To coincide with the launch of our Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan, UQ has released a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy. Underpinned by the pillars of reconciliation, the Strategy seeks to increase the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples employed across all areas and levels of UQ’s workforce. It also places an emphasis on elevating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges, building enduring relationships conducive to a shared understanding, and embracing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.
The annual performance and development (APD) process for 2024/25 is underway. All continuing and fixed-term academic and professional staff have received their APD form in Workday. APD conversations and manager evaluations for academic staff, as well as self-evaluations for professional staff, are due on Friday 20 December. You can find links to helpful guides, FAQs and training resources on the APD website. All APD processes for participating academic, professional and executive staff are due by Friday 28 February 2025.
UQ Venues will be operating on limited hours over the holiday period. Customs House will close after dinner service on Sunday 22 December 2024 and will reopen on Saturday 4 January 2025 for lunch, high tea and dinner. Patina at Alumni Court will close after the morning coffee rush on Tuesday 24 December 2024 and will reopen with a limited breakfast and bar menu on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 January 2025. UQ Brisbane City will close at 12pm Tuesday 24 December 2024 and will reopen at 7am on Thursday 2 January 2025.
Project idea submissions for 2025 Round 2 Student–Staff Partnership (SSP) projects are now open. The SSP program empowers students and staff to collaborate on projects to shape teaching and learning, student experience, governance and strategy at UQ. Visit the SSP website to learn more about the program, register for an information session, and submit your project idea to create change at UQ. Round 2 submissions close on Friday 24 January.
Academic staff interested in recruiting a PhD candidate through the UQ-IITD Research Academy joint PhD program are invited to submit PhD project proposals. Submissions close Sunday 19 January 2025 for projects commencing in July 2025. Visit the Academy’s website for more information on becoming a UQ-IITD joint PhD supervisor, to access the Supervisor Handbook, and to submit a project proposal.
Recent rain and humidity have increased the risk of mould in UQ buildings. Properties and Facilitis has taken preventative measures to address this. You can support this effort by tidying and wiping down your workstation and ensuring all your office windows are closed before you head off on the holiday break. Read more about preventing and reporting mould on UQ’s 'Mould in indoor spaces' webpage.
From planning with purpose to sharing food, incorporating more veggies and getting creative with leftovers, there are many small changes you could make to eat more sustainably this holiday season. In this blog from UQ Sustainability, read festive food sustainability tips from UQ experts Dr Kiah Smith and Dr Selina Fyfe.
The Institute of Modern Languages is offering UQ staff an exclusive price of $330 for beginner courses in French and Japanese in 2025. Courses will commence on Tuesday 4 March 2025 and run throughout the semester. Classes are 2 hours per week and will be delivered online via Zoom. A UQ staff email address is required to enrol. Enrolments are open now and will close on Monday 3 March 2025 – enrol now to secure your spot.
A reminder that People’s Choice voting is open for the Universities Australia Shaping Australia Awards, which celebrate the important work underway at universities nationally. UQ’s Professor Glenn King and the Infensa team are finalists in the Problem Solver category. They are nominated for their work to improve outcomes for people who experience a heart attack or stroke, supported by an unexpected ally – the venomous Australian funnel-web spider. Vote for Glenn and the team to help them win.
UQ now has approved suppliers for catering. If you are planning an event with catering, you can now select from one of 4 approved suppliers in the Brisbane metro area. These suppliers were selected to ensure quality, reliability, and value for event hosts. Learn about our preferred suppliers in the catering section of the UQ Where to buy guide on the UQ procurement page.
mySI-net will be unavailable due to essential maintenance from 6am to 8pm on Sunday 8 December. If you use mySi-net, please complete any critical transactions within the system before the outage or wait until it is available again. The outage may also impact the availability of other linked systems. If you have any queries or experience any problems around the outage, please log a request in my.UQ.
