3 The School at Present

3.1 A Brief History

Music has been a valuable contributor to The University of Queensland’s intellectual and cultural life for well over a century. Its foundations were laid at UQ’s establishment in 1910, with the appointment of a music advisor, followed by a Musical Committee and Student Music Society in 1912. A Diploma of Music was introduced in 1939, designed for music teachers, building on music courses offered through the Bachelor of Arts. UQ resolved to establish Music as a department in 1956, just prior to the establishment of the Queensland Conservatorium in South Brisbane. The fouryear Bachelor of Music was approved in 1966, and the Faculty of Music established in 1967. Performance training has been a feature of music education at UQ since 1968, with full-time staffing generally maintained on a continual basis in piano, strings and voice, complementing even longer-term strengths in musicology and composition. The Faculty of Music was disestablished in 1996 and replaced by the School of Music within the Faculty of Arts. The Faculties of Arts and of Social and Behavioural Sciences merged to become the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2013.

3.1.2 Leadership

The Faculty of Music was first headed by Professor Noel Nickson as Dean (1967–1984). Subsequent deans included Professor Warren Bebbington (1985–1991) and Professor Malcolm Gillies (1992–1996). Professor Philip Bračanin led the School of Music from 1996 until his retirement in 2007. Professor Margaret Barrett joined the University as Head of School from 2008 to 2018. Associate Professor Liam Viney was Acting Head from March 2018 until his appointment as Professor and Head in September 2019.

3.1.3 Undergraduate Degrees

The BMus degree introduced in 1967 had two common years followed by two years of specialisation in music performance or music education. Other specialisations were added over time, including composition, musicology and general music. Students also had the option of choosing to undertake Honours as part of their specialisation.

The review of all UQ qualifications for compliance with the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) resulted in the transition to a first-year entry AQF 8 BMus(Hons) program from 2016 onwards. The final AQF 7 BMus student graduated in 2021.

In addition to the long-standing Music major in the BA degree, the School established a second major, in Popular Music, in 2009, redeveloped into Popular Music and Technology in 2017, and a standalone minor, in Music Psychology, in 2018.

3.1.3 Postgraduate Degrees

The School introduced postgraduate coursework and research degrees in the early 1970s, with the Master of Arts in Music (coursework), the Master of Music (coursework and research), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). All “named” research masters degrees at UQ were replaced with the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in 2000. When the Master of Music Therapy was introduced in 2004, Music was no longer available as a field of study in the Master of Arts and the fields of study offered in the coursework Masters of Music were Aural Pedagogy and Instrumental Pedagogy.

Following the 2012 School review, the Master of Music Therapy was discontinued in 2013, leaving the Master of Music (MMus) as the School’s sole postgraduate coursework offering. As part of the review of all UQ program offerings in 2014 for AQF compliance, the School decided to shift the focus of the MMus away from postgraduate training for domestic music educators. The range of course offerings available in the MMus was broadened in 2015, making the course list more representative of the range of music disciplines within the School and providing the increasingly international student cohort with greater diversity in study options.

The first PhD in Music at the University was awarded in 1980. Higher degrees by research (HDR) activity peaked in 2016, with 52 active PhD and MPhil candidates in the first half of the year and 13 awards by the end of the year. Finding these levels of activity were unsustainable, the School has actively sought to reduce the size of the HDR cohort since 2018, aiming for a cohort of around 25 candidates (equivalent to 2.5 FTE candidates for each Teaching and Research academic staff member).

3.1.4 Research and Music Creation

Long term historical research strengths in musicology and composition have, over time, been expanded into education, performance, psychology and technology.

The School of Music has often sought to consolidate and integrate its research activity into a unified structure. At the time of our previous review in 2012, the School framed its research identity through the Creative Collaboratorium, “a Research Network in the School of Music” that was established in 2010 with VC strategic funding to “provide a collaborative research focus that recognised the unique qualities of its music disciplines (Composition, Musicology, Music Education, Music Health and Wellbeing, and Performance) and provide common ground for dialogue, collaboration, and the generation of new knowledge”. The research aims of the Creative Collaboratorium included investigating the forms, ecological factors and outcomes of creative thought and collaborative activity in the disciplines of music.

