globalization issues - baby related

The arrival day of the LittleOne approaches and I find myself more and more often browsing through baby related websites. Compared to most other parents-to-be we know we are not well prepared yet - which means we don't think that the LittleOne will need a lot of stuff in the beginning. When it comes to clothing we did not buy anything new so far, but we got a lot of things from friends and family, even a lot of stuff that I was wearing as a baby. We are quite well equipped in this sector and there are just 2-4 things we'd like to buy new. For buying new clothes we have 2 requirements: they should be organic and they should be made in Australia. Even though Australia has quite a bit of cotton and esp. wool production, it is difficult to find clothing made from Australian raw products. So we would be fine with raw materials coming from China or India if they have the labels sustainable, organic and fair-trade.

Spending half of this afternoon browsing the web for products fitting our ideas, I found tons of websites offering organic baby clothing. But most of them are just retailers selling several different brands, so for each brand I looked up the company and by this about 90% of the content had to be ruled out, because the company was either in the US or it was just Australian-owned, which does not say much about where their products are produced (an most of them don't tell).

A while ago I talked to a colleague about the difficulty of finding organic clothes in general and she recommended to have a look on the Etsy website. You can certainly find a lot of great stuff there, but again many sellers are based in the US and I see the positive sides of buying organic shrinking a lot, when I have to have it shipped from the US. I already have issues with having stuff shipped from the other side of Australia.

The same problem now occurs for my baby-shopping plans. I'd love to support local businesses, esp. in the textile sector as it is such a dumping price market with all the issues that come with that. But living on this huge island does not seem to mean that a lot of products are Australian made. Instead, everything is shipped in from all around the world (sometimes leading to an exaggerated increased price tag) and the local producers are quite hard to find if they exist at all. "Made in Australia" is a tag very positively promoted in the media, but you can find it mostly on veggies or tourist products. The eco textile industry seems to have only a few small sprouts so far - or if there are larger companies in this sector they are hiding very well from my Google skills.

If there are any readers out there who have good suggestions for Australian-made organic clothing, please speak up! I'd be more than happy to invest my salary back in the country I currently live in.

PMPS 2013

Even though we had a lot of political hick-ups during the past few months and even though the new government has not been able yet to announce the outcomes of the Fellowships and Grant applications in the ARC system of this year, they managed to hold the annual dinner for the Prime Minister's Prize for Science award. On the one hand this is a bit cynical as researchers all over Australia don't know yet - at the beginning of November - if they will have funding for their students or even a position for themselves from January on, because the political situation holds up the announcement. But on the other hand some very impressive (and quite young) personalities were honored with the various prizes this year and it is important to give this appropriate space and attention as well.

The Prime Minister's Prize for Science: Prof. Terry Speed from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne

Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year, Associate Professor Angela Moles from UNSW

Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, Associate Professor Andrea Morello from UNSW

Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools: Mr Richard Johnson from the Rostrata Primary School in Perth
Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools: Ms Sarah Chapman from the Townsville State High School

 Congratulations to all of you and your impressive achievements in  teaching and research!

Australian peculiarities II: Australians and their cars

Australians love their cars. Preferably big cars with a huge thirst. Cars that look like they are meant to be for the wilderness, but mostly they are used to drive here to drive the kids around and to conveniently get the groceries from A to B. The average car here is at least twice as heavy as the average car where I come from and as people here on average are shorter as well there must be some who need a ladder to get into these cars.

But the existence of these cars is not the peculiar thing, it's more how they are used. Or how they are used while they are actually not used. Because for some reason people hate to switch off their cars. On my way between home and office which is about 15min by foot I usually see at least 3 cars parked at the side of the street with their motors running. If it is a very hot or cold day I'd guess people sit inside a running car because of the AC. But on most of the days that can't be the reason.

It's interesting to see what people do in these cars: having lunch, refreshing their make-up, checking something on their laptop, chatting with a friend,... . Nothing what you would need a running motor for. And it's not that they just take a 2-min break and then they are on the road again. The "chatting with a friend" incident took over half an hour and occurred late in the evening under our bedroom window. Another example is the one with the dad and his two sons waiting outside the hospital for the mom plus child number 3. They were not even inside the car but were sitting outside enjoying the nice weather with the doors of the car wide open - and the motor running.

