School of Geography

School Research Committee Meeting

Minutes of the meeting held on Tuesday 17 November 2009, 1pm, A115 Amory Building & Seminar 7, Peter Lanyon Building (with videolink)

Present:Rolf Aalto, Catherine Bass, Alan Binge, Henry Buller, Chris Caseldine*, Paul Cloke,Mark Goodwin, Tim Quine(Chair) Helen Ratcliffe

Apologies:Dan Toy

Reporting:Helen Pisarska

*attending on videolink

Agenda Item / Comments / Action
09/1.0 / Welcome, introductions and apologies
  • Tim welcomed members to the first meeting of the 2009/10 academic year.

Items for note:
09/2.0
09/2.1 / Minutes (Enclosure A)
Agreed:
  • Minutes of the meeting 10 June 2009.
Noted:
  • Actions against Andrew Nicholas as previous Chair had been completed, and Helen P reported that she was still chasing up postgrads for their reports on the Research Committee funded conference/fieldwork (09.03).

09/2.2 / Matters Arising
Papers were tabled from Tim (titled “REF, RM (formerly known as ROM) and Research Income: discussion paper”), Rolf (titled “Summary of Physical Geography Research Meeting”) and Catherine (titled “Research Knowledge Transfer – Service Level Agreement”) which had not been included on the agenda. These papers would be picked up during the meeting for discussion.
09/3.0 / Terms of Reference, Membership and Meeting Dates (Enclosure B)
Noted:
  • The membership had been discussed in a pre-meeting with some members of the Committee.
  • Any changes in the structure of this Committee following the move to Colleges from 1 Aug 09 would be reviewed in due course by the Change Management Team.
Agreed:
  • There would not be a postgraduate rep on the membership of the Committee, however, when particular postgraduate issues requiring student input were due to be discussed a rep from one of the PGR SSLCs would be asked to attend the meeting. Helen P would update the ToR paper.
/ Helen P
Items for report:
09/4.0
09/4.1 / Director of Research
Graduate Research Faculty Board
Noted:
  • The University had set a target for all staff to have 1.8 postgraduate research students by 2015.
  • A process review was in place for PGR monitoring on SITS.
  • CentralUniversity space would be available for PGR students.
  • Biosciences good practice of termly reports and learning agreements were discussed, however, the Committee felt that these were not required in the School of Geography as it had other systems of monitoring in place.
  • The University would be funding an advert for studentships in January. The School Management Committee had discussed the possibility of funding some studentships as there would be a shortfall from the planned PGR numbers in 2010/11 if we relied on external funding. Mark would be asking permission at the next School Planning Group meeting to use budget from 2011/12 in 2010/11 to fund 8-10 bursaries in 2010/11.
  • School Codes of Practice need to be visible online.
Agreed:
  • The School needed to ensure that examiners were appointed at least 3 months before submission to avoid delays. Helen P would prompt supervisors at Easter/6 months before the formal submission date to ensure they were prepared to appoint examiners.
/ Helen P
Helen P
09/4.2 / Website
Noted:
  • Tim and Paul had each met with Dawn Aggas and Ed Creed to discuss the research and postgraduate components of the new website. Research activity would be divided around substantive areas of research rather than around people.

09/4.3 / REF consultation
Noted:
  • Discussion is continuing nationally concerning the panel to which Geography will be submitted in the REF. If Geography stays within panel C large Geography units will probably enter physical geography staff under panel B (as this is where STEM resources lie, so more money for the unit). Although this is possible, it is thought likely that RGS-IBG would argue strongly against such a split in the discipline. However, there are risks associated with returning humanities and social science scholars to a science panel. The uncertainty in the situation was elaborated in the School’s response to the University-wide REF consultation. Discussion is continuing within the University concerning its recommendation (Panel B, Panel C or split panel). The current draft of the University’s response states ‘We believe there is also a case for aligning Geography with STEM subjects under Earth Sciences‘.

