03 February 2010
Building capacity with quality: RMIT hosts conference
RMIT Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Margaret Gardner AO, with Minister Kim Carr on an earlier visit to RMIT. Both will contribute to the ATN conference.
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Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and journalist Glenn Milne are keynote speakers at the 12th annual Australian Technology Network (ATN) conference, which opens at RMIT University today.
If 2008 was the “year of reviews” then 2010 sees the sector facing an environment shaped by the Federal Government’s response to those reviews, particularly as it relates to quality.
Compacts, equity targets, transparent costing of research, academic standards and national regulation are all top of mind for the ATN in a market-driven environment that marks a new era for Australian higher education.
With the theme of “Building capacity with quality”, senior administrative staff and academics from Curtin University, University of South Australia, RMIT, University of Technology Sydney and Queensland University of Technology will hear from local and international experts.
RMIT Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Margaret Gardner AO, said RMIT was pleased to host what was certain to be an exciting and interesting discussion around the challenges and opportunities facing the sector.
“The conference is not confined to the lecture theatre. I encourage delegates to network with colleagues and explore the campus to see the many building developments we have under way at the moment,” Professor Gardner said.
Professor Ross Milbourne, ATN Chair, Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Technology Sydney, said that the strength of the network was the shared commitment to collaboration internally, nationally and internationally.
“The network continues to be the Australian university group with the fastest growing research capacity,” he said.
“Since the Australian Research Council’s inception in 2001, the ATN has increased its relative share of that merit-based funding by 41.7 per cent.”
Workshops preceding the event will focus on issues surrounding Transparent Costing of Research (TC) and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The three-day conference concludes on Friday.
The ATN’s aim is to help secure Australia’s reputation as the clever country, contributing to its social and economic wealth by building strategic partnerships and undertaking solution-based research which is relevant to the expectations of industry and the community.