I once asked a lady why she does not stop the motor of her car. We met in the middle of nowhere, where we both took photos of koalas sleeping in the trees. I found it inappropriate that she pestered the habitat of the koalas with exhaust fumes while taking photos of them. She answered, that her car is a Diesel and it is supposed to cool down before you stop the motor. I really wonder, who told her that: maybe the guy from the petrol station.

Keeping motors running is actually not only restricted to cars: maintenance guys having lunch while the chain saw or the leaf blower or the lawn mower is chugging along is a very common sight as well.

Maybe petrol is just still too cheap down here to get people thinking about environmental stuff and with the new government, which will sack the carbon tax and a bunch of climate institutions right with it, one can't expect a positive impulse from that side - at least not in the near future.

election - done!

The election is over, the coalition won very clearly! Hopefully the politician bashing is done now for a while and this energy is more used to do the actual job of a politician!

pre-election science hick-ups

In most societies politicians or the people in the background of politics have a great influence on science. How much funding will go into science, what kind of research will be funded, how stressful and competitive it is to get funding, ... . Often enough these things might change when a new government is elected and the new responsible people have a different opinion about this topic than the former responsible people.

Struggling towards the election with all the more or less usual campaigning and political sandbox fights (see: Rudd vs. Gillard) Australia could be in such an "unstable" funding situation, but universities and research and science is actually not on their agenda. And even though it seems likely that we will get a change in government, nobody really expects great changes for the research funding.

However, the political situation still takes its toll on researchers. Endless amounts of hours have been sunk into writing grant applications at the beginning of the year. Usually the outcomes are announced in July or August. But for some reason the political situation hold up this process and right now nobody knows when the outcomes of the fellowship and grant applications will be made public - some time after the election, when the new government has warmed up their seats in the parliament. I'm sure all the reviewers and all the panel members already did their job and the decisions about who gets how much are already made. So why holding up the announcement? Because some not-yet-elected Minister of Science wants to give a press conference on that? Do politicians understand that other people's professional and to some extend personal lives depend on these outcomes? That they want to know if they still have a job at the beginning of next year or if they still can fund their post-docs?

I do think that Australia fosters scientific research very well and gives a lot of opportunities to get funding. But I really dislike the attitude of Australian politics to sometimes forget that their decisions have impact on people's lives and that giving them sufficient time to adapt to changes instead of changing the rules from one day to the other would create much more trust in the abilities of the government.

the requirements for promotion

Promotion: the process where you have to wrap up your work, your achievements, your aims on a few pages and present yourself in the best possible light to climb on the next career step and be allowed to bear a new title.

This process is totally new to me. On the one hand, of course, because I am still a "newbie" and the only "promotion" I had was from grad student to post doc, but on the other hand because the process here is totally different to the country where I did my PhD. In PhD-country there are no titles like "Associate Lecturer" or "Senior Lecturer" - you are either a Postdoc or a Professor. And because of this there is no small-step promotion process - there is just the big jump to the Professor-level. In PhD-country the salary depends on your age and maybe on how long you have worked at uni and it is automatically adapted each year. In Australia we have the same system, but just within one salary group. As an Associate Lecturer my salary will increase up to highest salary within this group and then I have to go through the promotion process to the Lecturer level, if I want my salary to increase further. This is the situation I am in at the moment. I've been here for a while now and have a decent track record, so I thought it would be good to apply for promotion! There is a bunch of boxes I have to tick and I have to put a big application together which shows all my achievements since I am here.

Out of curiosity I had a look at the promotion policies of other Australian universities and it appeared that they vary quite a lot from each other.

I certainly didn't do a comprehensive search, but from my impression most universities have quite comprehensible promotion requirements.

