Brian Martin describes a difficult committee meeting he once attended which consisted of one representative from each department. When the meeting ended it left a bitter taste for many who participated. Having learned from this experience, Martin became a chair of the committee and tried a new system that overcame many of the previous problems.…

This study demonstrates the use of metaphor analysis in needs assessment for developmental support and shows how it can be used to critically examine assumptions in the literature about the ways emerging researchers conceptualize their career trajectory. We investigated the professional development needs of a group of science, technology,…

The future of education research is linked to what early career researchers in Education are doing and learning to do now. This paper presents a narrative of one early career researcher who works and lives in Australia. She tells the story about how she came to research and to an academic life, about what her doctoral work and education taught her…

What does it all mean for universities as research institutions when the external funding acquired by their academics, already stretched intellectually and time poor, is going to those who simply do not have the time to carry out the proposed research, i.e. to the academics themselves? That is, how can a full-time teaching and research academic…

Effective dissemination is crucial if innovation and development in teaching and learning in higher education are to lead to sustainable changes in practice. In 2003, King used an agricultural metaphor to challenge innovators to understand the purposes behind their dissemination aims. Similar to the way that seed can be spread, one could choose to…

University provision for academic development is well established in the USA, UK and many other countries. However, arrangements for its provision and staffing vary. In Australia, there has been a trend towards professional rather than academic staff appointments. Is this appropriate? In this paper, the domains of academic development work are…

Constrained public funding for universities and the emphasis placed on university-industry interactions mean that universities are increasingly required to compete for industrial funds for research. This in turn means that universities need to develop a customer service culture in order to be competitive and attractive to industry. Many studies…

Commonwealth funding formulae have caused Australian universities to become obsessed with maximising external research funding. Considerable pressure is applied to faculties, departments and scholars to apply for funding, and relative success in attracting it is given excessive weight in evaluating research performance. This may be productive in…

Research funding has been undergoing a shift from recurrent, stable funding to competitive funding of projects. The system rests on the assumption that the best proposals or the best researchers receive the resources, i.e., that quality is not only necessary but also sufficient to win a grant. A comparative study of the conditions of fund…

A survey investigated the Australian federal research grant process from the perspectives of unsuccessful 1991 applicants (n=222) from four universities. Findings include a number of limitations in the peer review process and information dissemination by the funding agency and raise questions about external evaluator selection. (Author/MSE)

Rural Australian health services have great difficulty completing complex competitive submissions for health funding. A collaborative, capacity building approach between a local university and six rural communities in Victoria proved effective in enabling the communities to research their own needs; consult with stakeholders; and develop a…

The reasons for increased collaboration between Australian universities and industry are examined, focusing on competitive research grant programs developed by the government in the last decade. University and industry response to these opportunities and to issues such as intellectual property rights and publication rights are discussed. (MSE)