Meeting 14/97 of the Committee of Deans was held at 2.15 pm on Tuesday, 11 November 1997 in the Sir George Lush Room, Ground Floor, University Offices Building 3a, Clayton Campus.

Tony Calder

97/0025 Secretary

An apology was been received from Professor J E Maloney, Deputy Vice-Chancellor - International & Public Affairs.

Professor M von Itzstein attended for Professor C Chapman.

The minutes of meeting 13/97 were confirmed subject to the amendment of the fifth dot point under item 4.2 - 1998 Budget Process to read as follows:

Mr Wade advised the Committee that the current budget methodology was under review and that a discussion paper on the issue would be issued in December 1997. Following extensive consultation, it was hoped to have a refined budget model in place by June 1998.

Professor Lindsay advised the Committee that the next iteration of Professor Webb’s discussion paper, Induction to Teaching for New Academic Staff, would address, where practicable, matters raised by Deans in discussions with Professor Webb and related issues raised in the West Review discussion paper learning for life.

The next iteration of Professor Webb’s discussion paper will be submitted to the 2 December meeting of the Committee of Deans.

Document D68/97 was attached.

During extensive discussion of the document, the following items of significance were raised:

recurrent activity and capital works budgets were included in the budget papers;

research grants and other streams of external income were still being refined in the budget estimates;

the Commonwealth is to provide final figures for research infrastructure grants but it was expected that these would be similar to 1997 levels;

the Monash Merit and Equity Awards had yet to be included in the Teaching and Learning budget (page 8);

the indicative I T Infrastructure and Services budget (page 11) had increased to $22m but the precise priorities may change on appointment of a Director of Information Technology;

the Capital Works, Refurbishment and Maintenance budget had been tightened; this was largely due to the need to provide for increased expenditure on information technology;

international students fee levels had not been reduced from the previously forecast levels but a provision of 5% (approx.) had been made in case of any downturn in fee income due to the recent devaluation of some Asian currencies; current information was encouraging for 1998;

the contribution of the Monash University College of Art and Design to the Bachelor of Multi-Media was still under discussion and final resolution of the issue may result in some minor alterations to the budget allocations; and

to support any significant faculty restructuring, a provision of $2m had been made to meet the interest costs of borrowed funds (page 5) which was a different approach to that used in 1997.

Professor Darvall provided an update on the status of the enterprise bargaining process for academic and general staff. In addition, Mr Wade advised the Committee that trades and services staff had voted overwhelmingly in support of the recently agreed Monash University Enterprise Agreement (Trades and Services).

Professor Lindsay advised the Committee that the aggregate value of applications under this scheme was likely to exceed the sum of $2m. Following completion of the remaining administrative details, the applications would be perused by the Academic Planning and Support Unit and Professor Darvall before each application is reviewed by a three member committee.

Professor Lindsay advised the Committee that a Teaching and Learning Plan Working Party, chaired by Associate Professor Merran Evans, had been formed. Consistent with the key tasks specified in Leading the Way - The Monash Plan 1998 - 2002, the target date for release of the draft Teaching and Learning Plan would be March 1998.

4.5 General Manager

The Committee was advised that Monash Council members had queried the anomalous situation of two courses having the same title but different course numbers. In some of these instances, the fee structure for two similarly named courses was the same but in others the fee structure varied.

Mr Wade advised the Committee that a primary consideration was to ensure that courses were clearly defined in the market place and that like courses delivered via the same mode at different locations were similarly priced.

Following consultation with faculties to resolve the identified anomalies, Council authorised the Executive Committee of Council to consider and make decisions on the various course fees for 1998.

Document D69/97 was attached to the agenda.

Following extensive discussion of the issues raised in the document D69/97, Professor Robinson recommended that the issue be further discussed at the next meeting of the Committee.

To assist the discussion, Professor Darvall was requested to present a paper on the matter.

Professor Quartly advised the Committee that initial analysis of the VTAC Preference Distribution Data indicated that the level of first preference applications for Berwick campus was lower than comparable 1996 data.

Noting that further analysis of the data was required, members suggested a number of approaches for addressing the situation should the need arise.

Fuji Xerox provided a demonstration titled The Future of Printing - Print on Demand. The demonstration focused on the following areas:

Monash Print Service Strategy;

cost and wastage minimisation;

electronic file input for hardcopy publishing;

network printing from anywhere within Monash; and

future directions of information distribution models.

A schedule of 1998 meeting dates, including proposed meeting dates for the Committee of Deans, was attached (D70/97).

The next scheduled Committee of Deans meeting will be held on 2 December at 2.15pm in the Sir George Lush Room.

Vice-Chancellor

Deputy Vice-Chancellors

Deans

General Manager