HeadSup

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Kia ora koutou

If you’ve been keeping up with the emails, there’s some shuffling underway in the School. I’ve been asked to step into the acting Deputy Dean role until John Hosking returns from his sojourn as DVC (Strategic Engagement) and Doug Elliffe steps back into the DD role from his time as acting Dean. I’m delighted to advise that Robin Kearns has agreed to take on the Head of School role in my absence. I’m also delighted to advise that Murray Ford has accepted the Chair, Ako role that will be vacated by Robin. I’m very confident that the School will continue to move forward with positivity because we have great people in all our leadership/service roles. I’m expecting that the changes will be effective from 1st May, with transitions currently underway, and that I’ll be back on the job later this year.

Field experiences are underway with our students out and about in exciting places. Lorna (@NZSeds) has been doing a great job firing off tweets from the new Earthsci 320 field experience in Taranaki – the sites our students are learning in are amazing. If you are interested in taking a look at the sort of places they are working check out our twitter tag @EnvUoA.

There’s much opportunity to appreciate and learn from Mātauranga Māori when it comes to the work we do in ENV, especially when we go into field. That’s why I’m very excited to announce that Kimoro Taiepa (Mātaatua, Tainui, Te Arawa) has accepted the position of Kaiwhakaako Mātai Taiao, Professional Teaching Fellow 4, who will be joining us mid-year. Kimoro brings a wealth of experience in Mātauranga Māori and tertiary sector environments. He will lead our Tertiary Foundation courses and will help us develop our framework for embedding Mātauranga Māori into the School.

Thanks very much to all who completed the employee experience survey. We had the highest response rate in the facutly (66%), excluding the Faculty administration (they always win these competitions!). The results of the survey will be shared with the University Executive Committee on 20 April, with faculty and service division results becoming available from 29 April-23 May. Results will be discussed in the VC’s All Staff Forum 26 May.

Keep your eye out for The Ministry of Environment and Stats NZ report Our land 2021, scheduled for release on 15 April. This document presents the latest on the state of NZ’s environment. It would be good to draft a School response to this document. If you are interested in leading this please get in touch with me.

Have a great couple weeks. Especially, stay safe and have fun if you are in the field.

Ngā mihi

JR

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Whakawhanaugatanga –  Communities

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ENV 2021 External Review

As all staff know, this is the year of our 5 year review. Thank you to all who are preparing material for the review. If you have CVs and info on research collaborations to contribute please do so asap.

Review Committee membership:

Chair:	Professor Graeme Aitken, Director of Educational Initiatives, Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Internal member:	Professor Jacqueline Beggs, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science
External member:	Professor Jonathan Aitchison, Head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland
External member:	Professor Noel Castree, Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Society and Environment, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
External member:	Professor Peter Rayner, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
External member:	Dr Alison Collins, Departmental Chief Science Advisor, Ministry for the Environment

 

Insights into volcanic risk from Auckland to the Antilles, Andes and Arabia Prof Jan Lindsay

Staff: Feedback from ENV Kauapapa 2021 QC round (Questions/Comments)

Thank you all those who posted a comment during our annual Kaupapa event. Responses to the comments are below:

