It’s Dental Health Week – which gives the funsters at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences the opportunity to run a Twitter quiz, asking who in the Middle Ages did the dentistry, barbers, blacksmiths, butchers or tax collectors. Gosh, who do you think dentists dislike?

In Features this morning

The Federal Court has decided inventions by AI can be patented. Amanda-Jane George (CQU)explains how this happened and why it matters.

Angel Calderon (RMIT) on this year’s Good Universities Guide ranking – the institutions that do well, the way the metrics work and the GUG’s enduring achievement.

Plus, James Guthrie (Macquarie U) digs into the UTS annual report to discover how the big building programme was funded – but not how many jobs COVID-19 has cost.

And Merlin Crossley (UNSW) explains how science would have found other ways to fight COVID-19 without vaccines. It is what a “high-quality knowledge agenda” makes possible.

With an oped a bunch of uni marketers need to read. Jason Brown (La Trobe U) and Peter McIlveen (USQ) suggest measuring student and graduate experience of study is important to quality assurance but are no measure of employment outcomes. This week’s addition to Contributing Editor Sally Kift‘s celebrated series, Needed Now in Teaching and Learning.

As well as Tim Winkler (Twig Marketing) on why it’s all over for open days.

The Threatened Species Index was under threat, which was bad. Not now, which is good

Starting in 2016 the index includes data on 254 mammals, birds and plant groups, supplied by organisations and individuals across the country. But federal funding for the Uni Queensland located programme that managed the index ran out in June.

Enter the Ecosystem Research Infrastructure Network (TERN). With support from the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, “for the foreseeable future” TERN is now “custodian” of the index.  The move should not be onerous, TERN is also at Uni Q.

Bized at Uni Tasmania insists it to be known that it is not as credentialed as CMM thought (August 3)

While it is a member of the European Foundation for Management Development, which runs the European Quality Improvement System, it is not EQUIS accredited. Which means it holds just one of the big four accolades, (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, business, AACSB accounting, Association of MBAs and EQUIS).

The 2018 Enterprise Agreement included a provision for academics on fixed term contracts doing the same work for five years or more to apply for conversion to continuing employment

There was also a clause for sessional staff to convert to fixed term.  The provisions kicked in last September – and presumably end when the agreement expires, nominally at end October.

They won’t be remembered for helping many people escape the precariat. Some 120 people or so are said to have secured fixed term appointments and continuing jobs.

Perhaps there might be more to hope for in the next agreement, if only because the Fair Work Act now sets out a path to permanent employment for casual staff (CMM April 21). And there could be a sort-of precedent, Monash U has been working on fixed terms positions for PhD students with sessional-teaching jobs ((CMM April 1, April 20). VC Margaret Gardner says she is “hopeful” that an unspecified number will be offered jobs this year (CMM July 27).

Andrew Miller is the new SA Division secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union. What, you ask, the Andrew Miller who was an especially active activist branch president at Flinders U? That’s the one. Cécile Dutreix (Uni SA) is deputy secretary.

Tammy Small joins Uni Wollongong’s Indigenous Strategy Unit as manager, projects. She moves from student advancement manager at Uni Newcastle.

In Uni Melbourne’s Student and Scholarly Services, Davina Potts will become Director, Future Students at the end of the month. She moves from an associate director role in Student Success. Kate Gascoigne will  start as Director, Operational Planning & Student Information in October.  She was seconded to SASS last year as Programme Director Ops Planning.