Right attitude earns endowment

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland University's plans to create a "knowledge economy campus" at Tamaki have received a boost from Allied Telesyn.

The multinational communications technology company has decided to endow a chair in data communications at the university.

The company, which makes high-level switches and routers, has headquarters in Tokyo and Seattle and research facilities around the world. The largest is in Christchurch.

Geoff Peck, managing director of the New Zealand operation, says Allied Telesyn has also endowed chairs in Kyoto, Japan, and Udini, Italy.

He says Auckland was chosen because "it has the right attitude - the vice-chancellor, John Hood, comes from business and his approach to the way the university does business is very effective."

Mr Peck says while it is up to the university to hire for the position, he would like to see it filled by someone with a name in the industry.

"Someone who's well respected in an engineering sense, or comes from a significant position in a known company and maybe wants to move out of the hard-line commercial stuff into research and teaching."

Professor Ralph Cooney, pro vice-chancellor in charge of the Tamaki campus, says the endowment should cover a big chunk of the $100,000-plus a year position and its set-up costs.

"This is tremendously important because it gives us a profile for what we are trying to do here," Professor Cooney says.

He says it will probably take about a year to find the right person. The job will include a large research and development component.

"A lot of this work will be postgraduate, because it involves both hardware and software, which is difficult at an undergraduate level," Professor Cooney says.

He says the plan for the Tamaki campus as a whole is to have an even split between undergraduate and postgraduate students.

"We've listened to the rhetoric about the knowledge economy and now we want to do something practical, immediate and effective - to develop a research-intensive, interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial environment."

He says the campus will have an associated technology park, with firms co-locating facilities there or partnering in some form of research centre.

"We want to create integration between industry, the university and crown research institutes. The idea is to get the national research and development stakeholders working together.

"We've got enough space to do it here, but it would not be possible at the city campus."

Professor Cooney says the Tamaki campus will include six areas or themes of study: environment, energy and resources; information technology, communications and electronics; materials and manufacturing; food and biotechnology; health, sport and psychology; and information management and entrepreneurship.

He says the university already has more than 20 staff in three faculties with expertise in data communications.

"This will provide a centre for coherence and capacity for growth."