Why CQUniversity is one of the 15 ‘fast moving’ research unis

CQUniversity vice-chancellor Nick Klomp explains why his institution is one of the 15 ‘fast moving’ research universities.

CQUniversity vice-chancellor Nick Klomp.

Vice-chancellor Nick Klomp says that when he took the job in 2019 and began writing a five-year strategic plan, it was recognised that the university needed to concentrate on its research strengths. CQUniversity is one of Australia’s smaller universities.

“We had lots of little flowers blooming, but we needed to make sure we focused because there was never going to be enough money,” Klomp says. So in that five years, some research areas have been let go and CQUniversity now has three research institutes and eight research centres.

“That really allowed us to focus where we were doing our research and that was around industry and regional requirements. We really focused on what would give us bang for buck for our mission, which is delivering to regional Australia,” Klomp says.

For example, he says the university has asked primary industries what they need, and this has informed the work of CQUniversity’s Institute for Future Farming Systems which brings robotics and other new technology to agriculture.

The university also partners with industry to fund PhD students to do research in areas of industry need.

“We went to industry and said, ‘If you fund one PhD in an area that you want research in, we’ll give you two. We’ll fund another one directly’,” says Klomp.

He says the university has clearly defined the key performance indicators for academics in carrying out research. Staff have been given support, and expectations for them were aspirational but doable.

“You sort of think that there’ll be a lot of pushback but actually most people were pretty excited by it,” says Klomp.