Celebrating our colleagues, progressing our strategy, collaborating for better health and more – 25 June 2024

25 Jun 2024
VC Inside UNSW
Edition 11 2024
VC Awards winners

Dear colleagues

UNSW is simply remarkable. At 75 years young, we’re among the world’s finest universities and there’s a clear reason why. It’s because of the wonderful people who comprise the UNSW community. On Wednesday I had the pleasure of hosting the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards that recognise excellence among our staff. This year’s awards celebrated seven winners in the six award categories from 464 colleagues nominated by you, their peers. The diversity of the winners, their areas of expertise and their achievements are a stunning illustration of the breadth and depth of talent across our University. Please join me in congratulating all the award winners – our colleagues who light up UNSW (there they are in the photo above!).

Help shape the UNSW Strategy: Progress for All

I’m pleased to reiterate the invitation that the Provost Professor Vlado Perkovic and I extended in yesterday’s email – by heartily encouraging you to join the consultation process to help shape our next strategy, UNSW Strategy: Progress for All. The strategy will provide focus for our work over the next 10 years and equip us for the next 25 years and beyond.

Your input during the consultation period – beginning in July – will be invaluable in guiding how UNSW continues to fulfil our enduring mission of having a positive impact on lives and communities around the world.

You can help make sure the UNSW Strategy is informed by insights from across our entire University community – and appropriate for our time. We want to amplify our distinctiveness and our ambition for significant positive impact and build on UNSW’s robust foundations.

The UNSW Strategy: Progress for All planning process is underway, with hundreds of people taking part in consultations for our inaugural Societal Impact Framework (SIF). The SIF incorporates the important insights already provided by our community, combining today’s most pressing societal issues with the areas in which UNSW can be most effective. The SIF will inform and integrate with the strategy.

In coming newsletters I’ll keep you updated with insights and progress on the strategy’s development. You can also speak to your ULT member for more information or visit the UNSW Strategy website.

I look forward to working with the entire UNSW community – students, staff, alumni and University partners – as we continue to pursue our ultimate goal of progress for all.

Health precincts centres of innovation and collaboration

Touring the Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct

Seeing powerful collaborations bloom is an extraordinary privilege and one I was delighted to experience in a recent tour of the now operational UNSW Integrated Acute Services Building (IASB) and the developing UNSW Health Translation Hub (HTH), at the Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct (RHIP). 

The IASB and UNSW HTH are beacons of genuine partnership for real-world impact. Through the strong partnership between UNSW, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, and community and industry partners, these two facilities are creating spaces to support the rapid translation of research, innovation and education into improved patient care.

One of the key features of the two facilities is the true collaboration and multidisciplinary approach that has defined them from the very beginning. Every UNSW faculty is represented across the many functions of these innovative centres. The detail of this collaboration crosses all aspects of the how, and what we do, into a deliberate creation of the encompassing environment.

In the photograph below, Dr Zoe Terpening, Director Strategy & Precincts, stands alongside a large-scale artwork in the IASB. This piece, by Richard Briggs, is one of many works that are integrated into the building’s internal surfaces. Four leading artists created these works to celebrate the environment and stories of the local area, and to help create a quiet calm for patients, carers and staff moving through the spaces. UNSW Art, Design & Architecture’s Associate Professor Emma Robertson is one of the artists who helped shape this gentle internal environment. I encourage you to read more about Emma’s work.

Above: Dr Zoe Terpening, Director, Strategy & Precincts, alongside an artwork by Richard Briggs within the UNSW Integrated Acute Services Building.

The RHIP is a truly visionary project. Seeing our University’s spaces and potential begin to bear fruit is absolutely wonderful. The UNSW HTH is due for completion in late 2025. 

Thank you to Zoe and to Shane McLoughlin, Senior Manager Development in Estate Management, for guiding our tour.

Above, L–R: Professor Attila Brungs (VC), Dr Zoe Terpening (Director Strategy & Projects, Office of the Provost), David Cross (Chief of Staff, Office of the VC), and Shane McLoughlin (Senior Manager Development, Estate Management). 

Advancing entrepreneurship in South Western Sydney

In further excellent news for improved health outcomes, UNSW’s recent $700,000 investment in a Health Tech Entrepreneurship Program to support South Western Sydney-based researchers, entrepreneurs and innovators is being supported by Investment NSW and the Liverpool Innovation Precinct.

This Liverpool-based program, leveraging the expertise of UNSW Founders, consolidates UNSW’s long-standing presence in South Western Sydney, and creates opportunities for coming generations of innovators to grow their talents, realise their aspirations and optimise their impact – whether locally or globally.  

UNSW Gendered Violence Prevention and Response Annual Report 2023

Every person at UNSW, beginning with me, has the responsibility to make our University a safe and welcoming place for everyone. Gendered violence behaviours have no place here.

An important part of embedding this positive culture is being transparent about gendered violence, raising awareness, supporting people through incident reporting, and continually working to prevent and respond to gendered violence when it occurs.

That is why UNSW publishes the Gendered Violence Prevention and Response Annual Report. The report for 2023, our University’s fourth, is now available. 

While we have made progress, there is much more to do. Together, we can be responsible for creating the culture and environment in which everyone is respected and supported.

Support is available for students and staff affected by gendered violence. 

NSW Higher Education Summit - Friday, 28 June - Register Now!

Get in quickly to snap up the final places at this Friday afternoon’s NSW Higher Education Summit, hosted by the UNSW Scientia Education Academy. With AI and Assessment in sharp focus, thought leaders from universities around Australia including experts from UNSW will explore some of the key issues impacting higher education today. 

The summit is a prime opportunity to hear insightful keynotes, participate in discussion – facilitated by DVC Education & Student Experience, Professor Sarah Maddison – and spend time with your peers. Find out more and register for the NSW Higher Education Summit now.

Support services available for our students and staff

I would like to remind students and staff of the services that are available to support health and wellbeing. The impacts of conflicts in the Middle East and other international spheres, with the very real local manifestations, continue to be felt acutely by many. Please consider making use of the services listed below if you need support for your health and wellbeing at this time.

Support for students

Support for staff

There’s even more Inside UNSW…

Best regards
Attila

Professor Attila Brungs
Vice-Chancellor and President

 

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