Issue 70 Contents

Rosemary White is originally from New Zealand. After postgraduate and postdoctoral work in the USA, she moved to Australia to take a post-doc at Sydney University. Then after several years in academia at Monash University, she is now a senior research scientist at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra. Rosemary is WISENet National Co-Convenor Elect due to take the role with Diane Webster (Melbourne) at the 2006 AGM.

Third Stream Funding was introduced in England in 1999, and received a favourable review in the 2002 report of the Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, on Measuring Third Stream Activities. In this report, Third Stream Funding is defined as “the generation, use, application and exploitation of knowledge and other university capabilities outside academic environments. In other words, the Third Stream is about the interaction between universities and the rest of society.”

A Third Stream Funding Forum was hosted at the Australian Academy of Sciences in Canberra, by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) on 12 October 2005. A number of high-level speakers contributed to the day, led by David Murray (Business Council of Australia, former CEO of the Commonwealth Bank), and including Prof. Peter Høj (CEO, Australian Research Council), Prof. Alan Pettigrew (CEO, National Health & Medical Research Council), Prof. Ian Chubb (Vice Chancellor, Australian National Univeristy), and others from industry, academia and government (Australian Treasury and Federal Department of Education, Science and Technology - DEST). For those interested, the full list of speakers and slides from most of the speakers’ presentations are now on the FASTS web site (www.fasts.org). The Forum was held to consider whether a type of Third Stream Funding might be useful or applicable in Australia. Prof. Snow Barlow, President of FASTS, introduced the Forum, and outlined some of the key issues for discussion, including that this funding, if provided, should be to promote genuine innovation in social and environmental engagement, and not just support further commercialisation of research. More detail about Prof. Barlow’s opinions can be found in an op-ed piece published in The Australian (20 July, 2005), which can be downloaded from the FASTS web site.

I felt that in most of the presentations and commentary, despite the broad definition of university-community engagement, there was a rather strong focus on using this funding to further promote commercialisation of research. There was also a good deal of discussion about how to allocate funds, assess performance and measure the outcomes. However, as Snow Barlow commented in his op-ed piece, “…third stream funding in Australia represents an excellent opportunity to identify gaps in current policy and funding to better leverage the economic, social and environmental benefits of the ideas, knowledge and capabilities embedded in Australian universities.” It shouldn’t be simply another funding source, measured to the nth degree, aimed at pushing university academics to sell their research results to industry.

To me, the most impressive talk was by Prof. Margaret Alston (Director, Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University), who had been asked by FASTS to give examples of how university research directly impacts and engages with the region. She outlined three of her recent studies, supported by a variety of funding bodies. Two focussed mainly on the impact of drought on rural communities, and the third was a rural women’s indicator project – a national quantitative survey of rural women. In each of these studies, surveys, focus groups and interviews provided much of the data. Prof. Alston’s results brought home the real struggle that is rural life during drought – one news headline read “Our kids are starving”. The rural women’s project revealed the lack of access to services that urbanites take for granted. Much of this was already well-known by people living in these communities, and we have seen anecdotes on the daily news, like that of the country woman who had to drive hours to a hospital to deliver her baby. What Prof. Alston’s analyses provide is hard data on which to base government policy changes, and perhaps changes within communities to help them in specific, relevant and ongoing ways, rather than only providing emergency funding when they are in strife. Furthermore, she emphasised that while this was very useful research that required a lot of interaction with the communities, she could see how to add even more value, perhaps via third stream funding. She listed a number of specific examples (see details in her slides on the FASTS web site), including funding for post-docs and research infrastructure, supporting local government, developing policy documents, disseminating results through the community.

As Snow Barlow pointed out, many of us in other science fields, such as biology, engineering, medicine [and] science policy, already contribute in many ways, for example, hosting class visits to our labs, visiting local schools and participating on councils, submitting professional opinions in response to government proposals. However, these are ad hoc and usually not well-recognised by our institutions, and what we all lack most is time to do this type of work. As Prof. Alston notes, third stream funding could support these sorts of activities, like WISENET, for example. In academia and government, funding is a formal way of recognising and acknowledging the value of these activities and would enable them to be much more effective.

Bradley Smith (Executive Director, FASTS) summarised the other key messages emerging from the day (paraphrased to some extent):

It was very interesting to hear these diverse views, especially from Treasury and DEST. I urge anyone who wants an insight into how these groups see universities and how they could/should interact with the outside world to glance at the presentations. Perhaps we should all make a commitment to find time to apply for the funding if it eventuates!

Note: The Research Quality Framework initiative’s stated aim is to develop the basis for an improved assessment of the quality and impact of publicly funded research and an effective process to achieve this. The Framework should:

be transparent to government and taxpayers so that they are better informed about the results of the public investment in research;
ensure that all publicly funded research agencies and research providers are encouraged to focus on the quality and relevance of their research; and
avoid a high cost of implementation and imposing a high administration burden on research providers.

Details can be found on the DEST web site: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews/key_issues/research_quality_framework/default.htm.