PDF《The RSS's Academic Affairs》

The RSS's Academic Affairs Advisory Group (AAAG) and COPS Academic affairs within the RSS Concern that the RSS had been paying insufficient attention to academic affairs led to the appointment of a Vice- President for Academic Affairs (initially Valerie Isham) in 2010.

In 2011, Paddy Farrington took over this role, and I (Kevin McConway) followed Paddy in the role from the start of 2012. During 2011, an Academic Affairs Advisory Group (AAAG) was set up to work with the VP (Academic Affairs). This group's Terms of Reference include reviewing and monitoring the strength of statistics as an academic discipline in the UK, supporting the work of the RSS and its Fellows with Research Councils and other funding bodies and with other learned societies, contributing to responses on consultations and policy initiatives that may affect academic statisticians, and generally to liaise with the RSS Council and other bodies in the RSS structure on working with and supporting academic statisticians. In this context, academic statistics is intended to be seen very broadly, certainly going beyond what goes on in statistics departments and statistics groupings within broader mathematical sciences departments. Membership of AAAG has so far included Alastair Young, who (I understand) was invited to become a member for several reasons, but to some extent specifically in order to provide a link to the work of COPS. So far, AAAG's principal activities have included (among other things): ? Commissioning a report on the state of academic statistics within the UK, concentrating on research funding, some staff demographics, student numbers, and particularly the supply and demand for taught masters degrees. (I was the author, before I joined AAAG. The plan is to hold a discussion meeting on these matters at the RSS in Autumn 2012.) ? Working with representatives of all the UK research councils that fund statistics (EPSRC, EPSRC, BBSRC, MRC, NERC), with the particular aim of improving liaison with those for who statistics is not a prime responsibility. ? Advising where appropriate on RSS work with the Council for the Mathematical Sciences (CMS). The future relationship between AAAG and COPS There is clear overlap between the spheres of interest and responsibilities of AAAG and COPS. The relationship has worked well so far on an ad hoc basis, but after discussion between the AAAG and COPS chairs, we feel it should be formalised in certain ways. I would suggest the following. ? AAAG does not have a formally representative membership, but the RSS should ensure that an appropriate representative from COPS is always one of the AAAG members, to ensure effective liaison. (The COPS representative would be the COPS Chair, or another nominee.) ? A (brief) report from AAAG should regularly be on the Agenda for the COPS annual meeting, and a (brief) report from COPS should appear annually on an AAAG agenda. ? The COPS representative on AAAG should routinely be on the list of RSS representatives on CMS. (Alastair Young has been on this list, which is short (currently

4 people) C who actually goes to the CMS meetings, to which the RSS can send

3 people, depends on the business.) ? The Chairs of AAAG and of COPS will liaise and confer on consultations from outside bodies, so that both bodies are aware of the consultations going on, and, where appropriate, so that the responses can be coordinated. ? It had been hoped that the RSS could co-operate with COPS on the annual data collection exercise, and indeed to widen its scope. However, currently, the RSS has no resource to do this. The current intention is that the data collection by COPS continues, that Alastair Young and I will discuss and make any small changes that seem appropriate, and that the resulting data will feed in (as it has to date) to AAAG deliberations. Kevin McConway, June 2012