to the issues and plan accordingly.
I write this from Beijing where, on Tuesday, UNSW hosted a dinner celebrating the joint 70th anniversaries of both the establishment of UNSW and the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. Future students, staff, alumni and partners were joined by the new Australian Ambassador to China, His Excellency Graham Fletcher, and UNSW’s first student from mainland China, and 2019 Alumni Award recipient, Professor Yang Qixun. It was a memorable celebration.
The following day, UNSW co-hosted the Sino-Australia Science Future Summit, alongside Springer Nature and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institutes of Science and Development. We were fortunate that Ambassador Fletcher was also able to attend the summit which was an inspiring showcase of research talent under the overarching topic of ‘Living in smart cities with 21st century technology’. It included presentations from three internationally respected UNSW researchers, Scientia Professors Martin Green, Martina Stenzel and Deo Prasad. You can find out more about these two successful events in this edition of Inside UNSW and in the Newsroom.
It was great to meet with staff from the Faculty of Law last week, and receive an update from Head of School, Professor Andrew Lynch. As the 14th ranked law school globally, and with a student satisfaction level of more than 90 per cent, UNSW Law has a great deal to be proud of. The school also makes an important contribution in research and legal policy, through the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, the Australian Human Rights Institute, and the Kingsford Legal Centre. We had a productive discussion covering many topics from diversifying our international student body, ideas for greening our campus, and the critical importance of ensuring that our research collaborations take human rights into account.
I was excited to hear last week that UNSW was successful in the latest NHMRC funding round, with 29 projects receiving a total of >$40 million in the new Investigator Grant Scheme. The awards provide funding certainty for five years and successful applicants came from across the Faculties of Medicine, Science, Engineering and Arts and Social Sciences. Congratulations to all of those who received these prestigious awards.
Congratulations to Professor Darren Saunders and Dr Jodi Rawley on being recognised at the Eureka Awards last week at Sydney Town Hall. Professor Saunders was recognised for his commitment to innovative science communication and his efforts to make science more accessible in the community. Dr Rowley was recognised for her role leading the Australian Museum’s FrogID team, which has developed a smartphone app to enable citizen scientists to log information about distinctive frog calls to support conservation efforts.
Well done also to Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla and her team at the Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Centre on receiving the 2019 Business Higher Education Round Table Award for ‘Outstanding Collaboration in Research & Development – Major Partnerships’. The SMaRT Centre has a long-standing partnership with steel manufacturer, MolyCop, with which it collaborates on ‘Green Steel’, made using old rubber tyres instead of coking coal, diverting millions of tyres from landfill.
Finally, a note to let you know that the call for applications for the 2020 Scientia Fellowship Program will open on 1 October. These fellowships are available for early to mid-career researchers and you can read more about the Program and how to apply in this edition of Inside UNSW.
Best wishes,
Ian
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