• Postive comments were posted about the new ENV academic workload model, which was developed under our Staff Wellbing strategic project. In response to the data in the workload model and as a continuation of our Wellbeing project, we are now embarking on a piece of work to reduce the taught FTE. David Hayward is leading this. Expect to hear more on the topic and engage in discussions over the next few months.
• The RSL pecha kucha style presentations were popular so we will continue with this activity.
• Supervision practice: a point was raised about the importance of supervisor refresher courses to ensure supervisors understand and follow supervision guidelines, and encourage students to be engaged. The School of Graduate Studies is hot on this topic. The new Wahapū digital system for managing doctoral candidature enables real time record keeping so it will be easier to keep track of individual records of supervision training. And yes, we are expected to retake the training every few years. For Masters and Hons supervision, the supervision training for doctoral candidature will be beneficial. Our advisors provide oversight of academic processes for these degrees.
• It was noted that there has been a reduction in support for staff and students with ongoing covid impacts. Grace periods (presumably for thesis submission) were mentioned but this is a point of confusion – although grace periods were reduced of necessity (they posed a knock on issue for visas), a work around was quickly established and communicated to students/staff to ensure extra time was available. One or two people missed the message but we caught up with them. I can assure everyone that there is a strong willingness on behalf of the University management to support people through Covid. If you or your students have noticed specific reductions in support, or you have a need for support that is not present, please send the Head of School a note specifying the exact issue so that a remedy can be found if possible.
• A question was posed about fair access to support: ‘If Tech supports teaching and student research, is there comparative support for non-tech courses and grad students?”. The phrasing of this question suggests that there is a concern that resources are unfairly distributed across the school. My focus is understanding what each staff member and research student requires to flourish and work to enable that. In a diverse school such as ours, there will always be variations in level of resourcing required to enable quality education (i.e., $$/tech time/GTA support). The word ‘comparative’ suggests that such resourcing should in some way be equal. It will never be equal and I have no truck with arguments that seek to equalise the division of resources across our school. But, we should reflect carefully on how we are using our available resources (people, time, $$) for the benefit of everyone in the School. To gain some understanding of this, I will be initiating a review to understand and track better how we subsidise teaching and research via technical services in the School.
• Drone pilots: apparently we need more. Thanks for the heads-up.
• Taumata Teitei UOA Strategic Plan – risks/opportunities. A request was made that we outline the key opportunities/risks for the School associated with the new UOA strategic plan. Good idea. We will follow up on this later in the year.
• Coordination of space/planetary science research/outreach into a UOA-wide platform. Great idea – needs a champion. If this was your idea and you are motivated please get in touch.

Events & Seminars

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A risky project about risk: experimenting with geography and creative practice Karen Fisher and Alys Longley

Date : Tuesday 20th April 2021

Time : 4:00 to 5:30pm

Location : 23 Symonds Street, Building 302, Level 5, Room 551 Ontology Lab

Experimenting with the forms through which research moves can be a risky business. Our research project “Navigating Marine Social-Ecological Systems” created a series of non-traditional science research outputs that have taken form as poems, abstract video-works, art installations and artist-books. Through taking these seriously and as equally important to all other research outputs, we have felt at professional risk, not just of invisibility, but even of humiliation and shame. Within the technical-scientific paradigm in which our project is located – in a government-funded science initiative – our insistence on the centrality of creativity and imagination, and our intersectional-feminist and anti-racist research orientation, can be interpreted as naive and irrelevant to our quantitative peers, wherein success is often defined in terms of measurable policy wins and environmental protections enacted. And yet, for us, practices that embrace different ways of knowing, being and doing are vital to our work in social science. In this presentation, we reflect on our experiences of professional risk in terms of methodology, in a project involving researching environmental risk in the context of oceans and coastlines.

Kainga Wāhine

Wednesday 21st April, we will have our next Kainga Wāhine shared lunch, for those identifying as women in the School of Environment: professional staff, postgraduate students, teaching staff, and research colleagues, all welcome 🙂

Please spread the word amongst your ENV women friends, colleagues and postgraduate students.

Date/time: Wednesday 21st April, 11:30-12:30pm (hopefully we can catch people before or after lectures/ meetings on the hour).

Place: Ontology Lab (302.551)

Bring: a plate to share (only as you are able – this can be a packet of biscuits, or pieces of fruit, or something more elaborate).

 

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Ako Innovation

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Rangahau – Research

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Field trip to RANGITOTO with DEVORA outreach!

Urgent: mapping research collaborations

In preparation for the School review, we are required to collect information about current collaborations across the School.