The activities of the Creative Collaboratorium culminated in the Creative Colloquium, hosted at the School of Music in November 2015. Following this event, the use of the Creative Collaboratorium as a frame for the research of the School decreased and it was discontinued at the point of Professor Margaret Barrett’s departure from UQ. Establishing a new means of conceptualising the School’s research culture was appropriate given the extent to which creativity and collaboration were linked to Professor Barrett’s research.

As part of its chamber-music affinity and identity, the School has a long tradition of supporting ensembles-in-residence, beginning with the Mayne String Trio (1980–1986), the vocal sextet Jones and Co (1982–1991), Perihelion (1988–1998), Elision Ensemble (1996–2008), White Halo (2014–2018) and UQ Chamber Players (2019 to present). These ensembles have achieved national and international recognition and have been particularly active in collaborating with composers to create new music.

3.1.5 Facilities

The Faculty of Music was established on the St Lucia campus in 1966, initially housed in the JD Story building before moving into purposebuilt space in the Zelman Cowen building in 1976. A low-cost extension to the Zelman Cowen building in the late 1980s provided an additional 5 practice rooms and 3 teaching rooms.

Mayne Hall was a major centre of musical activity for the School of Music from its construction in 1973 until 2004, when it was repurposed as an Art Museum and renamed the Mayne Centre. As a multi-purpose concert venue, Mayne Hall had been widely recognised for its beautiful acoustic and excellent pipe organ (which remains in situ) and was regularly booked by a large number of external community and arts organisations. Starting in 2003, the School’s major performances (as of 2016, the Vice-Chancellor’s Concert Series) transitioned to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) concert hall.

The School has long relied heavily on the Noel Nickson Room – a much loved, well utilised, small venue for solo and chamber performance, as well as teaching and rehearsing. The Nickson Room can be described as the heart of the School of Music and has recently received a number of upgrades to ensure its continuing fitness for purpose.

3.1.6 Recent Developments

Since 2012 the School’s academic staffing profile has evolved through:

1. Departures across the School’s disciplines:

• Associate Professor Felicity Baker, music therapy (2013)

• Dr Peter Freeman, popular music and music technology (2015)

• Associate Professor Samantha Owens, musicology (2015)

• Professor Patricia Pollett, viola (2018)

• Dr Warwick Potter, conducting (2020)

• Professor Margaret Barrett, music education (2020)

2. Consolidation in the performance discipline with new staff members:

• Associate Professor Adam Chalabi, violin (2014)

• Dr Anna Grinberg, piano (2015)

• Dr Shaun Brown, voice (2017)

• Mr Dane Lam, conducting (2021, 0.2 FTE fixed-term for 2 years)

3. Diversification into other disciplines:

• Dr Mary Broughton, psychology of music (2017)

• Associate Professor Eve Klein, music technology and popular music (2015)

• Dr Anne Levitsky, musicology (2022, fixed term for 4 years).

Notably, the last continuing academic staff appointment was Dr Brown in 2017. The recent fixed-term appointments of Mr Lam and Dr Levitsky are supported respectively by the Sleath Bequest and the Centre for Western Civilisation.

The cumulative impacts of these staffing changes are:

• an overall reduction in senior continuing and fixed-term academic staff headcount (from 17 in 2012 to 13 in 2022)

• an increase in practice-led, artistic and creative works research and public engagement capacity for the School

• a decrease in traditional research and teaching capacity outside of performance.

The School also relies on a cohort of longstanding academic casuals to coordinate and deliver courses in Popular Music and Technology, Australian Indigenous music and contemporary guitar training. They also deliver components of professional development courses for teaching – including multiinstrumental pedagogy and instrumental curriculum studies – and deliver aural training in musicianship courses.

Ongoing

Dr Katelyn Barney MUSC2810 Ongoing

Mr Nicholas Hunter MUSC1060 Temporary (continuing academic on leave)

Mr Trevor Hunter MUSC7010 Ongoing

Dr Josephine Jin MUSC1600 and MUSC7470

Finally, a small number of professional research casuals are employed as research assistants and technical officers, through specific project or annual School research support funding mechanisms.

