Dear Staff,
I hope you’ve been enjoying this recent succession of long weekends! Despite the shorter work weeks, there’s still been a lot happening across UQ lately.
On 13 April, we were delighted to welcome UQ alumnus and major philanthropic donor Andrew Liveris AO, and his wife Paula, back to our St Lucia campus for the official opening of the Andrew N Liveris Building, followed by a special dinner in celebration of the Liveris Academy.
In that same week, we heard the great news that Andrew had been appointed President of the Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (OCOG). Andrew will be joined by several other leaders with close UQ connections on the OCOG Board, including Associate Professor Sarah Kelly OAM from the BEL Faculty.
We had more positive news last week with the announcement of the first project to be funded under the Federal Government’s new $242.7 million Trailblazer Universities Program. Led by Curtin University and supported by UQ and James Cook University, the four-year project is focussed on creating new commercial opportunities in Australia’s critical minerals supply chain.
Last week, I was delighted to finally be able to participate in a couple of events that had previously been postponed on several occasions. On Thursday, we held the launch of the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre at Herston.
And then, last Friday we held the celebration of the Oceanic Thinking exhibition at the UQ Art Museum. The exhibition will continue to run until 25 June – so, if you are at St Lucia, I’d really urge you to visit the Art Museum over the coming weeks.
On that same day, we also held an event to celebrate the career of Dr Campbell Gray, the retiring Director of the UQ Art Museum, who has made a wonderful contribution to the development and growth of the Art Museum over the past 11 years.
I also had the chance to speak directly to the newest members of staff last Friday at our first New Staff Expo for 2022. And earlier this week we staged an event at Gatton to acknowledge and thank those staff who really went above-and-beyond in guiding our response and recovery efforts during the recent flooding of the campus. We’re now planning a similar event for those who led the flood response at our St Lucia campus.
As you may have seen in the news, the Queensland Government has announced that from 6pm today asymptomatic close contacts who test negative for COVID-19 will no longer need to quarantine for a week. Instead, they'll be required to wear masks outside their home and return a negative Rapid Antigen Test every second day, for a period of seven days.
Based on this latest easing of restrictions, we have updated our guidance for staff and students who are close contacts. If you are a close contact of someone who tests positive for COVID-19, please notify your manager / supervisor and agree with them your working arrangements.
In addition to this, and as I announced in my email to staff on 13 April, I have decided to suspend our requirement that anyone attending UQ campuses or sites must be vaccinated against COVID-19. As a result, the vaccination requirement at UQ will be lifted from next Tuesday 3 May.
This is a further step in the relaxation of the public health restrictions that have been difficult and disruptive for all of us, but also vitally important in safeguarding the health of our community. I sincerely hope that the threat posed by the virus keeps receding – and that our normal way of life will continue to re-emerge.
Finally, a quick reminder that the annual UQ Alumni Book Fair will be held over the next four days at the UQ Centre at St Lucia – starting tomorrow and running until Monday 2 May. There will be over 110,000 books, vinyl records, videos and DVDs for sale at this year’s Book Fair. You can find out more and register to attend here.
Thanks, once again, for all of your hard work – and I hope you make the most of the coming long weekend.
With best wishes,
Debbie
