1st major renewal goal - achieved

Two years ago we started on out path of renewal for CQUniversity. We set the 2 year goal to make the university financially sustainable. I am very pleased to say that we have achieved this goal. CQUniversity’s finances are in a good position. I have been very impressed by the stewardship that out CFO David Turner has provided in this area. But this goal has not been reached by the work of David alone. Everyone in the University can be proud of the work they have done to get us into a such a good position. However I have included a picture of David here because of his hard work, because he is with his partner Barbara who also contributes a lot to the University and because he looks so dapper in black tie!


In the past 24 months we have developed over 20 new programs, we have about the same number in the pipeline and we have removed programs that have run their course. All of this has increased our domestic enrolments by over 10% this year. We are over our government enrolment cap for the first time in many years.

Yes we have had a turn down in international numbers – but this could have been much worse without the hard work and dedication of our fantastic people working on the metropolitan campuses. Let us not forget that even with the turn down in international numbers our CMS operation is still contributing massively to the finances of the university.

We have made savings across the board and seen efficiency gains across the board. We also managed to be one of the first universities to settle its EB negotiations – thanks to the hard work of the university negotiating team and the unions.

We have made massive investments for the future including campus expansions, new laboratories and even new campuses.

So I think we can safely say our first goal has been reached. We now need to work toward our 5 year goal of being a really strong regional university meeting the educational and research needs of our communities and which underpins our national operations. And of course we also need to work in parallel towards our 10 year goal of being one of Australia’s great universities by us becoming Australia’s most engaged University.

Well done to all CQUniversity staff in making such a great start to our renewal process.

Move towards a demand led system

In the past universities such as CQUniversity have had a cap on how many domestic students we can take. This has made it quite difficult to start new programs - we simply did not have the places to assign to those programs. Next year the government will lift these caps and we will be able to take as many students as want to come to the university.

This offers us a great opportunity to grow CQUniversity to a size that best meets the needs of our communities. So our enrollments this year are up about 10% making us one of the fastest growing universities in Queensland. It has also allowed us to start programs such as law and paramedical studies.

Some have worried about the competition that the demand led system would bring. If we can grow so can all the other universities. Would students be attracted away from our region? Personally I do not share these worries. We are offering and developing much needed quality programs and that is why we are growing.

We will all have to work hard over the next few years while the caps are off to make the best use this fantastic opportunity.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Rockhampton

I have become a twit

I have decided to take the next step in digital communication and become a twitterer.

Someone asked me yesterday why I bothered to blog and now twitter. Good question. The simple answer is I really want to work in partnership with all the stakeholders in CQUniversity to build a great university. Now there is a terrible word "stakeholder". It really is management speak. What I mean is people - people who I can work with. This includes students, fellow workers and people from our communities.

Without electronic communication I simply could not get to speak to all of you. This blog gets about 2600 views per month. That's a lot of communication. This communication needs to be two way - so please comment on these blogs and feel free to email me.

So the next step in this communication is twitter. You can follow me as CQUniversityVC. I will get a twitter button added to this site - I will need help - that level of technology is way beyond me.



By the way I was really pleased to hear about the work that our Dr Alison Jones has been doing on the reef. She and colleagues have shed light onto how fish use tools. how cool is that? Read more here. Alison is yet another one of our star researchers. She is making quite a name for herself in observing rare marine phenomena. You may remember her video of the giant puffer fish last year. You can view that here.



This is a picture of Alison out on the reef. Anita and I were very privileged last year to spend a day out on the reef with Alison. What a star!

On the way home

I have spent the past few days in Canberra talking to politicians and their advisors. The main reasons for the visit was to inform people about our renewal plan progress and to talk about our plans to become a dual sector university. I also got the chance to go in the gallery for question time yesterday - it made VCAC and academic board look very tame.


