A new 10-year research and enterprise engagement strategy developed by Australian Catholic University seeks to upend traditional approaches to research prioritisation and measurement by reorienting the institution’s entire focus towards supporting human flourishing.
At a time when the nation sits without a clear national framework to drive and assess the societal outcomes of university research, beyond long-standing but poorly publicly understood academic measures, institutions have been forced to reconsider what excellence in research and research impact looks like.
While the existing university ranking systems prioritise Nobel Prizes, Citations and peer esteem, ACU has released a bold new approach, with Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Abid Khan declaring, “universities must act to shape the conditions in which people and communities can truly flourish.”
The strategy focuses the university’s research and enterprise activities on projects that advance the physical, social, cultural, moral and spiritual dimensions of human flourishing.
“We will be distinct in leveraging high-quality research to deliver leadership and practical solutions that promote human flourishing locally, nationally and across the Asia-Pacific,” Professor Khan said.
“Having spent a lot of my career focussed on models of innovation and impact, primarily in high-end STEM, I wanted to take the opportunity to position ACU distinctly around people-centred impact in keeping with the university’s mission.
”Rankings remain useful for discipline excellence, but aren’t specifically to be chased as an end in their own right. They can generate some odd behaviours so human flourishing is a useful coordinating principle to bring people together.”
It would be easy to write the strategy off as another attempt by a university to reclaim societal relevance, but the detail and specific focus areas suggest that ACU is choosing a new path, with impact on human flourishing as a dominant coordinating factor, building upon other retained metrics such as research quality where the university has established a strong position.
The strategy will focus staff on mission-driven research, interdisciplinary solutions, co-developed community-engaged outcomes and ethical global partnerships for impact. Within campus walls, ACU will also work on growing HDR enrolments in fields relevant to human flourishing and building a research community of practice to enable excellence, while also activating campuses in collaboration with government and community partners.
“There aren’t many ranking systems that go beyond basic academic metrics, so human flourishing also focusses our downstream impact. To be clear, we will need to develop new metrics ourselves – for example by leveraging Harvard’s human flourishing indices,” Professor Khan said.
“We’re now asking our research groups to come to us with interdisciplinary research projects aligned to the clear HF agenda. Similarly, we’re reviewing our domestic and international partnerships.
“One thing we’ve already changed is our international strategy, this used to focus (logically) solely on quality and so was very northern hemisphere oriented. As a result, I’ve just launched ACU’s first international research centre with Indonesia, called the Indonesia-Australia human Flourishing Centre, aimed at people-centred issues in our region so that our leading work now has a pathway to regional impact.
“The research approach we are taking brings operational life to the research-side of our mission, which therefore must go beyond academic research quality. It takes a positive, publicly understandable, accessible and distinct role for us as both a public university and a Catholic university – that role squarely being to serve people.”
Professor Khan will discuss the research strategy and what it means for the university and social licence at HE FEST 26.