Don’t miss your chance to take advantage of the Study for Staff Program in Semester 1, 2025. This program offers significant staff discounts on a select range of UQ graduate certificates to help you pursue your professional growth. Semester 1 applications for the Graduate Certificate of Business Administration have now closed, and applications for all other programs close on Friday 17 January 2025.
From Monday 3 February 2025, some parking rates at UQ’s St Lucia, Dutton Park and Herston campuses and Toowong office will increase for staff, students and visitors. These benchmarked changes are part of ongoing initiatives to encourage the use of alternative sustainable transport and free up parking for staff and students who need to drive to campus. Parking revenue is reinvested into campus infrastructure, including active transport facilities.
Tuesday 3 December is International Day of People with Disability. The 2024 theme is ‘Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future’. To mark this important day, UQ’s Disability Inclusion Advocacy Network (UQ DIAN) will be hosting an event called ‘You, UQ, and Disability in 2025’ at St Lucia. Staff are invited to join the event to share their views on disability inclusion and hear about leadership opportunities within the UQ disability community in 2025.
Road closures will be in place for the upcoming graduation ceremonies at Gatton (Thursday 5 December) and St Lucia (Friday 6 December to Monday 16 December). Where possible, please be mindful of noise and avoid unnecessary vehicle movement in and around the affected areas. We’ll have a lot of visitors on campus during this time, so please make them feel welcome. You can find out more about the Gatton road closures and St Lucia road closures on the Property and Facilities webpage.
UQ’s superannuation provider, UniSuper, has launched a new virtual care platform, 360Health. UniSuper members and their spouse, children, parents and parents-in-law can access medical care, such as nutrition advice, mental health assistance, and general practice care through the platform at no additional cost.
The annual performance and development (APD) process for 2024/25 is underway. All continuing and fixed-term academic and professional staff have received their APD form in Workday. For academic staff, APD conversations and manager evaluations are due by Friday 20 December. Professional staff should submit their self-evaluations in Workday by the same date. You can find links to helpful guides, FAQs and training resources on the APD website.
Do you have trouble remembering your chartstring each time you place a UniFi order? New functionality now allows you to set up accounting tags for your projects and opal units, with your own meaningful references. Once this functionality is set up, you can apply your accounting tag each time you place an order, instead of entering your long chartstring number every time. Learn more in the 'Quick Reference Guide: Create and use Accounting Tag - Requisition' on Workday or contact Finance Client Support Services if you have any questions.
UQ has been named the nation’s best university for the second year in a row in the 2024 Best Universities Ranking by the Australian Financial Review (AFR). The AFR rankings evaluate university performance holistically based on 4 pillars: teaching, research, career impact and equity. These rankings are the first in Australia to consider traditional notions of excellence, such as research and career impact, alongside student satisfaction and equity.
Participants are needed for 2 clinical trials in Brisbane testing potential new vaccines produced using technology developed at UQ. Vicebio are testing a 2-in-1 vaccine candidate for respiratory viruses in older adults developed using UQ’s reengineered molecular clamp. Eligible participants will be paid $2,125 on completion of the trial. Vaxxas are testing a needle-free avian influenza vaccine patch developed from UQ research. Eligible participants will be paid $1,560 on completion of the trial.
Brisbane City Council has advised the preview phase for Brisbane Metro services on route 169 has concluded. From Monday 18 November, route 169 has returned to the regular bus fleet from stop 1B and will include Dutton Park Place. Signage will be in place to direct passengers, and you can plan your journey via Translink. We will continue to provide updates related to the UQ Lakes station in preparation for the launch of a full Metro service.
From Wednesday 4 December, UQ is enforcing a new email security protocol called DMARC (Domain Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance). DMARC is designed to safeguard against imposter emails and ensure your messages are delivered without interruptions. If you send email from a third-party service (e.g., Mailchimp, Amazon SES) using an ‘@uq.edu.au’ suffixed email address, please reach out to the DMARC team.