For example the University of Technology Sydney has the following requirements for promotion from level A to B:

The staff member’s overall performance should:
(i) consistently exceed that normally expected of a level A academic
(ii) demonstrate the staff member’s capacity to perform at the level of Lecturer
(iii) demonstrate the staff member’s capacity to pursue a successful academic career as evidenced by, for example:
• the commencement of an academic portfolio. [...]
• the ability to achieve an appropriate balance between teaching, research and service over time
• the ability to make linkages between these three areas and understand how one can inform the other
• the ability to form productive relationships and work collaboratively and in teams
(iv) reflect at least competent performance across each of the three areas of academic activity (a)-(c) described below. .[....]
(v) demonstrate high personal standing in terms of workplace behaviour, including ethical and professional behaviour, respect for others, a collegial approach and support for equity and diversity in the University community.

So, to get promoted one has to be at the top level of the Associate Lecturer cohort and show promise to be able to perform well on the Lecturer level. Sounds feasible.

The University of Sydney gives a little table to explain their threshold levels for promotion, which for Research focused promotion (there is teaching only and research and teaching combined as well) looks like this:

The explanation for the different levels is the following:

Exceptional - An applicant whose achievements are Exceptional should demonstrate highly significant achievements and contributions in relation to the criteria at the level for which the applicant is applying.

Outstanding - An applicant whose achievements are Outstanding should demonstrate achievements and contributions which clearly meet the criteria at the level for which the applicant is applying.
Superior - An applicant whose achievements are Superior should demonstrate highly significant achievements and contributions in relation to the criteria at the applicant's current level.
Satisfactory - An applicant whose achievements are Satisfactory should demonstrate achievements and contributions which meet the criteria at the applicant's current level.

So, at the University of Sydney one has not only to be at the top of the current level, but one has to show significant contributions compared to the people in the level above. This is a significantly higher hurdle to take compared to UTS. 

But the most specific promotion requirements I found for the University of New South Wales. They give a neat little table as well, giving the option to go for research focused, teaching focused or combined. But they are much more specific about on what level they want an applicant to perform. Here is the table:

 

 

And the abbreviations mean: 

Outstanding Plus is expected standard at the top quartile of level above current appointment (O+)
Outstanding is expected standard between the midpoint and the top quartile of the level above current appointment (O)
Superior is expected standard at the midpoint of level above current appointment (Sup)
Sustained is expected standard for the bottom quartile of the level above the current level of appointment (S) 

Not Sustained is a level of performance that is no higher than at the current level (NS)
Acceptable level of performance requires evidence of engagement with the university in both teaching and service (A)

To get promoted on the research focused track your research achievements have to be above the midpoint of what people in the level above you have achieved. So, you have to perform in the upper part of level B for at least some time while you are still level A, to be able to be promoted to level B. Which means you must be as good as or nearly as good as the people who plan to become promoted to level C, for which the same criteria are in place. This sounds to me like a crazy strategy to ensure the quality of each level is constantly increasing (which is not a bad thing per se). And what happened to the people in the lower two quartiles of a certain level? They must have started off somewhere above midpoint by definition. And where is the upper limit for this "quality increasing" strategy?

School vs. university

Over the last few weeks it has been in the headlines all over: the Gonsky reform plans. The Australian schooling system suffers from a large gap between high and low performing students and the Gonsky school reform aims to improve this. The Australian schooling system is quite complex and responsibilities as well as the degree of schools autonomy vary from state to state. Schools funding is fed from both the states and territories as well as from the commonwealth and one can imagine that it is difficult to figure out how much money a certain school should actually get. And then there are very different requirements of the schools throughout the country. Schools in rural areas have different needs than schools in the city, private schools differ a lot from public schools - and the Catholic Church plays a major role in the schooling system as well. The Gonsky reform aims to account for these differences on a financial level and to close the gap between high and low performing students. Schools which e.g. have a high percentage of students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds or kids with disabilities will get more money per student to be able to provide high quality education. The whole plan sums up to a A$ 14.5 billion injection in the school system over the next 6 years.