WHO: All staff currently employed, including RF and part-timers.
WHAT: identify all active collaborations: actively involved in a common project, generation of outputs (e.g. paper, report) in the last 2 years or planned in the next 12 months. Just add a comment if you are not sure.
HOW: please fill in this template and email it directly to Michael Groom (m.groom@auckland.ac.nz)
Signing in to SciVal (https://www.scival.com) does part of the job for you by listing all your past co-authors and their institutions.
WHEN: by Friday 16th April.

Thank you very much for your support!

Pacific Education Innovation Fund

In response to local wellbeing and curriculum needs of Pacific learners and families arising from and/or exacerbated by COVID-19, the Ministry of Education is offering these two funding streams:
1. Pacific Education Innovation Fund
2. Pacific bilingual and immersion education
Full details on the eligibility criteria can be found here

Project Duration: Up to 2 years
Internal Deadline: Wednesday 14 April 2021.

Climate Change Global Challenge Research Project Regenerative by design – Addressing climate change and reducing inequality in a post-pandemic world 

You are invited to submit an expressions of interest if you are interested in collaborating on projects that address one or more of the following three focus areas:
• Environmentally sustainable and/or drought- resistant/resilient land agriculture, and clean food from oceans
• Environmentally sustainable energy – solar, wind, tidal and wave power, electro-fuels for transport, cooking fuels, and carbon capture and storage (CCS)
• Climate induced migration, changing behaviours (of those with little power who are forced to adapt and those with the power to adapt but often not the will)
A virtual workshop(s) will be held following the EOI process to identify the most promising research questions and approaches. Then a detailed plan will be developed to pursue the most promising collaborative research initiatives.

Deadline for EOIs, using this (attached/link) form (500 words max.) are due by 14 April 2021 to Dr Aoiffe Ficklin, WUN Program Manager at aficklin@wun.ac.uk.

New Horizons for Women Trust: Hine Kahukura (NHWT:HK)

NHWT: HK Research Award

For women who are conducting research that benefits women and/or girls in New Zealand. The awards are a one-off grant to help with your research and/or living expenses.

Value: $5,000

Wāhine Ora Award

To support research that benefits Māori women, girls and/or whānau in Aotearoa New Zealand. This award is made annually and is a one-off grant to assist this research and/or living expenses while conducting the research.
Value: $10,000

Margaret L Bailey Science Award

Assists a successful mid-career woman (at post-doctoral level) with her scientific research expenses
Value: $5,000

Guidelines and application forms can be found on the funders website.

Submission Deadline For All :  Wednesday 15 April 2021

New Publications

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Brückner, M. Z., Schwarz, C., Coco, G., Baar, A., Boechat Albernaz, M., & Kleinhans, M. G. (2021). Benthic species as mud patrol‐modelled effects of bioturbators and biofilms on large‐scale estuarine mud and morphology. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. DOI : doi.org/10.1002/esp.5080

Le Heron, E., Allen, W., Le Heron, R., Logie, M., Glavovic, B., Greenaway, A., … & Blackett, P. (2021). What does success look like? An indicative rubric to assess and guide the performance of marine participatory processes. Ecology and Society, 26(1). DOI : https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12211-260129

Manes S., Costello MJ, Beckett H, Debnath A, Devenish-Nelson E, Grey K-A, Jenkins R, Khan TM, Kiessling W, Krause C, Maharaj SS, Midgley GF, Price J, Talukdar G, Vale MM. 2021. Endemism increases species’ climate change risk in areas of global biodiversity importance. Biological Conservation online.

Chaudhary C, Richardson AJ, Schoeman DS, Costello MJ. 2021. Global warming is causing a pronounced dip in marine species richness at the equator. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, online

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Environment IT Committee Updates

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Software for teaching in 2021

This is only for software needed for teaching (labs. and FlexIT).

Last September, IT asked us to send software requests for 2021.  If you need anything beyond what you have requested back then, please contact me ASAP (say, Wed., 20 Jan., COB).  I will compile a list via the IT Committee, hoping IT can accommodate late requests.