Staff on the St Lucia campus can now visit Sun Stadium, a new public artwork in the form of a sundial, near the UQ Lakes bus stop. Created from sustainable materials, the artwork was brought to life through a collaboration between artist and choreographer Amrita Hepi, poet Jazz Money, and Dialogue Office's Christopher Bassi, along with Five Mile Radius and Sibling Architecture.
The UQ Centre (Building 27A) has transitioned back to its original purpose as an indoor multi-sport facility, as part of the University’s Sport and Recreation Precinct and will be managed by UQ Sport. A limited number of non-sporting events will continue to use the Centre. The lecture theatre within the Centre is not affected by this change and the booking process remains the same.
Did you know that UQ has an Email and Bulk Messaging Procedure? This procedure outlines UQ’s rules around sending bulk emails to staff, students and other UQ email holders. Any bulk messages to our community must comply with this procedure. If you send bulk emails to UQ email holders, please remember to take some time to familiarise yourself with the procedure.
ITS is upgrading UQ Digital Workspace (UQDW) from Monday 18 November. UQDW is a teaching platform that allows staff and students to access UQ software from any device with an internet connection. The upgrade will allow users to access a full UQ virtual desktop through the UQDW platform. This will enhance user experience and make it easier to use UQDW for large classes and exams.
UQ has just launched a new open textbook called Storying the Archive: Evoking the Fryer Library Indigenous Collection. Edited by Professor Tracey Bunda from UQ’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit and Dr Laura Deane, the book illuminates the Fryer Library collections through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s experience of them, to inspire connection and contribute to reconciliation. The book was produced with Open Textbooks @ UQ, which is UQ’s open book creation platform.
Enrolments are now open for the Summer Series of leadership development workshops, running from December 2024 to March 2025. Staff interested in attending one of the 3-hour face-to-face workshops can enrol via Workday. The 5 topics covered in the workshops align to the UQ Leadership Framework. Find details about the workshops, including topics, descriptions and learning objectives on the Leadership Summer Series website.
The REDROOM has temporarily closed for essential works to safely remove asbestos in preparation for stage one of the Union Complex redevelopment in late 2025. Other facilities in the area remain open. Works are expected to take about 4 months to complete, site conditions permitting. Visit the road and building works page for more information.
Next year, UQ will begin transitioning Learn.UQ from the current version, Blackboard Original, to the new Blackboard Ultra. Most courses will make this transition in Semester 2 of 2025 and Semester 1 of 2026. Blackboard Ultra offers a clean and modern interface, enhanced functionality, simplified workflows, and improved accessibility, and is mobile friendly.
UQ is transitioning from desk phones to Microsoft Teams Phone, beginning at the St Lucia campus. While staff can already use Microsoft Teams to make internal phone calls, Teams Phone allows you to receive and make calls to external numbers (including international calls). This transition supports hybrid working, by allowing staff to make or receive calls from anywhere. Find out more on the transition, how to access support, and how to register for upcoming information sessions on the project website.
UQ has launched a new health research data portal – the SMART Hub. It allows researchers to safely extract data from Queensland Health’s integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR), the largest digital health medical record system in Australia. By centralising data extraction and ensuring rigorous ethical standards, SMART Hub simplifies the complex process of obtaining research data.
The new UQ Experts website launched last week, replacing the former UQ Researchers webpages. It’s now easier for journalists, other researchers, and potential HDR students seeking supervisors to find information about UQ’s academic and research staff. You can follow the guide to update your researcher profile and ensure it showcases your skills and expertise.
UQ teaching staff can learn strategies to support linguistically diverse students with a 90-minute online training course. It covers topics like linguistic diversity at UQ and refining instruction, assessment and feedback with linguistic diversity in mind. You can complete this training at any time through Workday.
Volunteer for a UQ research study
Get involved in UQ research by volunteering for a wide range of studies. Your participation may be vital to solving medical mysteries or answering important research questions.