Temporary (continuing academic on leave)

Dr Cory Messenger MUSC1700 and MUSC2700 Ongoing

Dr Jessica O’Bryan

EDUC4645, EDUC7645, MUSC3780 and MUSC7180

Temporary (continuing academic on leave)

Dr Chris Perren MUSC2010 and MUSC3910 Ongoing

Temporary (continuing academic on leave)

Current HDR candidates are given opportunities to undertake casual academic employment, largely as tutors and markers in undergraduate courses, while current undergraduate students are given opportunities to undertake casual professional employment, largely as event assistants and as performers at graduation ceremonies.

3.3.2.5 Staff Engagement

Since the previous review, major staff engagement exercises have included the UQwide Voice surveys of 2015 and 2019 and the Pulse survey of 2021.

The 2019 Voice survey highlighted passion/ engagement and job satisfaction as School strengths with work-life balance and career development as areas needing attention. These results were broadly replicated in the 2021 Pulse survey, with consultation and behavioural accountability emerging as areas that also needed attention. Both latter trends were mirrored across the University and institution-wide efforts are being made to address the more universal challenges. Changes to School meeting schedules and HoS availability for one-to-one meetings with staff are intended to improve consultation processes in the School. We believe our low score for “my career development is supported at UQ” speaks to the need for better mentoring, investment in staff development in research, and supporting staff to integrate their strengths with UQ systems and structures for promotion and career development. Work-life balance is a perennial challenge for staff and the School is taking a more active approach to ensuring recreation leave does not accrue to excess. The School encourages staff to send and attend to email within business hours on workdays wherever possible, without restricting individual flexibility or choice.

The single largest issue articulated by academic staff in terms of their working lives is high teaching workloads. Academic staff are expected to coordinate, on average, 5 courses each year. Curriculum review and reductions in course offerings have had limited impact on continuing staff workloads to date. While the overall number of courses delivered by the School has been reduced by 22% (from 72 in 2019 to 56 in 2023) as a result of the curriculum reforms of 2019 and 2020, most of the resulting savings were in casual teaching costs and the discontinuation of low-enrolment courses with fewer than 10 students.

Project supervision is also a significant component of academic staff workloads, as research projects are a compulsory component of 3 of the School’s major degree offerings, the BMus(Hons), the MMus and HDR. The School’s success in attracting international students into the MMus has led to dramatic increases in project supervision workload in that degree. Our commitment to improving the retention of commencing students through to completion of the integrated BMus(Hons) will further increase supervision workloads.

The School currently seeks to manage project supervision workloads by setting a cap on the workload points that staff can receive for HDR advising and by investigating alternative ways of providing research training in the MMus that do not require all students to complete an individually supervised project. It is not clear whether these strategies will be sufficient to address the impact of project supervision on academic staff workloads or if the School will also need to investigate ways of mitigating the impact of growth in honours project supervision workload.

Staff and students have managed and absorbed significant amounts of change in recent years, especially in terms of curriculum structure and delivery. In the process, the School has become very lean and efficient in sequence design. Extensive change, in combination with the impact of COVID-19, has affected staff and students alike. In the context of these challenges, the School seeks to focus on supporting staff and student wellbeing and development in productive and sustainable ways.

3.3.2.6 Academic Workload Allocation Model

The School’s academic workload allocation model is a hybrid, in which workload for teaching is allocated based on the expected hours of work for different activities while workload for research, service, and student supervision is assigned based on responsibility for different activities. The model uses 1,725 points as the standard academic workload allocation for a year, making each point equivalent to 1 hour for teaching activities (as 1,725 hours is the maximum number of hours a full-time academic can be required to work in a calendar year).

Academic staff at the School of Music are assigned workload according to their appointment category (Teaching and Research, Research-Focused, or TeachingFocused). Work tasks fall into the following groups:

• Research and Scholarship

• Service and Shared Academic Responsibilities

• Teaching and Student Supervision.