SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
DRAFT MINUTES of the Second meeting of 2005/2005 of the Computing and Mathematical
Sciences School Board held on Wednesday 9th February 2005 in Room 353 at 4pm, Queen
Mary, Maritime Greenwich Campus.
PRESENT:
Liz Bacon (Chair)
Alun Butler
Bob Dolden
Mohammed Dastbaz
Tony Mann
Kevin Parrott
Miltos Petridis
Frank Razaghzadeh
Ray Stoneham
Zelijko Sevic (Business School)
Anders Murday (Student Rep)
05.02.1
Apologies for Absence
Tony Ackroyd
Chris Bailey
Ryan Flynn
Rodney Sue
05.02.2
The School Annual Reporting and Planning Document (ARPD)
The meeting was solely to discuss the ARPD. All sections of the report were
discussed in detail.
Summary of the School Strategy and Targets
LB explained the summary plans and discussed the financial position of the School.
It was pointed out that the lateness receipt of many of the statistics that were not
provided in the original statistical digest was unacceptable. Therefore it had not
been possible to respond to some of the ARPD questions.
Quality and Standards
BD provided an overview of the Quality and Standards parts of the report. Some
amendments were proposed regarding the list of reports from the Department of
Mathematical Sciences. BD asked the committee to identify any areas of the report
which they thought might be missing and let him know.
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Action:
TM to inform BD of the missing Maths programmes.
Portfolio Planning
The Dept of Computer Science is considering an undergraduate degree in Business
computing. It is also reviewing some of the existing MSc award titles. The report
also mentions the proposals which are under consideration. MP stated that he
thought constraints put upon the School regarding reduced staff would have an
effect on the running of any proposed new courses. However, LB mentioned that if
there was a market for a particular programme then a proposal should be put forward
and a strategy to resolve the staffing issue would be discussed.
The BSc (Hons) Entertainment Technologies degree will utilise existing resources
wherever possible. One new coursework will access an external studio resource
available at one our Partner institutions. There were no changes to the Department
of Mathematical Sciences and Computer Science.
Budget Report
CMS financial position which is currently healthy was discussed.
Staffing Report
Overall there appears to be little change in the staffing complement however a full
analysis of the staff had not yet been received. Due to the financial position, the
School is unable to recruit new staff.
Research Report
Research within the School is financed through several means, RAE funds and
external research funding etc. KP provided an overview of the financial position of
research. One amendment was proposed which was to include the SRIF expenditure.
The employment figures for PhD student were queried and LB said she would look
double check this.
All staff were asked to report any missing publications from the list and also to
inform Francoise Barkshire as she maintains the central list.
Action:
LB to ask Francoise to check the correct PhD student
numbers employed.
Action:
KP to add SRIF numbers to the report.
Resource Requests
The CMS School is desperately in need of a new lab and therefore, have submitted a
request for this. MP pointed out that due to the number of mobile computing
students now on the course plus our networking students, the current lab cannot
cope. He felt that this was not emphasised sufficiently in the report and this section
needed strengthening.
Action:
LB to reword this section.
Collaboration
BD explained that the School was still waiting for statistical digest for the full cost
centres. There was some discussion regarding the section however no changes were
proposed.
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Risk Management
LB explained how risks were graded. Some changes were proposed to various
aspects of the wording and risk levels.
Action:
LB to update the report with proposed changes.
Final comments by LB and BD at the end of the meeting outlined the problems in
completing the ARPD as follows:
1. No one in the School was warned about the change in format of the statistical digest
which required some time to understand before analysis could take place. A brief
explanation of the digest would have greatly assisted this understanding.
2. ‘Numbers less than 5 were not included in the digest breakdown but were included
in the totals, which was very confusing until an explanation was found for this
(apparently to prevent the identification of individuals). It was also extremely
unhelpful in the analysis and quite bizarre since this could be deducted from the
percentage figures and the identified totals.’
The rationale for suppressing values <5 was in case copies of the printed sheets were
copied.
3. The Final Destination statistics by programme was received less than a week before
the School board and two weeks before the final submission of the ARPD.
4. The only percentages provided in the digest combined university, partner college
and UK full cost collaboration. In order to report on significant issue or changes in
the data for university based students, a vast number of calculations were required in
order to convert the raw numbers to percentages.
5. Limited University data was received late from which to make School comparisons.
6. At time of the School Board, no information had been supplied for:
 Full cost overseas collaborations
 Average A’level tariff points for the School
 Target numbers for recruitment
 Full staffing analysis
7. The facility to drill down to programme level using pivot tables was invaluable last
year providing an analysis down to the level of programmes as opposed to
departments. This facility was not available this year except in table 1 out of the 125
provided.
8. A lot of the information was only supplied when requested and often at the last
minute.
9. This is not meant to imply any negative views about the Planning and Statistics Unit
as it is clear that the staff are under significant load responding diverse requests from
different departments.
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