What is ASEARC?

ASEARC was originally set up under the Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund (CASR) agreement with the Department of Education, Science and Technology (DEST). In January, 2009, the program was moved to the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) administered under the under Diversity and Structural Adjustment Fund (DSAF), but still managed under the original conditions in the CASR agreement.

The formation of ASEARC will create coordinated programs in undergraduate and postgraduate courses, research, research training, and consulting.

The collaboration will involve joint development and delivery of subjects and courses. The project will involve a detailed review of the degree and subject offerings at each institution and development of a range of coordination mechanisms. The review would identify which subjects should be given priority for being made available to all ASEARC members. There would be efficiency benefits involved in sharing subjects. There would also be significant benefits in undergraduate, honours and post-graduate students accessing subjects that would otherwise not be available to them, developed and presented by experts who would not usually be accessible. In parallel with the subject review the technological and administrative environment will also be assessed and the steps needed to sufficiently align them across the member institutions will be identified. These reviews will also involve assessment of good models already in operation overseas and the lessons that can be learnt from them.

ASEARC will also form a common graduate program to improve the recruitment of, and research environment for, Higher Degree Research (HDR) students, through shared seminars, training in research methods, workshops and supervision across institutions. Joint supervision across institutions of honours and HDR students will broaden the topics available and ensure supervision by highly qualified academic staff, as well as advance joint research between staff members at different institutions. An initial step will be an assessment of options for improved marketing of research degree options available through ASEARC and the current support provided to HDR students. An annual research meeting involving HDR students and academic staff will be conducted. A model for a Professional Doctorate and Masters program will be developed.

Each institution is at a different stage in terms of technology and other resources to enable effective collaboration. There will thus be some need for investment in technology so that each member has the minimum required to effectively participate. Future applications for funding for access grid rooms for UNW and UWS are current under review. At the end of the project there will be well integrated degree programs involving shared subjects, some of which will be delivered across several sites.

Data Bases

It will create a data-base accessible to the members containing information that will contain key information needed to properly align and coordinate the activities of the statistics groups at each member institution.

The collaboration will also improve research at each institution by operating as a research centre for the more than thirty academic staff, with shared seminar programs, staff development, workshops and mentoring of staff across institutions. A data-base of the research interests, skills, performance and plans of each staff member will be created and maintained to help manage and develop the research of members of ASEARC. This will include information on relevant contacts and networks and indicators of national and international profile and esteem, which are important qualitative factors.

The creation of ASEARC will also enable each member to support the others in contract research and consulting and training with industry by creating a larger pool of staff and skills that can be made available to industry and researchers in other fields, including health research. This will enable projects to be undertaken that might otherwise not be possible and contract consulting using local contacts of one group and skills based elsewhere in the network. A detailed assessment of the skills of staff members and potential customers will be made. Joint marketing activities will be planned and undertaken.