After a pretty heavy year on the politics side some of us are still standing.
The labs are still here, (most) of the staff are still here and another cohort of students have launched successfully. I'm calling it a win.... but at a cost.
The Uni has been through the wringer with the Federal Budget shenanigans. Yet another round of funding cuts, impending funding cuts and systematic changes topped off with a whole lot of drawn out uncertainty. This has resulted in a general grinding on the staff and a big overdraft on the goodwill that keeps the place running.
Another round of accreditation has been navigated with high praise for the quality of the course and the staff. The politics around the structure of the school aside, it was fairly painless. However the tension between the idealism of the APAC rules and the reality of where higher education is going has continued. This tension mostly plays out between APAC's idealistic staffing model and the reality of the downsize pressure that all the Uni's are under.
It's always interesting to spectate on these kinds of processes. Watching the slow evolution of the professional organisations as they struggle not to modernise while the commercial reality of operating in an environment that does not in any way resemble the one from the 70's that fostered (and educated) the mindset that is creating the drag on any attempt to change.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate some idealism in all things. But the reality is that a combination of factors and players are working at cross purposes to keep many of the professions (like psych) still functioning as though it was 1956. The problem is that mostly this results in the systems being completely non-viable within the current funding envelopes. Genius!
Before I start ranting too much.....
On the research side, there are lots of projects bubbling along. All manner of bits and pieces need building. I currently have about 14 projects on my to-do list but a few of them I would count as inactive at the moment pending further interest by the clients. I need to clear them before the honours students get too busy.
We have a good active cohort of PhD students at the moment with a number in the end game. (This will clear a couple of desks ... I hope) Not sure how many will be coming on board this year so it will be interesting to see how the desks play out. I can always stack a couple in a spare staff office I guess.
Speaking of staff, we lost a number of core staff over the last year through reorganisation and redundancies. Organisational change is always difficult. There is loss and sadness along with renewal and hope.... but that doesn't me we don't miss them.
The Uni is continuing its constant evolution (like any reactive organisation) and we are charging ahead at a considered pace. Not fast enough for many but too fast for some. There are new administration systems, more online courses and new campus locations. I personally am not missing some of the old administration systems. They were very aged in many of the design assumptions and were well past time for replacement. But the trade off is the pain of learning the new systems and figuring out how to get stuff done with them.
We have lost a number of admin staff and the rest have been centralised. This has created some renewal but also a concentration of pressure on the remaining staff. They have also been loaded with the new software systems, more duties (from the redundant staff) and a constantly evolving policy landscape and organisation which is making it very difficult to form new knowledge networks. Hopefully, we will have some time to stabilise and consolidate this year so that they can get over the learning curve of the new systems and find the productive sweet spots.
Just a few weeks now until the new honours cohort lands... time to shine the brass and grease the hinges....