But where is the money supposed to come from? The Commonwealth will contribute about 2/3 of it and to do that,.... well, the plan is that about A$2.3 billion of it will be stripped from the universities. About A$900 million will be taken from the general university grants and the rest will be saved by converting student scholarships into loans and by cancelling the discounts for students who pay their student fees upfront. That does not sound incredibly much in the first place and universities calculated that it comes down to a cut of about A$200 per student. The total funding of the Commonwealth to the universities will still increase, just not with the same rate as expected. But as the reform is planned to commence in 2014 we talk about money that in principle is already planned into the budgets and nearly spend. Combined with the earlier termination of the Future Fellowship program and the funding cuts from last year this adds up to a critical level. 

But besides the fact that nobody wants to have money taken away from them even if it is for a very good cause such as better school education: isn't it a weird thing to do? To aim for a better education on the primary and secondary level but then reduce the possibilities for the same now better qualified students to study at an Australian university? Esp. in a public university system which already has one of the highest student fees world wide? Isn't the higher education lifted into a new level of luxury by that?

Until now the whole Gonsky reform still isn't finalized. The states have to give their consent to it, because the schools are primarily their responsibility and so far just New South Wales has signed the agreement. And then there are elections coming up later in the year and maybe this changes everything anyways - at least that is what the opposition claims to do now in the pre-election phase.

The Australian way of academic fashion

Scicurious on Neurotic Physiology wrote this interesting bit about the male/female double standard when it comes to "what to wear" in a university setting.

The topic got a lot of comments, mostly agreeing that the pressure to dress nice for work is much higher for female academics than for their male colleagues and is needed to be taken seriously by colleagues and students. Many of the commentators come from a US background and reflect pretty much my impression of dress-code behavior on American conferences. The few non-US contributors draw a bit of a different picture: that it is not so necessary to be neatly dressed-up including nice bits of jewelry and make-up to feel comfortable and to be taken seriously at work - neither for men nor for women.

The Australian way on the fashion topic is a bit special though: on the one hand Australians care a lot about what they wear and how they look. Not only when they go to a horse race, but at the beach, in the shopping malls, for a quick dinner at the Asian restaurant around the corner and for work as well. Australians wear stuff to work that I'd consider wearing for a cocktail party. Women usually appear better dressed, but men have a good sense for style as well. But in academia these social rules don't seem to apply. Here everybody dress as they please and looking at the university-wide professor and post-doc level you can find a great mix of everything. I haven't seen anybody in holey sweatpants yet, but both women and men cover the whole range from comfy clothes up to "nearly too nice for work". The (mostly male) post-docs and young academics in my institute are usually dressed in a nice "buttoned shirt and comfy pants" way and this is sometimes so inherent to them, that they forget to dress up when they go to an American conference.

I don't think that Australia is the "holy land" where people (in academia) are not judged by their looks, but it's maybe a bit more relaxed than in the US. And this setting gives me a great playground to experiment with work fashion and to pimp my tomboyish wardrobe without risking getting too much attention for it in one or the other way.

 

open access

Open access to research articles of publicly funded projects is one of the big topics in the age of electronic publishing. Many universities in Australia have set up repositories to store the publications of their researchers and make at least the meta-data accessible to the public. The ANU went even a bit further by making files of a large amount of journal articles available for whoever is interested in them. 

Already last year the National Medical Health and Research Council (NHMRC) implemented an open access clause in their funding rules and now the second big funding body in Australia - the Australian Research Council (ARC) - dared doing the same. From now on all  published research funded by the ARC has to be made publicly available within 12 month after the publication (with a bunch of exception of course, like: when the journal forbids it *sigh*). This is a great statement, catching up a bit with the big open access projects like PubMed, Narcis or ArXiv. 

Big step in the right direction!

being a student? - being a professional?

Recently I have been thinking about the pros and cons of the PhD student system here in Australia and I sometimes find it a bit odd. 

Here are my thoughts - I'd like to hear yours about this.

