Thursday, April 19, 2012

From Strong to Great

Three years ago we started on our ten year renewal plan. Our plan said we were going to be financially sustainable in two years, one of Australia's strongest regional universities in five years and a great university in ten years.

We achieved financial sustainability well within the two years. I think it could be argued that we are now one of Australia's strongest regional universities. We have many new programs and researchers meeting the need of our community. I am very confident that all stakeholders will recognize that we have met this target at the five year mark.

My mind is now turning to how we can move the university from strong to GREAT. For the rest of this year I want us to have a debate about how we go about meeting our ten year goal.

In the original renewal plan we defined a great university by two measures - we would be in the top 50% of universities for research output and that we would be Australia's most engaged university.

But I think we need to do a lot more in defining what we mean by a great university and we need to produce a road map of how we are going to get to our greatness. So I want the whole of the university - staff, students, alumni and friends to start giving this some serious thought.

As you might expect I have some strong opinions on all of this! However I think we will need a common vision if we are really going to be a great University by 2020. I am really looking forward to working with you all to get CQUniversity to the place we all know it deserves to be.

Now on a personal note I cannot resist sharing with you a picture of my Grandson Owen. I was with Owen in Adelaide over Easter. His favorite phrase as "Gran Gran (his name for me) that's just not funny". We brought him this dinosaur costume at an Easter market.




Scott



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