The Decision Makers in Canberra are very supportive of what we are doing and can see that our dual sector plans will really benefit our community in Central Queensland. It was good to have Nik Babovic our Deputy Vice Chancellor (Vocational Education and Training). He has the knowledge and expertise to demonstrate that we really know what we are doing in this new exciting venture. I am still very hopeful that we will merge with Central Queensland Institute of TAFE. The main benefit of a merger will be teaming up with the CQIT staff team. They will have the expertise to to make the new dual sector merger a success, to really take us forward in the VET area. I really believe that there will be a great synergy between the TAFE and the University. Together we can be much more than the sum of our parts.

I am very pleased to hear that there as been a lot of progress back at base since I have been away. I was particularly pleased to hear about the successful professional accreditation of our property degree specializations.
Read more here.

Yesterday I saw a sign at parliament house - danger icy surface. It will be great get back to sunny Queensland at least our warning signs are only about snakes.

Location:Canberra

Letter from the Canberra

I am writing this in Canberra. I am down here to meet with politicians to let them know how we are going at CQUniversity. All in all I think I have 17 meetings planned! These visits (which I try and do quite often) also give me a chance to hear how people are perceiving how we are progressing. I am sure the dual sector university plans will be close to the top of the list of discussions with most people. They will also be interested to hear about how we are progressing with the renewal plan in general. There is a lot of progress to report.

Yesterday I attended the women's leadership breakfast organized by Barabara Lawrence. The speaker was Mary Carol from Capricorn Enterprise. What a fascinating life story she has! One of eleven children who has gone from success to success. She is a great supporter of the CQUnivsity. If you ever get the chance to her her speak do take that opportunity. The picture in this post is of Mary and Barbara.



Before I caught the plane I sat on the Audit and Risk committee and Planning and Resources committee. The agenda's of these meetings make you realize just how much we have going on at the moment. New programs, new campuses, new buildings, dual sector negotiations and overseas developments. I believe that we have to do all of this at this time. This really is our time. Our time to build an improved university to meet the needs of all our communities. I know this is meaning a lot of hard work for many in the University - and I thank you for the effort you are putting inat the moment. I think you only have to look around the place to see that your effort is paying off!

It is about zero degrees down here at the moment. It is always good to come down here at this time of year. It reminds you why you choose to live in Queensland.

Science Camp

Last evening I had the pleasure of attending the closing of the CQUniversity Science Camp in Rockhampton. This was a camp we held for local year 12 students who are interested in science. We had a fantastic group of students who came and spent a few days on campus. They did work in our laboratories and had presentations from our scientists and speakers from outside the University. The event ended with them giving presentations on sustainability. It was very clear that they had really enjoyed being part of CQUniversity for a few days.

I really want to thank the staff that were involved in this. You gave up your valuable time in a non-teaching week. You did the University a great service in showing local students and schools what we have to offer at our University. However I think your contribution was even greater than this - you helped to encourage a group of very talented youngsters to seriously consider science and health science!

I am just off to term two student orientation. Our offers for term two are up 40% on last year! If you remember they were also up last year. Yesterday I met with the new International students. What a great bunch they were! All our hard work is really paying off - CQUniversity just gets more and more successful. I am really looking forward to meeting the new students!

Unsung Heroes

Yesterday I spoke at the Australasian Syllabus Plus Reference Group (ASPRG) conference. Syllabus Plus is a major piece of software that is used to time table in universities. This really got me thinking about time tabling - something that I admit I rarely do. The two major (expensive) resources that we have in our university are people and our facilities. It is interesting that we invest a great deal in the management of people through our People and Culture Directorate - but relatively little on the management of our facilities. Yes I know we have our Facilities Management Directorate - but they are mainly concerned with the maintenance and construction of our buildings. The timetablers are the people that manage the utilization of our facilities. These are the guys who make sure the University gets the best return on it's investment on infrastructure.

Like many people in the University they are the unsung heroes of the place. The people who are often forgotten - unless something goes wrong. There are so many people in the University who have difficult complex jobs who keep the place running.

We are moving to recognize these unsung heroes through events such as the professional show case and the professional staff conference. We need to do more of this.

Can I take this opportunity to thank all the unsung heroes in our University. THANKS.