09/5.0 / Review of grant applications/awards (Enclosure H)
Noted:
  • There had not been time (with Dan off sick) to validate this information before being published for the Committee. Alan/Dan would check, in particular, the 0’s on the turnover figures.
  • The live grants information may include those awarded before 31 July 09.
  • We were expecting to have a six figure shortfall in our research earnings against our Business Plan targets.
  • These reports will become very easy to extract.
Agreed:
  • Given this expected shortfall against our Business Plan the School needed to show the University the planned trajectory for future earnings.
  • More robust systems were needed to join up the PDR and research group plans.
  • More direction at research group level was needed to ensure that individuals have a realistic set of goals; to ensure they would not be competing against each other; and to ensure staff were aware of the various restrictions about numbers of applications from Research Councils. Research group plans must be presented to the Research Committee.
  • GrantInfo must be promoted. The changes Dan has made to GrantInfo will make planning more effective as long as staff use it in the way it is intended.
/ Alan/Dan
Tim/Alan
09/6.0
09/6.1
09/6.2
09/6.3 / Study Leave reports
Bruce Webb (Enclosure C)
Agreed:
  • Mark and Tim would meet with Bruce to discuss ways of maximising his contribution to the School over the next 2 years before his retirement.
Paul Cloke (Enclosure D)
Noted:
  • His plan was ambitious but he has achieved a lot of, what is likely to be, very high quality work.
Tim Quine (Enclosure Dii)
Noted:
  • The EU bid had involved a lot of organisation. These awards were high risk, but high reward if successful. The proposal written was high quality but unfortunately was not awarded (a near miss).
  • The papers accepted for publication were in well regarded journals.
/ Mark/Tim
Items for discussion:
09/7.0 / Action Plan (Enclosure E)
Noted:
  • This would be a standing item on the agenda.

09/8.0 / Risk Register
Noted:
  • The biggest risk was research income targets not being met.
Agreed:
  • We need to make full use of GrantInfo and link this to PDR process (prepopulate PDR targets from GrantInfo).
  • The Directors of Human Geography and Physical Geography needed to hold planning meetings.
/ Dan/Tim
Henry/Rolf
09/9.0
09/9.1 / Research Group meetings
Physical Geography meeting, 13 November (Enclosure tabled (titled “Summary of Physical Geography Research Meeting”))
Noted:
  • There was a discussion of areas of research for the benefit of the new staff.
  • The research group had agreed to peer review all major grant applications; hold biannual strategy meetings; meet on a monthly basis as ‘faculty’ at both campuses to ensure dialogue and to inform the biannual meetings; hold regular research theme meetings with postgrads and postdocs.

09/9.2 / Human Geography
Noted:
  • Staff had not yet held a meeting, but hoped to before Christmas. It was difficult to facilitate this with such a large group of staff, however smaller groups should meet if the large meeting proved impossible.
  • Peer review system that Henry oversees is working well with turnaround time of 4 days.
  • Stewart’s new group is active and meeting up.
Agreed:
  • Directors of Human and Physical Research to share best practice.
  • Human Geographers to meet at earliest opportunity – off campus if necessary.
/ Rolf & Henry
09/10.0 / Research Knowledge Transfer (Enclosure tabled (titled “Research Knowledge Transfer – Service Level Agreement”))
Agreed:
  • Within the next month the School needed to define the projects (in Annex 1) for the RKT Office to support.

09/11.0 / REF, RM and Research Income(Enclosure tabled (titled “REF, RM (formerly known as ROM) and Research Income: discussion paper”)
Noted:
  • This paper had been discussed at School Management Committee.
  • The model of having ‘one size fits all’ could be dangerous, as research themes are funded differently over time.
  • This strategy needed to be tied in carefully to the other plans within the School.
  • The University will still require a minimum target for all staff. This could be calibrated with the PDP target of £30kpa.
  • The use of Teaching Fellows to incentivise the generation of research income. There could be difficulties with this as there is a 2:1 ratio of Human Geography to Physical Geography taught students.
Agreed:
  • Study leave would not be on an automatic rota.
  • Mark would work with Tim to agree a response to staff on study leave.
  • To hold an additional meeting of research committee before Christmas to discuss Study leave and RM.
/ Mark/Tim
Meeting closed 15:00

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SRC 17/11/09