Message from Society President – Dr Brent Clothier
Dr Brent Clothier shares his foreword as President of Royal Society Te Apārangi
Tēnā koutou katoa.
In our last newsletter, I reported on some of the recent developments with the Academy. I noted that we had listened to the issues raised at the special meeting of Fellows. I also said that we would, through our strategic planning processes, seek wide engagement and that we would start moving on this right away. Indeed, this process of wide engagement and strategic planning has now begun.
At our Council meeting on 30 June, we signed-off on a framework regarding the next steps in our long-term strategic planning process. It was agreed that this process represents an important opportunity for a deeper engagement with the Society’s membership in response to the issues raised by Fellows relating to our purpose and function.
The long-term planning process will be led by the President and Chief Executive. There will be an Advisory Group with representation from the Council, the Executive, the Academy Executive Committee, Companions, Early Career Researchers (ECR), Constituent Organisations (CO), Branches and Members. The review will comprise three stages.
The first stage will be the distillation of long-term strategic imperatives, say from 2022 to 2040, through wide-ranging discussions at a series of regional workshops with a mixture of Fellows, Companions, ECRs, COs, Branches and Members. It is proposed to hold these later this year in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch and Dunedin. Separate discussion forums will also be held with specific membership groupings such as Fellows, Companions, COs, ECRs, Branches, and Members. As well, there will be face-to-face meetings with key external stakeholders. We will start these wide-ranging discussions as soon as possible, and we hope to complete this stage by early next year.
The second stage will be to assimilate and organise the information and suggestions we have gathered from these meetings and synthesise them into a single long-term strategy document for consideration by the Society’s kaimahi, the AEC, and the Council. At this stage we will consider how this assessment of our ‘function’ might have implications for our structural ‘form’.
The last stage will be to develop a ‘near-final’ draft that is agreed to by Council, so that this can be circulated to the whānau who comprise our Society for any final suggestions. This is likely to take us well into 2023. Nonetheless, it is more important that we get it right, rather than simply meet some prescribed deadline.
I look forward to working with you, the Fellowship, and all the other limbs of the Society, as we embark collectively on mapping out our future vision, directions, pathways, and actions.
Ngā mihi
Dr Brent Clothier FRSNZ
President, Royal Society Te Apārangi