Doing a PhD is considered to be part of ones education, which is finalized by getting a degree. Therefore people doing a PhD are considered as students. On the other hand, to get a PhD degree one has to contribute to the knowledge in a certain field in a substantial and unique way. The work needed to get a PhD degree is very different to the work that is needed to get a Bachelor or Master degree. No lectures, no exams, no clear time table, no crowd of other students doing exactly the same homework, quiz, assignment. Instead the opportunity to work on a project that does not have a defined end product, to solve questions without the solutions already written down in a text book. The possibility to find amazing new stuff, publish in great journals, present on conferences. And the possibility to have the most frustrating time of your life, when nothing works and you don't understand your results at all.

These two situations are very different and the expectations from the people who finally grade the student are very different as well depending on if we talk about a Bachelor or PhD degree. But still one is called a student in both situations - "title-wise" no progress has been made when one enters a PhD program.

And as the future PhD is still a student, he still has to pay fees on his way to a degree. At the same time he is maybe contributing to the success of his advisor's projects - professional projects, which were rated so important, that the ARC or the NHMRC or whoever funds them. A student who is doing work on a professional level. Something is odd about this.

But not only the academics / the supervisors see their future PhDs mainly as students. The PhD students themselves do that as well. The "common" student life style comes with a bunch of advantages and esp. with a lot of flexibility in how to arrange ones day (I'm not talking here about the students who have full-time jobs additional to their studies). Skipping the class early in the morning? Postpone studying for just one more day? The decision on how much time students spend on their studies (additional to compulsory lectures) is their decision alone and besides studying for their exams, they learn a lot about time management, stress handling, learning styles and efficiency "on-the-go". However, for a "common" student it all comes down to his or her degree alone. If they fail it's maybe not good for the universities statistics, but in principle it's not affecting anybody else than the student.

For a PhD student the framework in which they work often doesn't change much compared to a "common" student. Their working times are still kept very flexible and they might have the impression, that their work/studies are still "just about themselves". Usually they work on quite confined projects and not all of them get the opportunity to see the larger impacts their work has in the context of their supervisors grant, the faculties' success, the long term achievements of the university. Their projects might not seem to be significant in a bigger context. But in reality their everyday work is embedded in larger projects, more people are involved and might depend on the outcomes of the PhD students work. Certainly the future funding situation of their group is determined by the outcomes and quality of their projects - but still they are "only" students.

How much PhD students see themselves as students or as professionals certainly depends a lot on the culture of the supervisor with his/her group. But the general university culture of referring to them as students with everything that is involved in that - from student fees to total freedom in their time management - does not fit with the high expectations their supervisors and the universities (and in principle the funding agencies) have when it come to the outcomes of their projects.

To be successful with ones projects, a researcher often needs a bunch of highly motivated and curious PhD students. And it's not always clear on what the motivation of a PhD student for his/her PhD project is based on. So, one can be lucky (or talented) and only pick those student who are curious about the science, who see themselves already more as a professional and who are committed to their projects. Or one has to find ways to change the view (and the motivation?) of those PhD students, who still see themselves mostly as students. And maybe a general change in university culture that somehow "upgrades" the PhD student would help as well...?

Our PhD students have already left or are about to leave for their long Christmas breaks. Most of them are traveling to their home countries for family re-union. They take about 4-6 weeks breaks - at a stretch. That's more than my whole annual leave! 

One of the nice perks of being a grad student....

funding and the people who pay you

A couple of days ago the Australian Research Council (ARC) finally announced the outcomes of this year's proposal round. Everything was kept on hold for a while until the government had decided where to cut a serious amount of money from the tertiary education sector. All researchers, who had put in proposals this year, kept their breath first because they were worried, that the money might be cut from the grants they applied for. And after they knew that this will not be the case, it was the usual breath-keeping during the days before the results are announced.

The very nice thing about ARC funding is that the outcomes are published online and are separated into all potentially interesting aspects: how many applications were funded, how much money did they get, what were the success rates in general, in each field, for each university, for women, for men, separated by age, separated by years after obtaining a PhD,... . And of course one can look up each proposal abstract plus names and institutions and how much money they got for what kind of topic. 