Please provide as much information as possible from the list below:

Requester Name

Requester Username

Faculty

Software Vendor

Software Name

Software Version

Course Name

Lab Location(s)

Teaching Week Required

Comments\Customisations\Modules etc

Tester    Installation

Source Files Location

*FlexIT?

License Owned

*Please be ready for another lockdown…

Even if it is the same software as last year, IT need to know – software will not be carried over from last year.  IT needs more time than in previous years to make sure software works off FlexIT.

Thank you, Ingo

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More Information

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Need to store and share research data? Request Research storage or UoA Dropbox for research

Queries about virtual machines? Virtual machine consult or Nectar Research Cloud?

ResearchHub: connects people, resources, and services -research-hub.auckland.ac.nz

Remote working issues: Please refer to the remote working page. If you do not find the answers to your questions, please log a call on the IT Portal for any IT-related issues or contact the Staff Service Centre for other queries.

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Two-factor Authentication : Authy

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https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about-us/about-the-university/identity-and-access-management/two-factor-authentication/download-authy-for-desktops.html

YubiKeys work but of course require a USB port.

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VPN: Instructions on how to install

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https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/academic-information/postgraduate-students/postgraduate-support-and-services/vpn-service.html

VPN, Linux: FortiClient is running fine on Linux.  Check the VPN link listed above.

VPN, Mac desktops: (information from April, may be outdated).  Students may need IT to make their machines mobile and install FortiClient directly from the website.  They will also need to set-up two-factor authentication by downloading an app like “Authy” on their phones and then setting up their University of Auckland account.  I suggest people do this part before IT gets to them to make the process faster.  To do that, they can use the instructions on this page:

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about-us/about-the-university/identity-and-access-management/two-factor-authentication/download-authy-for-desktops.html​

To get a mobile account set up, log a service request or go to one of the service kiosks. It is unclear how this is being done remotely but I am sure this can be done. Please let me Ingo (i.pecher@auckland.ac.nz) know if you have managed to install FortiClient on their macs remotely.

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FlexIT and Remote Access

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FlexIT is straight-forward for remote access to computing power and programs. Alternatively, check if your project/group or so has a virtual machine. Remote desktop access to specific machines can be set up by IT but may note be reliable. Check the Staff Service Center https://uoaprod.service-now.com/sp.

Remote access is possible to some workstations in the geocomputational lab for research, and on a needs basis.  This may be a viable solution for specialized data analysis.  Please look into alternatives: It is unclear however, if/how on-site desktops can be maintained, if needed..

FlexIT access and requests: Use the FlexIT form in the IT Portal to request access as a staff member, to ask for an application be added, or to report any issues or faults.

FlexIT, Linux: Please check FlexIT link: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/my-tools/flex-it.html.  It does not have any information on Linux but should be useful for “translation”.

Depending on your browser (in particular, Firefox), you also need to do the following, from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/595554.

“…tested with the Horizon 4.8.x and 4.10.x clients and Firefox v64.0. Both are 64bit versions, running on Ubuntu 18.04.1

Download the client from the VMWare Horizon Client for 64-bit Linux
In Firefox, open about:config and click through the warning.
Add a new boolean entry called network.protocol-handler.expose.vmware-view and set the value to false
Create a file called `test.html` somewhere on your computer and put the following in it: test
Open the file in Firefox and click on the link, which should prompt you for a path to open the link.
Select /usr/bin/vmware-view and it should work for future uses! “

(1) was provided by UoA but I think it works with generic software from VMWare as well.

Check with Ingo (i.pecher@auckland.ac.nz) if you run into problems.

Software licenses: Software vendors have relaxed their licensing to allow students to install software at home, rather than relying on Flex IT. There is a running list here https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/my-tools/flex-it/install-software.html

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Please email content to Martin for next edition of P-cubed by Friday