admin @ Tue, 2005-10-25 15:46
AT least 28 staff have taken voluntary separation packages -- with a $10,000 sweetener - and others will have to reapply for their jobs after Monash University decided to shut down its Centre for Learning and Teaching Support.
The move will affect more than 100 staff, some of whom will be redeployed to other parts of the university.
As CeLTS staff pack their bags, the National Tertiary Education Union has warned of widespread moves at Monash to reduce staff by offering voluntary separation packages.
Branch president Carol Williams said 11 people had been offered packages in the print services division, initially with the same extra $10,000 as CeLTS staff if they went by a certain date.
"The mood around here is horrific at the moment," Dr Williams said.
"VSPs are being offered everywhere - in business and economics, the Victorian College of Pharmacy, particularly targeting teaching-only staff, and the faculty of arts, especially if they are not research active."
Dr Williams said that despite the financial incentives, some CeLTS staff were reluctant to leave because they had specialist skills that were not necessarily in huge demand in other places.
And if they took a VSP they would be locked out of employment at Monash - Victoria's biggest employer in this field - for two years for tax reasons, she said.
Senior deputy vice-chancellor Stephen Parker said a new teaching and learning centre would be set up at Monash but that this was not a substitute for CeLTS.
His spokeswoman, Michelle King, said about 30 equivalent full-time staff from CeLTS' language and learning service would be transferred to the new centre along with six from the staff from the Higher Education Development unit.
CeLTS provides professional development for staff, student support services - particularly in language and academic writing for international students - support for off-campus staff and students and multi-media development.
Professor Parker said the English Language Centre, formerly part of Monash International, would move to the new centre but remain a separate unit.
The off-campus learning support for staff and students would transfer to Monash's Gippsland campus.
He said while the university was hoping to save $1.7 million in the shake-out, cost-cutting was not the main aim.
It was about adopting a more strategic approach to teaching and learning and shifting some of the CeLTS functions to the faculties, many of which were already duplicating those services.
"It's a better arrangement: from the students' point of view there will be greater provision for learning support than there has been in the past," he said.
"We've increased the budget within the new institute and we brought in the English Language Centre. And that's come at a cost."
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