This is how it's supposed to be in a funding scheme based on tax money! Every person can look up what their tax money is spent on. And everybody can just write an email to the person who got the money and ask why they think the money is well spent in their project. Usually nobody does that, but at this point the system gives the opportunity to engage with democracy, because everybody can inform themselves very easily. Where I come from politicians don't care about the projects that are funded - or at least, if they do, it's not transported to the public. Here the opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb complained that a lot of the money goes to projects, which do not seem meaningful and innovative enough. And they made a whole list of projects, that should not have gotten funding from their point of view. AND some of these projects were mentioned in the newspapers. Sounds harsh, but it's a great starting point for some discussions. Esp. a big Center of Excellence is in the focus of this debate. The director of this center responded to the complaints and explained how this research is important for Australia and why it's worth spending the money. Stepping out of the ivory tower, getting involved in "the real world", explaining your stuff to people, who usually do something totally different. But they pay you, so they have the right to know. And if some are even interested for more reasons than just for the money - even better!

PMPS

Last Wednesday the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science (PMPS) were awarded. Since 2002 the Australian government awards these prizes for outstanding contributions in research and teaching of science. This year the recipients were the following:

Prime Minister's Prize for Science

Kenneth Freeman 

Science Minister's Prize for Life Scientist of the Year 

Mark Shackleton 

Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year 

Eric May   

Prime Minister's Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools 

Michael van der Ploeg 

Prime Minister's Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools 

Anita Trenwith

What I really love about this award is that there are prizes not only for researchers, but for school teachers as well. Having an engaged and inspiring school teacher in no matter which subject can create this little spark that makes the students really interested and curious. And self-motivated curiosity is what we all want to see in our uni students. But it is as well something that I whish everybody to have. There are so many people, who don't have "their own field" and lack this deep interest in something. They don't get excited and curious and want to know more about something just out of general interest. This is very sad as there is nothing more satisfying than successful learning. Having a great teacher early in life can make a huge difference and its great that this is officially valued by the government through this prize!

More info about the whole thing can be found here: Link to the PMPS website

bad finance karma

The money story goes on and it becomes apparent, that I don't have a good touch with this topic at the moment. Our payroll people calculated my new net pay as it most likely will be after the LAFHA tax changes come into effect in July. It’s devastating! My net pay will decrease by 1k AU$ per month! That is A LOT! And still there is no final official statement about the whole process, so nobody who will be affected can actually make any sophisticated arrangements - 1.5 month before it all gets started! And it does not seem as if paying the full tax rate would come with getting the same benefits as the general full tax rate person.

But that's not the only bad news! When I signed my contract I was told, that I have to join a superannuation fund. That's in principle not so bad - but I was wondering what happens to this money, when I leave Australia for good. So I asked this question and was told, that I'll just get the money back. Sounded good, so parts of my salary are just parked somewhere, where it might even grow a bit (which it actually doesn't - that's part three of the bad karma story) and when I leave the country, I just get it back. This is correct in principle, just that the lady I asked forgot to tell me about this tiny tiny extra bit of information, that BEFORE the money is transferred back to me, it will be taxed with at least 35%. this is much higher than my current tax rate!

So, this is all very slow and bad information politics and I feel quite ripped off! And I'm still in a good position, as I don't have any big financial burdens. What is with the people who have kids, a sick family member, have to pay a credit back... and they planned with the net pay as it is right now? Can we please be informed about such harsh cuts so much beforehand, that we have the chance to adjust our lifes to it, dear Government?

happy too soon

If the government suddenly changed their strategy or if it is just based on communication problems, who knows. The latest news say, that all of us on temporary visa will not recieve LAFHA anymore from the 1st of July on - this year, not next year. In 1.5 month we all will have to arrange our lifes with a much lower net pay - yeah! Very thoughtful strategy, thank you!

good news

In a recent post I wrote about the governments plans to stop the Living Away from Home Allowance (LAHFA), which would lead to strongly reduced income for a lot of people on temporary visa. This income cut is about to commence in July and until today there was no additional information about how the whole process will be going on and who will be affected in which way. But today - finally - they let out a tiny bit of information, that at least for people who already could claim this tax cut, there will be a delay of the commencement date until July 2014. So people have a bit time to adjust their life styles if necessary - and I'm sure in a lot of cases it will be necessary - maybe search for a job with higher income or make arrangements with their current employers. We'll see how these taxation changes will affect the employment of international researchers at Australian universities.

uni support - love it!

