News Archive
Newsletter July 2009
Funding
As you are aware, a letter is being sent to all research staff within UCC requesting an automatic deduction of €2.50 per month from salary.
ARCS Newsletter: July 09
Funding
As you are aware, a letter is being sent to all research staff within UCC requesting an automatic deduction of €2.50 per month from salary. ARCS has taken this step reluctantly, however we do require a minimum level of funding in order to host and attend IRSA meetings, and we would also like to be able to organise social events for ARCS members. Attempts to secure sponsorship from AIB, BoI, TSB and VP Research have all ended in failure. We are also planning to solicit funding from IRCSET.
Website
We are attempting to address the need for an improved and active website. Committee member Selwan Ibrahim has attended the requisite Content Management Support Training course in UCC and has agreed to take on this task. Selwan has also set up a LinkedIn group for ARCS. More on this at a later date.
Academic Council
The ARCS chair, Gordon Dalton, attended the Academic Council Research Committee (ACRC) at the invitation of its chair Prof. Stephen Fahy. This step was a follow up from the ARCS AGM where Prof. Fahy took the floor and expressed his support for research staff representation on the Research Committee group tasked with decisions on researcher career structure. At the meeting of the ACRC, Prof. Fahy proposed that research staff be represented on the committee. There was some initial reluctance on the part of some committee members, however, the motion was passed and Gordon will represent ARCS on the ACRC.
IRSA
The quarterly meeting of the national researcher body IRSA, took place in Galway at the beginning of July. The main issue of concern was the targeting of research staff that had succeeded in obtaining CIDs within UCD, for compulsory redundancy as a cost saving measure. Since then, this has been postponed, fortunately. It was arranged that Conor O’Carroll of the IUA will host the next IRSA meeting in Dublin in September and will update the associations on the progress of the HERG initiative on researcher career structure (currently stalled due to other wider considerations regarding university employment structure taking place within HEA/DES). Finally, it was agreed to examine the setting up of a Facebook group for IRSA. ARCS will also look into this at a local level. The minutes of the IRSA meeting will be posted on the ARCS website.
IFUT
Gordon is meeting the UCC IFUT (trade union that represents many academic staff) representative next week to explore how IFUT may assist and represent contract research staff.