Taking it online: Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton participates in Operating Plan workshops with staff last week.

The COVID-19 outbreak has meant temporary adjustments in many aspects of life. While it is certainly not business as usual on campus for Macquarie at the moment, the engagement with the University community in the development of our Operating Plan 2020-2024 continues – albeit in digital mode.

With one week remaining in the initial engagement period for the Operating Plan, staff and student workshops have now gone online in order to maintain momentum while observing social distancing recommendations.

The Vice-Chancellor joined participants on the Zoom digital meeting platform for workshops last week, to hear more staff feedback and ideas to support the Plan’s five strategic areas, as well as hearing from students in a number of virtual meetings yesterday.

Students shared their support for the ongoing efforts in communicating updates during the response to Coronavirus, as well as providing input to the development of the Operating Plan.

As expected in the current climate, the need for agility was a common theme in the staff workshops, and there was continued discussions around improving processes.

Here are some of the things staff had to say during last week’s workshops. Add your views on the digital engagement platform by this Sunday 29 March.

STUDENTS FIRST

“I’d like to see more upfront support for international students.”

“We could be more flexible in allowing students to undertake paid internship opportunities.”

WAYS OF WORKING

“When it comes to systems integration, we need to ensure downstream services are considered.”

“We have to reduce the number of our smaller systems, and the business processes which drive them, in order to be able to have agility at the top line.”

OUR PEOPLE

“There is a sense that the 40:40:20 allocation of time for academic staff sometimes adds up to more than 100.”

“The opportunities for development of a career plan out of Early Career Researcher roles is tricky, especially if they have a heavy teaching load. Sometimes there’s not enough time to do research.”

FOCUSED INVESTMENT IN RESEARCH

“At the University we are risk averse and over-process in complex ways. We need to find a way for our researchers to be supported in research projects in a timely way with funding flowing quickly.”

“How can we streamline funding better, improve our processes and how we collaborate? We need to find some middle ground where the University can innovate, whilst still managing risk.”

“We have some research areas that we could focus on and make the University more famous for, attracting more students. For instance, applied science universities in Germany are very attractive to new students.”