I just realized again how much effort my uni puts into supporting and "growing" its staff. Besides all the mandatory courses a new staff member has to attend, esp. about workplace safety stuff, there is a large variety of workshops offered, which are really well set up and I always take a bunch of new ideas back to my office. In my former uni we didn't have support like that and if there actually was a workshop related to the topics a researcher is interested in, it was not well advertised, so that most likely you heard about it a few weeks after it was held. Here, you can't actually miss the announcements because your mailbox is swamped (in a positive way) with reminder emails.

Workshops are usually held for all disciplines in the university together and depending on topic for all levels of academic staff. So that besides attending a good lecture, you usually meet a lot of interesting people from other faculties, who sometimes have very different views on how to teach students good writing habits or how to structure your own research. And well established concepts from the business or the arts people (had a few very nice conversations with people from the School of Arts) can be very fresh for someone in my field.

A lot of my colleagues don't attend any workshops, because they think, they don't have time for that and they are too busy with their research, paper writing, student supervision, lecture preparation,.. to once in a while spare half a day for a workshop. Even though the topics of the workshops are about efficient writing and reading, being a supervisor, transferring research ideas into good projects,.... . Maybe some of them even think, they know all the tricks anyways and don't need fresh input.

But I think the uni does a great thing in providing these workshops and investing in the development of its academic staff. Thank you! Love it!

proposal stuff

Just got the notification that I was "identified as a suitable Assessor for Proposal(s) within this current (ARC proposal) round". I got my first grant just a few month ago and now I'm already on the list of people assessing other peoples proposals. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Possible emotional states are:

• honored - because the ARC seems to thing I'm capable of doing a good job
• scared - because of the responsibility
• freaked out - because of the unknown amount of work
• proud - because I'm SO AWESOME
• relaxed - because that's part of the job
• happy - because of the interesting new aspect of my job

 I guess, I'll run through different stages of all of the above possibilities (and a few more, that'll surprise me), esp. after I have checked which proposals are assigned to me.

Any good advice about how to avoid the 10 most likely pitfalls that there are in proposal assessing (whatever they may be) are very welcome!

money makes the world go round

The Australian government is recently discussing the pro's and con's of the Living away from home allowance (LAFHA). This allowance means for people from overseas, who come to work in Australia and are not a permanent resident, that they get some part of their salary tax-free. The idea behind it is that somebody who comes to Australia for maybe a year might still have financial responsibilities in his/her home town and this tax-free money is supposed to compensate for that. The LAFHA is mainly split into two parts: part one says that what one pays as rent will be tax-free, part two gives a certain amount of money "for food" as tax-free (how much that is depends on how man people belong to the household and the amount is calculated fresh every year). The weird situation is, that the more rent ones pays the more salary becomes tax-free and from the governments point of view, this possibility as been abused too much during the last years.
But instead of finding a better way to regulate that, it seems that the current plan is to stop the whole LAHFA thing completely - already from July on. This of course would bring in quite a bit of tax-money, but for a lot of people it would mean a very sudden and sharp decrease of their net income. If one can trust the numbers I saw in an information session of my uni, we talk about something like 10k per year less. That's tough!
In general, I must say, that when I came here I was surprised about this kind of "free money" and the amount of it. So I would have no objections, if the government would reduce this amount a bit or bring in different rules, that prevent the abuse. But cutting it off completely is a bit like changing the rules in the middle of the game. I'm sure a lot of people informed them self much better about how much money they'll have in their pocket, than I did. And I'm sure that quite a few of them would have reconsidered the job offer if they were told that they will earn 10k or 15k less per year.
If the new taxation comes as planned, recruiting new staff from overseas will become much more difficult for universities and its very likely that quite a few people, who already work here, will think about the duration of their stay once more.
Interesting times...